One Piece Fan Pitches Their Perfect Live-Action Casting for the Admirals

One Piece recently confirmed that it’s moving forward with Netflix and Tomorrow Studios on a new live-action series with original series creator Eiichiro Oda serving as Executive Producer. This live-action series was first announced as part of the franchise’s 20th Anniversary, but had been largely kept under wraps until just a few days ago when it was announced that the franchise would be debuting a ten episode first season on Netflix. The casting for the series has been kept under wraps, but Oda reportedly teased that the entire acting crew has been set in stone already.

But while the Straw Hats may reportedly be set in stone, and while the first season has teased it will cover events from the East Blue saga, there are still all sorts of mystery as to the rest of the extended cast. One Piece has one of the biggest extended casts in all of manga and anime, so any number of actors could help bring them to life.

AllisonTheGreatOne shared a pitch for three big Admirals, Aokiji, Kizaru, and Akainu to Reddit that includes Will Smith, Josh Brolin, and Adam Sandler filling out these major roles in the upcoming Netflix live-action series. Here’s the full breakdown of choices:

The three Admirals were notably based on real life Japanese actors with Aokiji being based on Yusaku Matsuda, Kizaru on Kunie Tanaka, and Akainu as Bunta Sugawara, but there’s nothing saying that they can’t be portrayed by any other actor for a future live-action appearance. There’s no telling as to whether or not any of the Admirals will be making an appearance in this first season just yet, but seeing a big name like any of these three attached to the project would be huge for anime adaptations in general.

But with questions of budget, schedule, and release for this new series still up in the air, this dream team of actors may be too unlikely. It certainly is fun to think about, so what do you think of these casting choices? Who would you want to see join the world of live-action One Piece? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!

Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 90 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold.