We’d love to be proven wrong, but we can’t think of any way that Netflix’s ambition to render the beloved anime series One Piece in live-action will result in anything but failure. There’s the fact that the streamer has done this multiple times with other anime properties and never produced anything satisfying, and this was with more grounded concepts that should’ve been easier to make happen (Death Note, Cowboy Bebop). This thing, with its abundance of expensive Devil Fruit Powers, bulging eyeballs, and cartoon insanity, is nearly impossible to recreate faithfully.

Netflix released the first promo images from the series this morning, one being a poster, one being a concept photo. In the photo you can see the silhouettes of the five initial members of the Going Merry: from left to right, Taz Skylar as the lovesick chef Sanji, Emily Rudd as fearless navigator Nami, Iñaki Godoy as the rubbery optimistic protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, Jacob Romero Gibson as goofy panic-stricken Usopp, and Mackenyu (he goes by just one name) as the feared swordsman Roronoa Zoro.

The poster features just Luffy. It also confirms Netflix will be premiering this within the year. Let’s just get it over with. The superior anime is not hard to find; the complete run to date is on Crunchyroll, and large chunks of it can be found on Netflix and Hulu.

Netflix’s last live-action anime production, Cowboy Bebop, initially touted the involvement of Shinichiro Watanabe, but the man is now distancing himself from the end result. “For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check. It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue,” he now claims. “I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene. It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop, and I realized at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop. I felt that maybe I should have done this. Although the value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.”

The post Like It Or Not, Here Comes The Live-Action One Piece appeared first on Anime Superhero News.