The recent One Piece live-action adaptation has been gathering a lot of attention and praise from critics and the community alike. Even Eiichiro Oda, the author of the original manga, gave his blessing to the show, by giving Iñaki Godoy, the actor portraying Monkey D. Luffy, his iconic straw hat. Still, the show isn’t quite perfect.
The fight scenes are full of spectacle, enhanced by VFX and CGI, but at the root of it is that the actors actually perform most of their own stunts. This allows for fewer camera cuts and enables them to showcase more of the action, living up to the source material to a much greater extent. Mackenyu, the Japanese actor, actually has martial arts and sword fighting experience, so his casting as “Roronoa Zoro,” the swashbuckling pirate hunter, is very fitting.
During one of the fight scenes, Roronoa Zoro’s most precious sword is seen bending when he rolls to avoid an attack. Clearly, this was due to the actor wearing a foam replica during the stunt, but it sparked a lot of discussion online, especially on Twitter. Here are some of them:
https://twitter.com/minafromonce/status/1699284708071260517?s=20
https://twitter.com/jantteoki/status/1702959986572493025?s=20
hi @netflix
loved the live rendition of ONE PIECE.
the way it holds us between comic & real, is a chef’s kiss.to the team 🥂
P.s.
a minor bug noticed in episode one/
zorro's sword sheath is seen bending like an air-filled balloon. I am not sure about the intention. pic.twitter.com/Qmj4pTPitp— & Notes (@rahul__and) September 5, 2023
https://twitter.com/TsinobiGaming/status/1699105047966064733?s=20
Meanwhile, a Taiwanese YouTuber known as Huber actually went through the trouble of manually fixing it, to make the sword not bent, as seen in their video.
They went through each frame and carefully painted a straight version of the swords, removed the old ones, and composited the straightened ones on top. A digital blacksmith. The comment section and other online discussions of this video all mention the YouTuber should be hired as a visual effect artist by the studio behind One Piece, so we may be seeing the start of a career.
It would seem fans love the adaptation, to the point where they want to make it just that little bit better, despite the amount of effort involved.
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