Netflix’s One Piece: Breaking Down Nami’s Most Controversial Change

One Piece‘s live-action series on Netflix took on the entirety of the East Blue saga with the eight episodes seen in the first season on Netflix, and in changing some of the events for the new series, it actually made a controversial change to Nami and her ties to Coco Village and Arlong as a result. There naturally had to be a number of changes made to the Netflix series in order to adapt so much of Eiichiro Oda’s original One Piece manga, but fans were happy to see that the spirit of the characters had been kept mostly intact despite all of the shifts. 

It’s just one nagging issue that changed Nami’s origin story with the Arlong Park arc seen in Netflix’s One Piece series that sort of changes just how tragic of a life she actually led to that point. It all stems from a few key changes beginning with Nami actively seeking out Arlong to join his crew in the live-action series and not telling anyone in the village about. Compared to the manga, and it makes for a less impactful version of the story overall despite hitting the core emotional beats in order to tell the Arlong Park story. 

Netflix’s One Piece: What’s Different for Nami’s Origin Story?

In the original manga version of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, Arlong and his crew attacks Coco Village and kills Nami and Nojiko’s mother Belle-Mere when she can only pay for their tributes. Not only does the live-action series remove the part where Belle-Mere actually fights back against Arlong before failing, but it also removes Belle-Mere refusing to lie and acknowledges Nami and Nojiko as her daughters despite the fact she was about to be executed by Arlong. In the live-action series, Nami and Nojiko get spotted by the crew instead. 

Following Belle-Mere’s death, Arlong in the manga decides to kidnap Nami because he finds out she’s a good map maker and wants to force her to do the same to him. The next time the people of Coco Village see Nami, she reveals she’s joined their crew because of the money they gave her for it. The people then end up hating her because she seemingly valued money over her mother’s life, and thus shun her. The live-action One Piece accomplishes the same goal, but instead has the young Nami openly approaching Arlong’s crew to the chagrin of the village instead. Once again, removing the severity from the situation. 

But the key change to the live-action One Piece is that Nojiko actually knows Nami’s true goal in the manga. Shortly after Nami joins Arlong’s crew in the manga, Nojiko finds out her plan to save up 100 million Berries and buy back Coco Village from Arlong. Thus the people of the village soon find out of their own accord, and decide to bear with Arlong’s terror for all those years in order to secretly support Nami’s plan to save them. So while they acted like they hated Nami to make her having to work for Arlong easier, they knew it was for the greater good. 

Nojiko doesn’t know Nami’s plan in the live-action version, and thus she and the people of the village actually hate Nami and think she’s a terrible traitor for working with Arlong. There’s even a whole confrontation with Nezumi in the manga where the people of the village try to keep them from stealing Nami’s money, and openly fight them because they don’t help poor folks like them anyway. So the live-action series misses the point of Coco Village as, yes, Nami was bearing this terrible secret all alone, but the whole idea was that she was never alone in the first place. 

It’s when she fully breaks down and finally asks Luffy (who doesn’t bother learning her origin in the manga, because it doesn’t matter to him anyway) for help, that Nami finally accepts any of the help around her. She’s been struggling alone for so long, and finally realizes that she doesn’t have to. It’s why her finally fully becoming a member of the Straw Hat crew has impact, and the live-action series misses out on this aspect. 

But what did you think of the changes to Nami’s origin story in the One Piece live-action series? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!