One Piece is the final boss of TV watching. The long-running anime series has been going on strong now for over 1000 episodes, and that was technically just Season 1. So when Netflix set about adapting the series for live action, it went without saying that not everything would be included. Season 1 introduced the impeccably cast Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) as the rubbery kid who wants to be King of the Pirates, but most of its eight episodes were spent on establishing the premise, focusing on the backstories of characters, and uniting the crew of the Going Merry, Luffy’s ship.
In Season 2, now streaming on Netflix, One Piece can finally move past the table setting and actually get to what has kept viewers coming back year after year and arc after arc: island-hopping adventures, scary yet campy villains, and stories that make you cry without realizing it.
