With Netflix’s One Piece being a huge success, the streaming platform has been diving deeper into similar projects, and one of its latest live-action adaptations has excelled in an aspect where the first season fell short. While the One Piece live-action broke the long-standing curse of poor anime adaptations, it is far from perfect. The project faced major challenges, especially as it had to adapt longer arcs from the anime and manga that span over 100 chapters and episodes. In condensing the story, the live-action naturally had to cut certain elements.
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Unfortunately, in doing so, the first season of this ambitious adaptation did not feature as much action as many fans expected. Even the actors acknowledged this issue, with Zoro’s actor, Mackenyu, hinting that they are trying to include more action in the upcoming season. While it remains to be seen how One Piece Season 2 will address this, a new live-action adaptation has already shown exactly how to tackle this problem. The Last Samurai Standing, currently airing on Netflix, is a perfect example of how action-heavy sequences in a live-action adaptation of a manga or anime should look.
Netflix’s Last Samurai Standing Provides a Perfect Representation of How One Piece Should Handle Action
The currently trending series on Netflix, Last Samurai Standing, based on the novel by Shogo Imamura, which also has a manga of the same name, follows the story of a samurai who, in an era where samurai are no longer needed, enters a series of deadly games to earn enough wealth to support his family. What follows is a brutal set of battles where samurai face each other in bloody combat, all hoping to claim the final prize. Since the series revolves around samurai clashing head-to-head, heavy sword action is a constant theme, and it is more than safe to say that Netflix’s adaptation not only captures this action but often goes beyond expectations.
The sword fights in this series are top-tier, offering a clear example of how live-action adaptations should handle sword combat. This is exactly the element Netflix’s One Piece needs to learn from, especially with Zoro, a swordsman with the pride of a samurai, being a central character who should be highlighted just as effectively as Last Samurai Standing highlights its protagonist. In fact, the upcoming season of One Piece offers the perfect opportunity to do so.
Season 2 will cover the Whiskey Peak arc, where Zoro takes on a hundred Baroque Works agents. There is no denying that this sequence could become one of the series’s biggest highlights for action. If One Piece delivers sword combat anything close to what Last Samurai Standing showcases, the next season of One Piece could easily fix one of Season 1’s biggest issues. Based on the reports so far, it seems Netflix’s One Piece does plan to elevate its action significantly, and the latest hit on the platform is a promising sign that this improvement is on the way.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm -
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