The East Blue Saga that this first season of One Piece is adapting is really Nami’s story. Luffy may be the face of the franchise, the captain of the ship, and the one with the big dream, but the one with the layered story, the one to actually grow throughout the season, is Nami. It makes sense, too, as the two most important pillars of a ship’s crew are the captain and the navigator.
There’s also the fact that the other characters (including Luffy) are rather simple. Not in a bad way, but what you see is what you get. Zoro’s the edgy, too-cool-for-school dude who instantly becomes an audience favorite — and Mackenyu plays that to perfection, never smiling or even changing the tone of his voice. Luffy’s always just overenthusiastic and ready to jump without looking. Even Usopp (Jacob Romero), whom we meet in this episode and is a chronic liar and a (terrible) con man desperate to make others think he’s cool, is not hiding many layers beyond his first impression. The three get along instantly — kind of: Zoro seems to mostly just tolerate people, while Nami’s using them for her own benefit (remember, she’s working for someone else). She has secrets and mistrusts everyone but is smart and will keep Luffy and the others alive (for now).
So far, each episode of One Piece is about slowly breaking down Nami’s barriers as well as her preconceived notions about pirates. She’s the great skeptic who sees pirates as the villains the world considers them to be, but Luffy’s slowly convincing her otherwise. She was surprised by Luffy’s compassion toward the Orange Town citizens in the previous episode and his fierce loyalty to his friends. This episode spends a lot of time on the disagreements of Luffy and Nami — which is mostly about their different ideas of piracy. She first refutes every attempt by Luffy to say they are a crew, she shuts down Luffy’s idea for a very horribly drawn Jolly Roger — Zoro’s more lenient and sees its potential — and she’s confounded by Luffy’s plan to just ask for a ship rather than steal one like every other pirate does.
So when Luffy finds the perfect ship, the cartoony one with a sheep figurehead that Usopp’s cleaning up, Luffy immediately makes friends with him and convinces him to take them to the shipyard’s owner to try and buy it from her. This prompts Nami and Luffy to make a bet — if Luffy can’t talk the owner into gifting them the ship, Nami can steal it.
Luckily for them, the owner Kaya instantly takes a liking to them — most likely because her illness has turned her into a recluse and they are the only people her age other than Usopp she has seen in years. Now, I’ve praised the look of the show before, but it truly bears repeating that, if nothing else, this is the best-looking manga live-action adaptation to date. Not just in terms of casting, as Romero, Celeste Loots, and Alexander Maniatis look and act just like Usopp, Kaya, and her butler, Klahadore, brought to life without turning into a caricature and without losing any aspect of the characters in translation (Maniatis even nails the ridiculous hand motion Klahadore makes to push up his glasses, a foreshadow to his clawy reveal).
Likewise, the makeup and costume designs make these more than just expensive cosplay. Merry’s whole sheep-outfit thing somehow doesn’t look stupid. If I initially thought that One Piece’s cartoony nature would be a problem for the live-action adaptation, I take it back. Because the source material is so goofy, it makes suspension of disbelief easier than if this were a more “realistic†story. After this episode, and the introduction of Arlong (more on this later), swallowing the more bizarre elements of the story that will appear in any future seasons, like Chopper or Funkfreed, won’t be so hard.
Having snagged an invitation to celebrate Kaya’s birthday, Luffy plays on his charm and tries to convince her to give them a ship, jumping on the table and proudly proclaiming that they are not sailors like Usopp had told them but pirates. Not even regular pirates, mind you, but pirates that (as Luffy proudly brags) defeated a clown, raided a Marine base, and beat up a captain. Against all odds, Kaya’s amused, but before she can give them a ship, her illness cuts the evening short.
The Straw Hats (it does have a nice ring to it) are on a race against the clock because they only have until midnight to get Kaya to help them, before Klahadore’s plan — to have her transfer ownership of the shipyard to him, then to have him and his crew kill her with poison — takes effect. Not only is the butler an extremely obvious traitor, but he’s also a pirate named Kuro, captain of the Black Cat Pirates — the one Morgan claimed he had killed. Kuro has catlike claws and seems to have super-speed, which is something rather tricky to adapt to live action but looks quite good here.
Though Nami’s heart of gold gets the better of her after bonding with Kaya and makes her return some of the items she stole from the house, they shouldn’t have a problem getting some cash. Upon learning that Klahadore’s actually a pirate, Zoro gets excited as his bounty would make up for letting Buggy go. However, Kuro’s crew gets the better of the pirate-hunter, knocking Zoro out and throwing him down a well while Luffy’s busy eating a whole pot full of poisoned food. Meanwhile, Usopp’s living his boy-who-cried-wolf life, as his latest attempt at ringing the town bell and warning that pirates have3 snuck in falls on deaf ears. No one believes the poor fella. No one, that is, except Koby.
Koby’s B-plot has increasingly become the most fascinating adaptation choice so far in One Piece. In the manga and anime, we get a short little side story about his training with the Marines in the background, but here he is not just a main character; he represents what is ultimately the main antagonist of the story: the Marines and the government. Koby has now become a sort of surrogate son to Vice-Admiral Garp, who thinks of turning Koby’s experience with pirates into an asset for the Marines, training him in strategy, and now sending Koby as leader of a mission to capture Luffy — whom they track thanks to Luffy being dumb enough to leave his ugly Jolly Roger on the ship he was supposed to send adrift and far from their current location.
X Marks the Spot
• The show makes it clear Zoro’s terrible at directions, but to think there’s a toilet onboard is just next level.
• Turns out One Piece is not getting rid of Buggy so soon (which is an excellent choice). He’s visited by a guy who looks like a shark, then by Arlong the fish-man. That’s right, Arlong’s showing up early, and he kidnaps Buggy, who will help him in capturing Luffy. If you want to know how big a threat Arlong is, his bounty is 20 million berry, compared to Kuro’s 16, Buggy’s 15, and Alvida’s 5 million.
• The show seems to be making the implicit romance of Usopp and Kaya explicit, with both Zoro and Nami asking them about their relationship and Usopp wondering if she actually does like him. One Piece is definitely aging up the story, what with the blood and the cursing, but adding romance can make for interesting changes.
• Turns out Usopp’s a good marksman, just like his dad, Yasopp, who just so happens to be the marksman in Shanks’s crew. Man, everyone in the East Blue is somehow related to Shanks’s crew.
• The scene where Nami asks Luffy for help in picking an outfit and he just keeps repeating that she “looks like Nami†is adorable.
• It’s curious to think that, in the years since the manga first came out, we’ve seen plenty of stories about pirates being fun and carefree adventurers and also freedom fighters, including Pirates of the Caribbean and Black Sails. The title One Piece has most in common with, however, is Our Flag Means Death. That show completely shatters the image of the fearsome pirate, turning the crew into a found family, and makes it all about fun adventures. Luffy would definitely be best friends with Stede Bonnet.
• When looking at the map of the Grand Line, Nami’s bewildered by a huge mountain with five rivers running up its sides. It’s unlikely we’ll see Reverse Mountain this season, but it’s a cool detail nonetheless.