One Piece Season 2 Review: Against All Odds, It Might Be Time To Get on Board

Even to a total neophyte to the Church of One Piece, it's clear that Netflix's live-action remake is something of an abomination. There's a perfectly good show buried beneath all those flattened visuals: While evidently faithful to the hundred-volume manga series by Eiichiro Oda, there's something unbearably off about its look and feel. The fantastical wonder of Oda's candy-colored world was partially lost in translation, making it feel more like the demented lovechild between LazyTown and a Disney Channel Original than the costly undertaking Netflix purports it to be.

That's not to say that there aren't charms to Netflix's pirate shenanigans, but I found myself immune to them in its first season. As One Piece headed into its second, I still believed the show had been given too much credit. Not enough ink has been spilled on its aesthetic failings, its stilted tone: Critics likened it to a child's dream come to life, but what child would paint with such a dull canvas? Was it reverence for Oda's original work that kept so many optimistic? Maybe so, as those problems are no closer to resolving themselves in this new season. If anything, One Piece Season 2 is doubling down on the baffling style that made its first such a pain. For every step forward, it takes two back, with co-showrunners Matt Owens and Joe Tracz chasing one inspired choice with an equally ridiculous one. Returning to this world felt just as maddening as it did three years ago — but something bizarre happened about halfway through the season. I found myself getting on its wacky little wavelength anyway.

It helps that the narrative growing pains that plagued One Piece's first season have since been ironed out. The series had to find its footing, tonally and aesthetically, while assembling the Straw Hat Crew (named for its leader's trademark cap) under one banner. The former may still be a jarring work in progress, but One Piece is saved almost entirely by the power of friendship — that, and its exceptionally cast ensemble. Buried under a few cringe-inducing wigs (sorry, I absolutely despise these wigs) are the spitting images of Oda's creations, each united in their loyalty to aspiring pirate king Monkey D. Luffy (an utterly magnetic Iñaki Godoy). And the crew only gets bigger and more watchable as this series plumbs greater depths, venturing into a new region where Luffy hopes to find the titular piece of treasure that will help him turn piracy into a vessel for joy and freedom. Where Season 1 was mostly table setting, Season 2 is the true beginning of this adventure, embracing the weirdness and warmth of the source material for better and worse.

6.0

One Piece Season 2

at Netflix

Like

• A pitch-perfect cast
• Emotional stakes that feel real and urgent
• An infectious whimsy that's impossible not to smile at

Dislike

• Disappointing visuals and garish effects
• A persistent identity crisis

The Straw Hats' exploits have barely begun by the time they sail into the Grand Line — a region where the currents, weather, and magnetic fields all change on a dime — but they've already earned a scandalous reputation. Luffy, with a bounty a hundred million strong on his head, is wanted by the Marines of the World Government and a bloodthirsty crime syndicate known as Baroque Works. The latter becomes the main antagonistic force this season, with bounty hunters scattered across the Grand Line searching for the Straw Hats, destabilizing Marine strongholds, and sowing discord everywhere else. It all adds up to a major conflict involving the desert kingdom of Alabasta, its missing princess, and a lot of interventionist intrigue — but One Piece has a few one-off pirate adventures to bank before it can come to that. 

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Each episode covers one "arc" of the original manga; each island the Straw Hats visit becomes an adventure-of-the-week of sorts, breaking up the monotonous beats of Netflix's binge model until things get more serious (and serialized) in the season's back half. Luffy's crew navigates an island with currents that defy gravity, and another on which a hundred Baroque Works goons are lying in wait to kill them. A few assassins stand out from the pack, like Charithra Chandran's Miss Wednesday, who starts as a femme fatale before becoming the vulnerable heart of the entire season. David Dastmalchian is also a quiet menace as Mr. 3, a man whose Devil Fruit powers let him wield candle wax to deadly lengths. Others are hard to forget for more ridiculous reasons: There's a guy who conceals a Gatling gun within his comically large, Mozart-inspired wig, and another who can turn anything, even his boogers, into a projectile weapon. That any of that works is a testament to One Piece's emotional core, which is more compelling than it has any right to be.

