Netflix announces new One Piece anime, not to be confused with the one that already exists
One Piece is getting a new anime adaptation, even though the original is still going after 20 years
Well, it didn’t take much for Netflix to go completely mad with anime power. After years and years of trying and failing, the streamer finally produced a live-action adaptation of a classic Japanese cartoon/manga that isn’t such a complete and utter disaster that it should be launched into the sun so it can’t hurt anyone anymore. We’re talking about Netflix’s One Piece, which by all accounts is not only not a terrible embarrassment, but people seem to like it and think it’s actually pretty good. But with a second season already ordered, how is Netflix supposed to capitalize on that success in a completely unhinged way? By ordering a new anime adaptation, of course!
Of course, the One Piece manga already has a very popular and successful anime adaptation from Toei Animation that has been running for over 20 years and has aired more than 1,000 episodes, so creating a whole new adaptation with a different studio (WIT, the people behind Spy X Family) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also, the new adaptation is going to cover what’s called the “East Blue” storyline, which the original anime already did in 1999, so this isn’t even going to be some entirely new thing.
Remakes are obviously fine and very common, even in anime (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, a more faithful adaptation of the manga source material, came out just six years after the original show), but the One Piece anime is still going on! This is like if Disney went back and remade Iron Man after Avengers: Endgame with a whole new cast while Marvel Studios kept putting out new superhero movies. Sure, it might be cool or interesting, but why?
Actually, the “why” is pretty boring and obvious: Netflix will own this version of One Piece rather than having to license it from Toei or Crunchyroll or whoever owns the North American rights to the current show. Then, when someone watches live-action One Piece, Netflix can gently push them toward watching the new show that it owns—called The One Piece—rather than the old show, which it does not own. It’s really an elegant and beautiful expression of what happens when the same company owns the distribution and the production of media, so maybe we should just be grateful that Netflix isn’t trying to erase the original series from existence (which is probably what Disney would do in this situation).