Netflix’s “One Piece” Sails Into the Grand Line with a Swashbuckling Season 2 ...Middle East

The live-action anime adaptation is always a dicey proposition, no less so when it’s Netflix doing the adapting. Their version of “Cowboy Bebop” was a dour, muggy reshuffling of the series’ events with a mismatched cast and no sense of direction; “Avatar: The Last Airbender” fared even worse, unable to survive Netflix’s punishing runtimes, pacing issues, and the cardinal sin of, well, casting bad child actors as the leads. So it was doubly surprising that their adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s long-running manga and anime “One Piece” somehow broke the curse: It wasn’t perfect, by any means, but it managed to capture at least some of the free-wheeling mania of Oda’s bizarre character designs, while repackaging it in a curiously novel mishmash of tones that feels unique, at least by Netflix standards.

It helps, of course, that everyone loves a good pirate story, and Oda’s basic brief is an infectious one: A candy-colored fantasy land of swashbuckling buccaneers and mystical creatures, as well as purple, textured “devil fruits” that can lend those who eat them increasingly cartoonish powers. The high seas are bedeviled by fish men and physics-defying obstacles, but it’s worth it to the pirates who risk it all to acquire the One Piece, a mysterious treasure left behind by infamous pirate Gold Roger. One such adventurer is Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), a rubber-limbed youngster with a goal as single-minded as his irrepressible optimism: He wants to become King of the Pirates.

Season 1, which smooshed about the first 100 episodes of the long-running anime (which is still going!) into about eight hours, fast-tracked Luffy gaining his ship, the Going Merry, and the first wave of his loyal crew: stoic swordsman Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu, son of Sonny Chiba), wily navigator Nami (Emily Rudd), blustering shipmate Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson), and stylish chef Sanji (Taz Skylar). With the essential parts assembled and the East Blue arc out of the way, Season 2 proceeds with a more episodic structure this time around, as the Straw Hat Pirates (so named for Luffy’s favored headwear) head down the Grand Line, a dangerous stretch of sea that presents their first real obstacles to finding the One Piece.

Of course, the titular treasure is secondary to “One Piece”‘s concerns this season, as, in classic adventure-of-the-week fashion, the show gives the crew plenty of stopovers to help the needy, save their own skin, or latch onto new noble causes. The Straw Hats get trapped in the belly of a giant whale, Jonah-style; a seemingly pirate-friendly island becomes a trap; a prehistoric island also proves home to two frenemy giants playing out a century-old duel to the death. And all the while, they’re hunted by a new group of over-the-top baddies called the Baroque Works, who operate in male-female pair teams with powers as ostentatious as their outfits.

For the most part, this episodic structure really helps paper over some of live-action “One Piece”‘s bigger flaws, which have to do with its big-but-not-big-enough budget and the innate bloat of an hour-long episode runtime. One of the show’s more novel appeals is showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda’s insistence on translating Oda’s eccentric character and production design as literally as possible to live action; this means real people will pop on screen with ridiculous pastel outfits, impossibly sculpted hairdos (or, in the case of some of the men, physiques), or weapons so unwieldy they make Cloud’s Buster Sword from “Final Fantasy VII” look pocket-sized.

It’s a campy treat to see folks like David Dastmalchian show up as a Baroque Works renegade with candle-wax superpowers, dressed like Alan Cumming on “The Traitors,” to be sure. But the visual pop of those fits and neon-colored wigs sometimes gets obscured by the perfectly digital flatness of the color grading, not to mention the occasionally ropey CGI (especially when Luffy’s Gum-Gum powers kick in). There’s an uncanny valley feel to the whole thing, but in reverse: People who look so lifelike when presented in such unblinking, cartoonish ways. That tonal weirdness carries over into the show’s tone, too, which flits between Saturday-morning cartoon and adult-drama/action-show willy-nilly. It’s hard to know what to feel when you watch a cute cartoon reindeer named Tony Tony Chopper (voiced by Mikaela Hoover) say “shit.”

That dissonance does feel infectious, though, especially when “One Piece” centers on its central ensemble, which mostly fires on all cylinders this season. While Godoy continues to bring his exuberant (though frustratingly one-note) giddiness to Luffy, the real highlights here are Mackenyu and Skylar. Zoro gets a brilliant showcase in the third episode of the season, where he gets to indulge in a “Kill Bill”-like roaring rampage of revenge as he slices and dices through literally a hundred assassins in an enormous tavern set. (The fight scenes continue to feel fresh and inviting, even as the wirework grows tiresome the further the season goes.) Sanji, meanwhile, is the charm at the heart of the crew, oozing effortless cool and bouncing nicely off the rest of the crew.

This season also introduces a couple of new crewmembers in the form of “Bridgerton” alum Charithra Chandran as a Baroque Works assassin with more complicated motives up her sleeve, and, well, the aforementioned Chopper, whose tragic backstory gets explored in the final two episodes of the season. (He clearly got the bulk of the effects work this season, which makes me question how sustainable the show will be for Netflix if he’s gonna be a fixture moving forward.) They work well enough in their respective stories, but I’m understandably skeptical of how well the show will maintain a balance of so many characters as the Merry gets more crowded—to say nothing of how the show’s structure puts some of these characters’ broader personal journeys on hold.

For now, though, “One Piece” remains an imperfect, if entertaining, treat; for those lacking the will or the time to dive into thirty-plus years of manga or anime (the show’s episode count is already in the four figures), it does well in a pinch. Purists may complain it flattens the rich characters they’ve spent half a lifetime enjoying, and that may well be true. But taken on its own terms, it feels not unlike the campy, swashbuckling Sam Raimi-produced adventure shows of the ’90s, like “Xena: Warrior Princess” or “Jack of All Trades.” It’s goofy, knowingly strange, and wears its heart on its sentimental sleeve, and that’s enough to put some wind in its sails.

Whole season screened for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.

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