#opla meta

[queen-of-andor]

Μaking Zoro hallucinate Mihawk on ep. 3 was a brilliant move. Mihawk has left a physical remainder to Zoro - a scar- that he still has a long way to go before he becomes the world's greatest.

On the first episode of the season, he encountered and fought with Tashigi, who wasn't just another random marine. But someone who resembled his childhood friend in appearance and even used Kuina's words while she was fighting him. So when she called him just a brute who would never become the greatest - she was actually projecting her own insecurities on him but that's a subject for another meta- she really hit a nerve in him. Because it was like Kuina's ghost was also saying that.

So it makes sense for him to start spiralling from that point. And it is manifested two episodes later, when his hallucinations of Mihawk start.

Τhat makes the scene he shares with Luffy, his captain, inside the bar on Whiskey Peak very significant. He's the person to whom he declared he was never gonna lose again right after Mihawk defeated him. He's the only person he opens up about his insecurity and Luffy knows exactly what to say in order to comfort him:

Zoro is the kind of person who would never give up on his dream and would continue to pursue it, no matter how difficult it might be. And despite having hallucination Mihawk mocking him, he never stops or hesitates during his fight against the 100 agents. And it makes the final exchange of words with hallucination Mihawk even more worthy:

[ladyhoneydarlinglove]

in defense of opla sanji

so there was some discussion in a discord server im part of about opla sanji and what people thought of the changes made to his character and i promised a cordial rebuttal to the people who expressed disappointment with those changes, which ended up being a full on essay that’s too long to post to the server, so im putting it here instead lol

okay so first off, the eyebrow controversy. i get why people are sad about the eyebrow but imo the reason they probably didn’t end up using it is simply due to the limitations of makeup in making it look realistic the way that it would need to in order to translate into film. because the thing about the eyebrow in the manga is that it’s technically just a single line from the main part of the brow to the curl, and so oda can shape the line however he needs to make sanji’s facial expressions and the curl will just kind of follow naturally, which works due to the simplicity of the the manga’s lineart style. in real life though, any eyebrow swirl the makeup team added onto taz wouldn’t be able to follow the muscle movement of the rest of his face and would end up looking very stagnant compared to everything else, which would probably end up looking really odd and out of place over time, especially since none of the other main cast currently have any other odd features that stand out like that (i’m assuming they also opted not to give usopp a long nose for similar reasons). that can work in small bursts like with wapol, where his mouth can’t emote like the rest of his face and so most of the facial acting is being done with the eyes, but it’d be much harder to pull of long term like you’d need to with sanji.

the main rebuttal i’ve seen to not including the eyebrow is the fact that cosplayers include the eyebrow and it works for them so why couldn’t the live action too, and there’s a couple reasons. first of all, cosplay in general is trying to mimick the source material as much as possible, and so the point of a sanji cosplay is not so much to look realistic as it is to look like he could have walked off a manga page, which is not the case with opla. for all that it has done a fantastic job with bringing much of the whimsical weirdness of one piece to life, it’s main goal is still to look like a live action production, and certain changes will need to be made in order to accommodate that. second, most of the time when i’ve seen sanji cosplayers they’re chosen to do the eyebrow by drawing it in as a thick black line, which again is in order to mimick the manga style; it works for cosplay, but irl a thick black line on taz’s face would look very odd, particularly if he can’t make it emote along with the rest of his face. and that leads into my third point, which is that the way cosplay is most often captured on camera is with still shots where a character is stagnant in a pose, whereas the live action obviously needs to be captured on film. again, the eyebrow works in cosplay because the stillness is reminiscent of a manga drawing or anime cel, but a film production requires actors to be able to move and emote in order to be pulled off successfully.

(i think it’s also worth noting that oda himself has clearly has a massive amount of influence in how all of the characters in especially the main cast are portrayed, and so i have to imagine if the eyebrow was omitted, it’s because he didn’t insist on it being included, which tells me that he likely doesn’t think the eyebrow detail is all that important so. do with that what you will.)

next, the changes made to sanji’s character vis-a-vis how angry he is. personally, i think that this is again at least somewhat due to the limitations of a live action production. one of the reasons that sanji’s anger works in the animanga without turning him into a total dickhead is that it is usually accompanied by a lot of slapstick humor (particularly with luffy and zoro) and also often contrasted with the silly fawning he does over ladies to show that he’s really just a giant dork, but the reason both of those tropes work in turn is because they’re being done in an illustrated/animated medium; the suspension of disbelief that happens when consuming something that you already know isn’t supposed to be realistic carries over to what are otherwise quite over exaggerated gags and characterizations, and the overall effect is a balancing of sanji’s character between two extremes.

