The king of pirates is on his way to being the king of the world.
I was also surprised to see that Iñaki Godoy is Luffy in the live-action of One Piece. Not precisely because of him, but because Netflix is a rare customer when it comes to making adaptations, but also for some reason Eiichiro Oda’s manga is becoming popular as it could not do in the nineties.
Let’s jump back in time to when Cheetos cost 3 pesos and 1 peso of salsa was like a whole bottle. The wonderful nineties and the beginning of the 21st century were a blessing for anime fans in Latin America. Well, not exactly, but for those who watched TV and had Slam Dunk, Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball, Cardcaptor Sakura, Doraemon, and much more to enjoy.
Among all the franchises that could be expected to succeed, there was also One Piece, a shonen with equal or more strength than Dragon Ball and with equal or more renown than Slam Dunk, but it did not take off in Latin America.
Some blame the dubbing, which was confusing and in many ways ambiguous and irrelevant to the development of the story. Others to the censorship, which was brutal and did not allow those who want to see action like in Dragon Ball to get into anything; but most likely the reason was One Piece itself.
Unlike his companions from the Big Three, Dragon Ball or Saint Seiya, Eiichiro Oda is a mangaka with more determination for his work than anyone and that he made known to Shonen Jump from the beginning, something that his sales supported month after month. , but also something western audiences are not used to.
We already talked in another moment about why we have to continue with One Piece and the virtues of Eiichiro Oda, so today we will no longer throw flowers to this great mangaka, but we will talk about the strange revival that this franchise is experiencing, the same that will make it have a live-action adaptation.
One Piece over the years
The evolution of One Piece is curious. Unlike other stories, its characters have raised their “power level” very little, something that all western anime fans fantasize about, who even fight to see who would beat Goku or if Saitama, a character destined to criticize the absurdity of this situation, he would be able to defeat other protagonists.
In One Piece we continue to see fights between beings that take physical capacities to the extreme, but they fight on ships, they hurt their bodies with injuries that last for posterity, and, more importantly, they are still susceptible to die from a dip. Something that the nose that came out of the sewer to say “Goku beats him” would not like.
But the great virtue of this manga is exactly that. It is slow, it has a rhythm that is explained throughout its hundreds of chapters and it has visible consequences; there is no way to escape from what Eiichiro Oda has written, there is no way not to understand this as a battle between two sides who are aware of how devastating war is.
A story that has been cooked for decades, being formed from an army of dedicated and committed fans to not only see the superficial parts but to understand the background through which its author has moved, whether in a subtle or cynical way, perfectly instructed to attract more fans when necessary.
During the last two years, the news about One Piece has been much more intense. Partly because most of the world’s population entered a pandemic state and that made possible both the explosion of anime and the consumption of digital content, but also because it entered the band of the record number exceeding 1 thousand chapters.
The moment that his community waited for years arrived and the context was lent so that everything happened in a positive way. One Pace exists, TikTok exists, Twitter exists, TuMangaOnline exists, YouTube exists and wherever a mugiwara was, he was ready to introduce others to the path of the Grand Line.
It seems like a story written by Eiichiro Oda himself, but it is also today more than ever what One Piece criticizes is a reality. The rise of ultra-right governments, as well as extremist groups taking more weight in all latitudes, bring to mind that world in which there is nothing to do but live in revolt by pirates who exploit usurped land, or governments that exploit lands ready to be usurped.
Armies and bodies of power are exposed, and where the world casts doubt and uncertainty, One Piece and Luffy give an answer.
Although Netflix can dilute this intense political comment in its live-action, the time is ripe for Eiichiro Oda’s word to continue to haunt the world, because he has done so for more than 20 years in Asia and is finally finding the echo that wanted in the West.