Tom Reviews the Live Action One Piece
A Solid 7/10
Everyone is coming up to me and saying Tom what do you think about Live Action One Piece. Are you gonna talk about Live Action One Piece on the show. Obviously no we won’t. Joe doesn’t watch TV. This is the best you’re getting.
Let’s get some things out of the way first: One Piece is supposed to be a comic book.
Oda did not decide to make One Piece a comic book because he lacked the means to create it in his intended form—no. It’s a comic book. Its pacing suits a comic book. Its strengths are magnified by being a comic book. It became a worldwide phenomenon because it’s a comic book. When you make it not be a comic book no more, it gets worse. Want proof? The dang anime!!
This doesn’t mean I think this adaptation is bad or misguided on principle—I just think, well, even if it’s as good as it can possibly be, it can’t avoid taking a pretty huge hit by making One Piece not be a comic book no more. Keep that in mind when I tell you this show is a solid 7/10. Maybe 8. Probably 7.
It is pretty much as good as I can imagine it being and way, way better than I expected. But brother, this shit is supposed to be a comic book.
Second, a lot of people have said “who is this for” as a way to dismiss or ridicule this adaptation. It’s my belief they don’t really ask this question literally—it’s more of a way to signify that they personally don’t want to watch it. The reason I think this is because the answer is so blindingly obvious: it’s for people who are repulsed by cartoons, comic books, or foreign things. Folks, there are so fucking many of those people.
You could use the above to further argue “bah, you see: this is a soulless endeavor, less an artistically pure project than a calculated marketing campaign.” Well, it definitely is a marketing campaign, but I can’t find it in my heart to get mad at it. Listen, I just put out a piece of art, Sicko Shock 2, I poured so much of myself into—it feels very close to the best work I am capable of, a piece of art I held nothing back from, and as a result it starts to feel indistinguishable from myself. When it got the response that, in retrospect, it was always going to get (80-60% of our audience listened to it and buzz died off in a week) I really struggled with that. It felt like a rejection of me, who I am, my life as a creator. I would have done anything to get it in front of more people, have even one more listener get something meaningful out of it.
ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY: It is undeniable that Eiichiro Oda feels that way about One Piece about 10000 times more intensely. It is his ONLY published work and he has been working on it for his entire adult life. I understand very deeply how important it is for a work this important to have the reception you feel it deserves. To paraphrase Tor Client: it’s common sense that not everyone’s going to like something—but what if they all did?
All of which is to say: if I’m Oda, and I am told I have the opportunity to produce a huge commercial for my art baby that is laser-focused on the demos that historically have resisted it (ie, Americans, normies, dads, and jocks), I am going to say yes every single time. If you think this is crass or mercenary I just can’t agree with you.
OK, so: The Show Itself. How is it?
I mean, it’s fine. The stuff that happens in One Piece happens in it and that’s pretty good.
As suggested, the fact that it’s not a comic really hurts. One of One Piece’s best qualities is how goofy and silly it is. The world is serious, the threats are serious, the emotions are serious, but so much of the tone and look is silly Looney Tunes goofy gags. The show does as good a job as is possible to recreate this, but it just can’t do it right. It never could. No one could.
Case in point: when Usopp sees something scary his eyes are supposed to pop out and his tongue is supposed to shoot out three feet and be zig-zagging. When Usopp makes a funny face, basically, that is funny to me. Usopp in this show has a normal guy’s face and he does NOT do that.
So what we get is a weird sort of half-measure that works decently at its best and makes it feel like a baby show at its worst. In a comic book, when da goofy stuff hits you go haw haw, I love this, because you have been primed for it by looking at panels of funny cartoon guys on every page. In live action, when you are watching a piece of huge budget prestige TV and a goofy cartoon thing happens, you go hm... it feels like the tone is confused here.
A lot of the plot gets chopped down and rearranged to fit the needs of a TV show, and while I don’t prefer it to the original, it was done really well! I think the best edit was reducing Don Krieg to a cameo, he and his cronies ate up a lot of pages to basically say “these guys think they’re hot shit but they got washed out by the Grand Line,” which the show proves is something you can say in one minute.
Not all of it works though: a lot of big setpieces from the comic get scaled way down, often taking scenes that took place in multiple stages throughout a huge area and distilling it down to one scene in a single room. The fights in those rooms look pretty good, but they’re never allowed to get as creative and fun as the originals. Zoro also seems to become ride or die for Luffy off-screen? He and Nami do that “we’re NOT a crew” routine and then a few scenes later Zoro is like, oh shit by this part in the story I’m loyal. Better say “I’m loyal” and hope no one asks any follow-ups.
