The first season of One Piece, a live-action adaptation of the manga and anime of the same name, dropped on Netflix a little while ago, and was received way better than many fans expected. Live-action adaptations of animated shows are dicey at the best of times, and One Piece is especially wild and imaginative. How would Netflix pull that off?
Well, they managed it. One of the keys was flexibility. There are some crazy creatures in One Piece, and there was probably a temptation to rely too much on CGI. But the team used a lot of prosthetics as well, so characters like Arlong the fish-man seemed grounded in our world even as he also appeared outlandish and alien.
But there are even bigger challenges ahead. What to do, for example, with Tony Tony Chopper, a young reindeer who can transform from a human-reindeer hybrid to a full-on reindeer at will, and who also happens to be the resident doctor on board Monkey D. Luffy’s ship? He’s a beloved character and he’ll need to be onscreen a lot. How is the live-action show going to handle this?
Will Tony Tony Chopper be created with CGI or practical effects for the second season of One Piece?
The short version is that we don’t know, but prosthetics lead Jaco Snyman was already thinking about how to bring him to life before the first season of the show dropped on Netflix. “I’m looking forward to working on Tony Tony Chopper,” Snyman told Gamespot. “That’s going to be interesting. I hope that we are able to follow the same approach as with Arlong when we get to it.”
Anime vs. live-action? Netflix's #OnePiece head of prosthetics breaks down how Chopper could come to life in Season 2 👀 pic.twitter.com/w84nUzNvXW
— GameSpot (@GameSpot) September 19, 2023
Netflix didn’t renew One Piece for a second season until fairly recently, and work is probably stalled until the writers and actors strikes in Hollywood are over, so we don’t have any definitive answers yet. However, I have one suggestion: muppet.
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