however, that same effect wouldn’t work nearly as well in the live action because irl, sanji’s fawning over women would just come off as creepy and unappealing—and honestly it often does in the manga as well, which is why sanji is such a polarizing character. a lot of people simply can’t look past his lady lover schtick because they think it’s gross. but of course you also don’t want to completely eliminate the lady loving part of sanji’s character entirely because then he really wouldn’t be sanji, so the question becomes, how do you adapt that into a live action setting without making it gross? you can make him a charming flirt instead of a fawning idiot, but if he’s only directing that flirtatiousness and charm towards women, you’re still running the risk of it looking somewhat creepy to a (largely female) portion of the audience, because many of us have known incessant flirts irl and they tend to get very annoying very quickly. animanga veterans might be willing to overlook that, but new audience members (and opla is trying to draw in a new audience) are less likely to buy that because they don’t have other reasons to like the character yet. i love sanji, but his character in the animanga is undeniably a slow burn payoff, and opla simply doesn’t have the time needed to pull that off. so what did they do instead? they made him charming to everyone.

and honestly? i think that’s a shockingly brilliant update to sanji’s character. the fact that he’s charming and charismatic to everyone means that his flirting with women automatically becomes less creepy because you can chalk a lot of it up to how sanji is generally, which in turn makes the actual flirting seem more like a playful game than anything with real intent behind it. he’s sweet instead of creepy, and even if you roll your eyes at his antics you know he doesn’t mean any real harm, which is so important if you want to be able to pull off a character that loves women, particularly with a modern western audience in mind. this version of sanji is a shameless flirt, but he also feels safe, and that makes him infinitely more appealing (particularly to female viewers) because let’s be honest, how often do you find a man that feels safe to flirt with out in the real world?

the other thing about sanji’s charm in the live action is that, much like his anger and fawning in the animanga, it’s still very clearly a mask with multiple layers hidden underneath. in the animanga i think the layer of sanji’s masks tends to go anger > (attempted) charm > guilt > fear whereas in opla it seems to be charm first and then anger, but the anger (and guilt) is still unquestionably there. we see it pretty clearly in his interactions with zeff as sanji chafes at being under his roof while still not being able to bring himself to leave because of what he thinks he owes, and also in the viciousness with which he fights, particularly in the name of protecting others (like nami). but imo what really sells the idea of sanji’s charm as a mask is that we see his anger coming through the cracks when charm doesn’t work, and that happens most obviously in his interactions with zoro.

because sanji tries to be charming with zoro, but zoro clearly isn’t buying his act the same way everyone else is, and you can really start to see the frustration sanji feels about that by little garden where they spend all their time together sniping back and forth in a way sanji hasn’t done with literally anyone else except zeff because it wouldn’t fit with his charming persona. and while i wouldn’t go so far as to say they don’t like each other, there’s also clearly more friction between sanji and zoro for a longer period of time in opla than there is in the animanga, i think in part because the mask sanji wears is different. in the animanga zoro sees sanji’s anger and rises to meet it because he recognizes and understands that anger intrinsically, and so they click pretty early on (see my separate dissertation on why arlong park is a zosan arc). versus in opla, zoro sees the charm mask briefly when sanji serves them at the baratie, but he also gets to see the anger underneath that mask more clearly than the rest of the crew because he’s the one fighting alongside sanji at arlong park, and i think sanji choosing to slip the charm mask back on afterwards is what throws zoro for a loop and causes most of the friction we see between them in the front half of season two. because zoro isn’t a guy who believes in wearing masks, and so to see what sanji is like when he is and isn’t performing is confusing and annoying because he can’t understand what the point of the performance is. and in turn, sanji gets irritated with zoro far more easily than anyone else because he can’t understand why this guy isn’t buying the charm offense that has worked on literally everyone else.