Most crucially, the series takes plenty of time to let its heroes grow. The strong, mostly silent Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu) is still licking his wounds from a battle with the "World's Strongest Swordsman" back in Season 1, and his quest to get his mojo back involves a hunt for two new swords and an opponent worthy of those blades. (In particularly tense battles, he wields a total of three, one caught between his teeth. It's the kind of aurafarming that's just zany enough to really work.) The Straw Hats' unflappable navigator, Nami (Emily Rudd), finally gets to test her skills in a realm that defies understanding, while Usopp (Jacob Romero), the team's bumbling, slingshot-wielding comic relief, gets ample opportunities to put his burgeoning courage to the test. It doesn't hurt that Romero also makes even the most mundane lines laugh-out-loud funny. In a show where Devil Fruit gives characters bizarre physical powers — Luffy can stretch his limbs like rubber; others can turn into smoke or animals — One Piece functions best as a down-to-earth character study. That could be cause for concern, as a great deal of this show is basically live-action Looney Tunes. But until Owens and Tracz (or, in the upcoming third season, Tracz and Ian Stokes) can figure out how to defy the laws of physics in more credible ways (not just with wire-fu or giant CGI animals, though that stuff is appreciated), its grounded character work will have to carry the slack. 

Small moments of team building are the glue that makes that drollery much easier to believe; that One Piece also hews so close to Oda's heart-wrenching material only strengthens that cohesion. Maybe it's manipulative to focus on a CGI whale with abandonment issues, or deliver a new chapter of tragic backstory for the suave cook Sanji (Taz Skylar, arguably the biggest victim of the Bad Wig Olympics), but it helps in distracting from everything within this show that still just does not work. Most manipulative of all might be the introduction of One Piece's de facto mascot, Tony Tony Chopper (voiced by Mikaela Hoover). A baby reindeer anthropomorphized by the Human-Human Fruit (yes, really), his past is the subject of the season's obligatory, episode-long flashback — and it is impossible to walk away from dry-eyed. But Chopper also personifies the show's shortcomings in a way that nearly undoes all that emotional integrity. He mostly presents like a stuffed animal brought to life, but when his emotions boil over, he grows into a bipedal beast that could have stumbled off the set of How the Grinch Stole Christmas… muscular skin suit, slapdash makeup and all. It's garish stuff, and it easily undermines One Piece's status as one of Netflix's most expensive undertakings. Either something is amiss with the show's budget allotment, or it needs a lot more than it already has.

Then there's the issue of its tone. It's impossible to say who this show is truly for: Its violence is relatively tame (see: bloodless) enough for a young-ish audience, but its language and humor feel too crude for its TV-14 rating. And it may be an OK entry point for those who've never read a page of Oda's manga or sat through any of the One Piece anime's thousand episodes, but at every turn I found myself wondering if all this emotion wouldn't hit different in the original medium. It's not just a matter of suspending one's disbelief: Netflix's adaptation is getting ahead of itself in a spectacular way, trying to breadcrumb storylines that are hundreds of chapters down the road. This season spends some time waffling on its focus, teasing out a new mystery involving Gol D. Roger, the OG King of the Pirates and creator of the One Piece, and his long-lost son (who may or may not be Luffy, but also, probably isn't?), before all but abandoning that concept. Fans of the manga or anime will likely be following along with a knowing curiosity and more than a little grace; knowing how this tale evolves must go a long way toward papering over any stumbles here and now. But there's no such comfort for outsiders, who need actual reasons to care about the politics of Alabasta or the duty of the Marines, and don't always get it.

So, yeah, One Piece is an unmitigated mess… but it also refuses to become total hate-watch material. It's all too easy to pick the show apart (believe it or not, I'm still holding myself back here), but it can't be discounted for its passion, either. It's a clumsy love letter to a tale that's captivated millions, and it's also undeniably infectious. Godoy's Luffy has a particular way with the material, winning you back with a knowing smile and a knockout line that's stunning in its simplicity. It makes total sense that the Straw Hats are following him into certain dangers, risking their lives to chart an unchartable realm or prove their bravery. He's so full of conviction, so buoyant with joy, that you just might want to follow him, too — even if every instinct is telling you to fight that feeling.

Premieres: Tuesday, March 10 on Netflix
Who's in it: Iñaki Godoy, Emily Rudd, Mackenyu, Taz Skylar, Jacob Romero, Charithra Chandran, Lera Abova, Daniel Lasker, Katey Sagal, David Dastmalchian, Callum Kerr, Julia Rehwald
Who's behind it: Matt Owens and Joe Tracz (co-showrunners), Eiichiro Oda (executive producer)
For fans of: The original One Piece, Disney's Descendants, Twisted Metal
How many episodes we watched: 8 of 8