One Piece (Live-Action) (English audio) - Episodes 1-8 (Completed)
Not anime but I wanted to briefly talk about this live-action adaptation of one of the most popular manga out there. As someone who's read the first 70 vols of One Piece, going into this after watching the trailers I was intrigued and had hope of a solid adaptation, and to my surprise they had managed to successfully pull it off in a number of areas.
The acting is very good and the characters are portrayed well across both the main cast and also the villains which is a surprise. Luffy's actor does a great job bringing the character to life. The costume work is also pretty solid and you can tell they put a lot of love to the world-building and production designs. Makeup for a lot of the characters and villains were very good too.
The action is also well-done and there's a lot of stunt work in various places with the actors, but the show does suffer a bit from the camera work, as there are a lot of very close-up shots which feels off-putting and had they stepped back a bit and zoomed out it would have looked a lot better. Probably a stylistic choice or cost-measuring issue but hopefully they can amend this with future seasons.
Now it has been a while since I have read East Blue's arcs but the general plot is very faithful and while there are various parts tweaked it does work overall. The CG on Luffy's abilities is also well done given it is a pretty tough challenge as you wouldn't be able to pull off Luffy's moves without it.
Overall, I had a great time watching this adaptation and I actually want to see more of it, especially considering the anime in its current state is not the ideal approach due to its pacing issues. Plus, there's no harm having more One Piece if they do it justice which they have done here, which is surprising given Tomorrow Studios also worked on the live-action Cowboy Bebop which I didn't watch but everyone else who did said it was terrible in specific ways.
It's 8 hours in length so do check it out when you have the chance. The Japanese dub does include the anime cast which is a neat touch for those who prefer that route. Watching this has also gotten me interested in playing my One Piece video game backlog, watch some of the films I have yet to see in the backlog and even re-read the manga volumes that I own which is a good sign.