This story contains spoilers for One Piece.
Netflix’s recent adaptation of the legendary Manga and Anime series One Piece is finally here, and it’s a largely faithful interpretation of most of the East Blue saga, condensing over 44 anime episodes down to just 8 live-action ones, with a few key changes. Some of the huge differences will be obvious to longtime fans, but some of the decisions from showrunner Matt Owens and the rest of the writing team will likely surprise even the longest serving crewmates. Here’s the most important alterations in the translation to live-action and why they’re such a big deal:
Romance Dawn
The inciting incident for the Great Pirate Era, the time period where One Piece is currently set, is no less important in the Netflix adaptation as it also kicks off with the Pirate King Gold Roger’s public execution. A lot of the dialogue is lifted wholesale from previous incarnations, but the biggest changes are the people present for the event.
In the crowd we can see the green cape of the revolutionary Monkey D. Dragon, along with brief shots of future Warlord of the Sea Mihawk; Shanks, who is, at the time, part of Roger’s crew; and a young Captain Smoker. All of these characters have been shown in the crowd before, but there are some important previous attendees missing: Buggy, Crocodile, Donquixote Doflamingo, and Gecko Moria.
The biggest change is the presence of Vice Admiral Garp, who wasn’t at the execution previously but leads the proceedings in Netflix’s One Piece. Despite the alteration, this doesn’t seem to change his character’s trajectory much, as he still ends up overseeing Koby and Helmeppo’s training.
The marine cadets Koby and Helmeppo get far more screen time than in the source material, showing a lot more of their experience working under Garp. In the anime, it’s several hundred episodes before they’re seen again. Though, they make semi-regular appearances in the manga.
Show, don’t tell, is what most screenwriters will recommend. The fight between Zoro and Mr.7 is previously mentioned in the Baroque Works arc of the manga and anime, which would take place a short time after the events in the live-action season, but it isn’t depicted until the Netflix adaptation In the anime and manga, Zoro simply talks about winning the fight when higher-ups in Baroque Works reveal themselves after the crew reaches Arabasta.
Including this fight in the new adaptation works to introduce the audience to two important things: seeding the existence of the network of pirate mercenaries a full season before they’ll become relevant to the story, and as an early showing of Zoro’s skill as a sword fighter. In the source material, the audience doesn’t actually get confirmation of this until he’s freed from Shells Town.
While we’re on the subject of Zoro — here he’s responsible for giving Helmeppo’s his horrible haircut, which solves a long-standing fan argument about why someone would look like that on purpose.
Orange Town
Although the crew are introduced to the clown pirate Buggy in Orange Town, their experience with him is pretty different. Buggy previously hadn’t forced the village to attend a circus performance, and hadn’t entirely leveled the surroundings, but was still a highly credible threat.
Without any buildings standing, this means the dog Chouchou has nothing to guard, so isn’t sitting outside the pet store waiting for his owner. We do still get to see a shot of Chouchou walking toward the camera at the end of the episode, thankfully.
There’s no appearance from the lion Richie, either. This means no fight scene between him and Luffy, though Buggy does lampshade this with a line of dialogue about expecting the circus performance to have a dancing lion. We do still see Luffy locked in a cage by Buggy, though this time it’s because he’s being subjected to a salt-water torture.
