Two years after its first season aired on Netflix, the live-action adaptation of One Piece will return to our screens in 2026. A highly anticipated return for fans of Luffy and his crew, the first glimpse of which raises a problem that the series will struggle to resolve in the future.
One Piece, a series with a colossal budget
The Straw Hat will be back next year with his friends -Zoro, Nami, Sanji, Usopp- after a three-year hiatus deemed far too long by fans. Netflix subscribers are starting to get fed up with having to wait so long between seasons of their favorite shows, like Stranger Things... Yet, these delays are also a guarantee of quality (in theory). The budget for season 2 of One Piece is colossal, with $18 million per episode, which represented a total of $144 million for season 1. For comparison, this is more than Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian ($15 million per episode). However, this very comfortable budget might not be enough to give a realistic look to the live-action version of One Piece.
An unsatisfying Chopper for One Piece
Revealed in this trailer for season 2 of One Piece, Chopper's design did not convince fans. Even though the series' creator, writer, and co-showrunner, Steven Maeda, had stated in 2023 that one of the challenges of the sequel would be adapting Tony Tony into live-action, the result proves that his fears were well-founded. The character's appearance is disappointing: while in the anime he's a cute reindeer-like plush toy, in the trailer he turns into a sluggish, gross creature. He looks like a wet rat, so to speak. A rendering that will have required a significant portion of the budget of One Piece, and which proves that the funding of the series, already very high, might not be enough to succeed in giving a credible look to the fantastic bestiary of Eiichiro Oda - who himself is satisfied with the look of Chopper.
VFX, a challenge for the future of One Piece?
Special effects are a major challenge for the One Piece series, and Chopper's design proves that this challenge will be difficult to meet for Netflix. Season 1 was more than satisfactory in terms of CGI, but non-human characters with a plush appearance (Pikachu, Sonic, Chopper...) as well as fantasy creatures with a more "smooth" appearance will be increasingly numerous in the future of the series. The next seasons should see the arrival of Jinbe, the whale shark Fish-Man, Franky, the cyborg from Water Seven, or Brook, the skeleton musician who ate the Resurrection Fruit. So many protagonists with extravagant looks, requiring colossal work in terms of special effects. Eiichiro Oda has the particularity of creating heroes and villains of crazy proportions, with disproportionate and unique physiques, and Netflix has its work cut out for it to make them credible in live-action.
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