Similarly the big emotional beats just don’t hit for me. I imagine this may be different if they were new to you. But I can’t help but compare them to the original comic, in which the story is allowed to unfold at the proper pace. I get why this is! A TV show needs to be snappy and get a lot done in each episode. I couldn’t have done it any better. But I can’t overlook it: they are rushed, and they are lesser.
Enough moaning. Here’s the other truth: They cast this show really well, lol. Like the cast IS the Straw Hats. The kid who plays Luffy never wowed me with his acting but like. He’s Luffy! There is this hilarious video where the kid meets Oda and is like, Oda-san I am so glad to be entrusted with this role. I hope I can use my craft to do your story proud. And Oda just points to him and is like holy shit it is Luffy in real life.
Zoro is good, Nami is good, Usopp is REALLY good (you really buy that his dumbass lying and posturing is enjoyable to hear instead of annoying), and Sanji is like, REALLY REALLY good (huge brain move to have his womanizing not be lascivious and instead kind of pathetically charming). When the crew hangs out and chills, it feels like they’re really buds and that’s one thing you have to nail if you want something like this to work. Buggy is decent—there’s a bit too much Joker in there for my tastes, I wish he was a little more pompous, but I’m not mad about it.
I could go on but it feels silly to. It’s not really a show, so why review it like a show? It’s a commercial for the comic book One Piece. How do I know? Because the comic’s going to keep going and this isn’t. Even if Netflix doesn’t cancel it, the fact is that you can draw a character the same age for as long as you want, but these actors are going to be in their 50s by the time they get to Marineford.
As a commercial, I think this is a triumph. It shows what One Piece is, why it’s great, and why you should like it, all in a format normies won’t be afraid of. This is going to get people reading the comic. It will. And that’s worth it.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
I saw some people complaining about the fishman racism metaphor and I thought well, that’s probably a bit of an overreaction. That metaphor isn’t exactly nuanced but it’s well-intentioned, and you can’t blame Oda too much—nuance comes from life experience and no weekly mangaka has any of that! But uhh no I agree actually. The TV show correctly intuits that when working with a world as dense as One Piece’s, any place that can bear some exposition MUST have exposition. But this means that now Arlong constantly talks about how fishmen used to be slaves and now are second-class citizens that humans are racist toward. I cannot emphasize how bad a look it is to have the only character talking about the injustice of racism and slavery use it as an excuse to kill and oppress with impunity. Also, in the original Arlong doesn’t give a shit about racial politics! Arlong is a shithead washout idiot who doesn’t deserve to wear the insignia of the Sun Pirates!
The boats are so badass. They wasted so much money on actually building all the boats in real life and uhhhh wowee they look great.
I love that Garp wears his inexplicable doggy hood
I also love that some guys just look like animals still
They tease Smoker at the end—now how the hell are they gonna manage that. They already have cut way back on Luffy using his powers—he mostly has normal fights with one stretchy finisher. You can’t have Smoker fighting normally! He’s made of smoke!!!
Why is everyone British? I mean I know why—it reads as “foreign but not scary” to Americans and also adds an air of legitimacy/authority. But like. Why is everyone British??
Sanji never explains why he has a kicking-only fighting style! Plus, in his flashback, Zeff attacks him with his hands! No!! He learned the kicking style FROM Zeff! That’s why he’s Red Leg Zeff!!
I love the physical transponder snail props
Captain Kuro still sucks! Weakest part of the season, weakest part of the early comic. Can’t fix that guy, just a dud. Well, it’s only uphill from there.
Tom Played the Spider-Man game
I played the Spider-Man game on PC.
The reasons why:
1) After playing Chrono Cross for 40 hours I wanted a game with modern graphics just for the variety, and
2) I wanted to “swing around”
I’m sure some small part of Spider-Man’s success is due to the design of the suit, or the character, or the writing…but we all know the main reason Spider-Man has become an A-list superhero is because swinging around is the most funnest way to go around. All humans instinctively understand this. So I wanted to swing around.
This game was what finally got me to upgrade my RAM from two 4GB sticks I bought in 2011. Also I noticed I had them in the wrong slots too, lol, so they were extra bad. Basically any time I swung around really fast (the point of the game) or a cutscene started, the game went OH SHIT and dropped to 10-20 frames per second. When I put the new RAM in, it was a solid 60 without a hitch. So that’s nice. I was able to swing around with ease and pleasure.
