"I am happy to say that my expectations have been met with the Netflix series." - Oda
▪︎ What were the reasons that led you to agree to bring One Piece to reality and trust in this project?
ODA: For many years I have received different offers to adapt One Piece into a live action and I have rejected them all. First of all, I think that manga works are not intended to be adapted to the cinema, it is not easy to bring them to a real image. But visual effects and production standards started advancing to a point where I saw movies being made that convinced me that with today's technology it's possible, so I changed my mind and started thinking about finding the right partner with the one to work.
▪︎ As an executive producer, what was your role on the project? How involved were you in the adaptation?
ODA: Being an executive producer allowed me to have the right to give the final go-ahead on all aspects of this production, in the scripts, in the editing... Basically, it allowed me to say 'this is good enough to be released'. And, if I wasn't satisfied, I wouldn't see the light. And there were times when I was very honest with my comments about things that I wasn't happy with, and they responded great to all of that. It's not that I physically went to the set, I didn't order them anything, but they shared everything with me. Now, if I had been more involved in understanding how production is done, from a budget point of view and with all the little day-to-day things that go into producing something, I would have known all the difficulties that the team has to go through. and could not have been so objective when evaluating the result. So I think it was necessary to have some distance from the beginning to be able to monitor things and give my opinion on whether something works or not.
▪︎ What has been the biggest challenge of this adaptation?
Oda : I would say the biggest challenge I faced was not betraying the expectations of current One Piece fans. And, after many conversations, trials and adversities with the production team and the writers, the answer I think we arrived at is that live action characters have to resemble the characters that everyone has come to love and embrace. . And I think we have achieved it.
▪︎ Was there any scene that worried you the most when it came to bringing it to reality?
ODA: I don't think there was any particular scene that I could say that I was afraid it wouldn't work. I would say the biggest concern I had in all this endeavor is whether the characters, especially the Straw Hats, would feel true to the ones people already know and have come to love. It's not about one scene in particular, but about the entire series. If fans don't accept them as the characters in the manga and anime, a lot of good things can be done with all the other elements of the production and still fail. So in the writing process and in the casting we paid a lot, a lot of attention to the way the characters are.
▪︎ This live action has some modifications in the plot with respect to the original work. Were you part of these changes? What do you think of them?
ODA: Again, for me it all comes down to the main characters, and their flashbacks are a very important part so readers can understand where these people come from and fall in love with them. We were very, very careful to make sure that the Straw Hats and their stories were fully reflected in the adaptation. We had a lot of conversations to get it right, and as a result of those, I think we achieved a very strong result.
▪︎ In a letter published by Netflix, if the final product did not meet your expectations, it would not be published. What are the details that you reviewed in order to give the go-ahead?
ODA: It's hard to say just one thing, it really was everything, I cared about every detail of the series, both the story and the action. I wanted to make sure that the final product was something that the fans could really see and enjoy, so I wanted to make sure that if things weren't working out, we could stop this at any time. That was important to me.
There was a point where I really thought we had to postpone it until next year or so because we were nearing the end. In May or June we were still discussing various details and I was taking notes on a lot of different scenes, a lot of very detailed things, and I wasn't sure if it was going to be possible. But fortunately, the production team responded to all my notes and made them a reality at a pace that surprised even me.
▪︎ After these seven years since the project began, what do you think of the final result of this live action ?
ODA: In Japan, people of my generation grew up watching a lot of Hollywood movies and idolized them. Most hits in Japanese cinemas were Hollywood films such as Indiana Jones , E.T. , and Terminator . So if Hollywood produced this adaptation, I expected the quality to be very, very high. I was hoping that instead of a Japanese studio doing it, Hollywood would be able to do justice in terms of quality to the world I had drawn.
It's true that since then I've gotten older, and compared to a lot of the writers, the producers, and all the crews working on the show, I've been through a lot too, so I made sure my voice was as well. was heard. If there was something that I thought was not right in the adaptation, I did not hesitate to communicate it and let them know. And, looking at the final product, I am very happy to say that my initial expectations have been realized, I knew that Hollywood would be able to do justice to this vision.
Source: CINEMANÍA
