Netflix making live-action 'One Piece' from popular manga

The hit Japanese manga is coming to Netflix as a live-action series — a development that’s both exciting and worrisome for fans who have seen mixed success in a growing list of Hollywood adaptations

Hit Japanese manga “One Piece” is coming to Netflix as a live-action series — a development that's both exciting and worrisome for fans who have seen mixed success in a growing list of Hollywood adaptations.

Chronicling the coming-of-age adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a young pirate with a heart of gold, the world's bestselling manga series has already been adapted into an anime TV series with over 900 episodes. There are also 13 animated movies, “One Piece” video games and merchandise galore.

Ready to give her verdict is Nina Oiki, a gender and politics researcher at Tokyo’s Waseda University who has been a “One Piece” fan since she was in elementary school. She read the manga created by Eiichiro Oda when it first came out in Shonen Jump magazine in 1997, and watched the animated show that followed shortly after.

“I know some people are worried about what might happen with the Hollywood remake,” she said, noting how past American attempts at depicting Japanese comics and animated works have at times proved disappointing.

The 2017 Netflix movie adaptation of “Death Note,” a manga and anime about a book that can kill people, was widely critiqued as a flop. In December 2021, Netflix canceled “Cowboy Bebop,” its live-action adaptation of the space Western manga and anime of the same name, after just one season.

The cross-pollination of Hollywood and Japan goes back for decades. References to Japan, such as the image of a geisha on a screen, are plentiful in the 1982 sci-fi movie “Blade Runner,” directed by Ridley Scott.

The film, in turn, influenced anime, including the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” anime that first aired in 2021.