And good thing too, because that’s pretty much the only good thing in this game! The combat is fine, but it wears out its welcome long before the game ends. You fight a jillion identical guys, folks. The open world Chore Checklist game design continues to suck ass. There are so many little chores all around that give you crappy tokens you can use to unlock shit that sucks. Folks: with very few exceptions, the alternate Spider-Man suits (the main reward and motivation to do the open world chores) all look way worse than the classic suit you get for free.
Mary Jane’s hair is stupid. Look at that swoop.
There’s a part near the end where da Sinister Six goes nutty over the whole city (spoilers: there are villains in this shit). I was so hyped for this especially because this game’s version of Electro looks so scary and strong. He can fuggin fly and is made of lightning and can shoot lightning bolts with ease. I was like, oh boy, the boss fight with him is gonna be so fun. Turns out the way you defeat him is you shoot web at him until he goes “ugh! This is too much web!” then you punch him four times, and then you do that like five more times. During this fight, the Vulture is also flying around not really doing much of anything. This adds a fun tactical layer as you have to juggle the aforementioned Electro fight with the novel task of shooting web at the Vulture until he goes “ugh! This is too much web!” then you punch him four times, and then you do that like five more times.
Note that you beat two of the Sinister Six in one fight. Well you actually do that twice. Rhino and Scorpion are also beaten together. So the most exciting thing in the game (da villains are here!) is 2/3 completed by doing two crappy little boss fights where you web the guys until they go “ugh! This is too much web!”
Anyway, I still beat the game because swinging around is so goddamn fun. Obscene how much I can forgive if I get to “swing around.” Weeeeeeee
Tom Reviews Song of Kali
So I went to the big library downtown and wow!! The one in my neighborhood sucks major ass in comparison!! (why not request a transfer? Because my email was set up wrong and I never got notifications they ever happened so I assumed it didn’t work)
I saw they had a bunch of books by Dan Simmons who wrote Hyperion which I loved. I decided to get Song of Kali, his debut novel, since it is covered in praise about what a great horror story it is.
Folks! Wow!!! This book is racist as shit!!!!
I looked up “Song of kali insanely racist” and saw a million threads of shocked readers unable to believe this book is critically acclaimed. I saw one Reddit thread where a guy (you know the kind) was like “it’s a serious accusation to call something racist. You better be ready to back it up. Please provide the page numbers with racist material.” Now obviously this person should not be responded to, they are engaging in bad faith. However, the answer is page one motherfucker:
Song of Kali is about how Calcutta is a hellmouth to Evil World and every person in it is evil, or is rendered evil, and everything in it sucks and is awful on account of it’s infected by evil. The reason is that in Calcutta there is a cult of Kali worshippers (Kali is fully evil in this book, Temple of Doom style. This itself is racist) who do evil shit so that Kali gains power and spreads her evil over the city, which is why it is so humid and traffic is so bad.
The plot (I’m going to spoil it all on account of I do not respect it) is that a presumed-dead Indian poet is somehow writing again. They send a white asshole to do an article about him. Asshole brings his wife and daughter to Calcutta. They think Calcutta sucks ass and that the people are barely human—more simian than human, really. This is about when I googled “Song of Kali insanely racist.”
Turns out they brought the poet back to life using Kali’s magic so he could write an epic poem about Kali that would be published worldwide thereby increasing her sphere of influence. The guy is spookified and tries to get out of there but they kidnap and kill his baby daughter before he is able to. He and his wife do escape Calcutta, but the poems are published and are responsible for All War since 1970, apparently. Yes! You know how sometimes humans are greedy? That’s because of Kali. You know all war? You probably think war happened because of reasons. Like geopolitical factors or access to natural resources. No. That was actually because of Kali.
Man! This book is so fucked! It’s not even scary!!! I kept reading thinking like, well, it’s insane how much Simmons hates Indian people, but maybe a cool spooky thing will happen. No! The only thing that happens is it’s revealed that Kali is responsible for All War, the dumbest thing ever!
A real fuckin stinker that should have stayed in the desk drawer. Dreck!
UPDATE: Did some digging and turns out Dan Simmons is just fully a far-right crank! He wrote a book where America decided to do socialism and it made the world into Hell World. You might think, wait, this doesn’t make sense. Why would socialism make things bad—he was very clear that all bad things come from Kali. Well what if I told you all the members of the Kali cult were communists.
Anyway, now everyone is addicted to a drug called “flashback” which makes you remember the 90s. Now, me, if I was writing this, it would be about a dystopian future where video games are too crappy and people take drugs to remember Chrono Trigger.
I am baffled that the guy who wrote Hyperion is such a shithead. This is I guess Orson Scott Card disease in action. Simmons doesn’t even have the excuse of being Mormon.