One Piece‘s live-action series has been a massive success with fans because of how faithful it’s been to the original series, and one of the minds behind the Netflix series revealed the most surprising aspect about working with the original manga creator Eiichiro Oda. The first season of the live-action take on Eiichiro Oda’s massively popular manga series introduced fans all over the world to a new take on Luffy as he gathered together the members of his Straw Hat pirate crew. And it was so successful that it was quickly confirmed to have a second season now in the works.ย
One of the big draws of the live-action One Piece series was how faithful of an adaptation it was for the manga releases, and the co-showrunner behind it all Matt Owens opened up about working on the series ahead of the start of Netflix’s Season 2 production in a Reddit AMA with fans. And the most surprising aspect of it all was how collaborative and fun it was working with the series’ original creator, Eiichiro Oda, as they helped to figure out how to bring it all to life.ย
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One Piece: Matt Owens Talks Working With Eiichiro Oda
“The most surprising aspect of working with Oda is how well we gelled and collaborated,” Owens began when detailing working with One Piece‘s creator for the Netflix series. “Not that I expected different, but his engagement was not just informative and important, but fun. We have spent HOURS talking about intricacies of One Piece. Characters, history, all sorts of things.”
As Owens continued, it was revealed that Oda and Owens developed a much closer working relationship over the course of the series, “We also talked a lot about movies and books and anime. We learned how each other think and it birthed a very creative partnership. I always look forward to our talks because we learn so much from one another and it made for a better show. I really cannot express enough my love for him.”
What do you think of One Piece’s live-action series and how it brought the manga and anime to life? What do you think of the way Oda has approached the 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!