(there’s more to be said on why the moment opla sanji and zoro fully click is little garden instead of arlong park, but thankfully someone’s already done a wonderful analysis of that here so i don’t have to lol)

someone on the server also mentioned specifically that they didn’t think sanji opening up about his dreams to luffy and co right away fit given how they had to pry it out of him in the manga and i kind of jokingly responded to that by saying it was because opla zeff was gay but i’m also like, sort of serious when i say that? maybe not that opla zeff is gay but opla zeff is a very different creature than animanga zeff and i think a lot of changes to sanji’s personality could be attributed to the idea that he has a more open relationship with zeff in opla than he does in the animanga. going back to the slapstick thing for moment, in the animanga zeff clearly cares about sanji but he’s also physically pretty rough (because it works from a humor standpoint) and gruff with him and so even though they clearly care about each other, their relationship ends up having a veneer of anger over it because zeff simply doesn’t know how else to communicate and sanji adapts to speak his language. in opla though, while zeff is definitely still kind of a hardass i think he’s also more openly caring than he is in the animanga, which is most prominently seen when he helps bandage up zoro after his fight with mihawk despite not knowing him, seemingly because sanji was determined to help and he wants to support his kid. extrapolate that how zeff would have interacted with sanji after taking him in and i think you get a generally more open relationship, and so while sanji still has an underlying anger to him, it ends up taking a backseat to his charm because it isn’t his sole means of communicating with zeff.

of course, much of this is just my own personal opinion and conjecture and it’s obviously not the be-all end-all say on opla sanji. personally i think opla sanji still has the same core as animanga sanji albeit in an updated package, but i can also see why people disagree with that and are disappointed with some of the character choices made and that’s totally valid; there’s always going to be differing opinions on how characters should have been adapted, particularly for something as iconic as one piece. but i hope that i’ve at least given people who are disappointed in opla sanji something to chew on in why they probably made the changes that they did, even if you still ultimately disagree with the decisions.

[danielsarmand]

i've seen a lot of people complain about the hair in opla looking bad especially when it comes to sanji, nami, maybe vivi, people with longer hair that doesn't just kind of stick up and sit still, and i think as far as opinions go this one is kind of missing the point? like yeah. objectively the hair looks bad. frizzy dry unkempt stiff. however i think this is generally regarded as lack of attention to detail whereas it's the opposite? these people are at sea almost 24/7, my hair would be looking exactly the same with all the seawater and humidity, not to mention the constant fights and whatnot. i get that one cannot expect realism and plausibility from one piece and everyone looks and acts ridiculous all the time, but that's why these little things matter!!! they help ground an otherwise completely absurd and cartoonish show and, alongside the more emotional moments, convey that hint of credibility that's needed for a live action to work. idk i find it really refreshing personally and i don't really get all the fuss about details and things looking low-cost etc. because i can assure you that's intentional the hair looks bad on purpose they spent time toward it looking like shit

[readwing]

I’m absolutely smitten with how sweet Sanji and Luffy’s relationship is in the live action (and how Zoro plays into it)

There is a way in which live action Sanji brings a sense of calm and, dare I say, gentleness to the ship? A ship that until that point had been supportive of each other, yes, but also prone to butting heads. Which is why it makes sense that Sanji is introduced in an episode that begins with everyone uncertain of who should talk to Luffy about an obviously emotional matter that Luffy clearly doesn’t want to talk

They send in Zoro, arguing that he’s the fist mate, but gaffs it. Zoro barely tries. This isn’t his sort of issue or his sort of worry. When Luffy needs reminding later that he’s the captain and his ship isn’t falling apart and he made the right call — that’s his issue. That’s what Zoro’s good at — and noticeably it’s also what Sanji couldn’t quite succeed at doing earlier when he tried to explain the responsibilities of a captain to him in the galley

What Sanji can do though, and what he does when they’re sailing after Nami, is give Luffy space and support to work out his feelings. He can support him that way, teaching him about fishing while reassuring him that sometimes you just need to be patient. He’s not pushing Luffy into any particular decision, he’s just nudging him into acknowledging what he feels about it. He’s not judging, he’s listening

In that moment, you can see on Luffy’s face how much he already loves Sanji

It’s in Sanji’s nature to be compassionate. He enjoys taking care of people

This is the counterbalance the ship needed. The counterbalance the show needed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the original dynamic between Luffy and Sanji, and I miss the sly abrasiveness of the Sanji in the manga / anime, but with everything else in the live action being just a tad more grounded I don’t think it would’ve worked as well here to make that the focus — especially not when the season is so short, and especially not when we’re not as likely to have this version of these characters for long.

Bringing the classic Sanji traits to the forefront and letting his sharper barbs stick to his interactions with Zeff (and Zoro) was a good idea. It’s still the same guy, they’ve just swapped around which part of him we get to know better first

[lostsometime]

back on the "the fight choreography in this is so smart" train with the observation that it's so good how chopper fights like someone who isn't trained.

sanji is doing flips and shit because he has trained to fight exactly like this, for years.

heavy point chopper at this point is just a big, strong guy who can throw his weight around and is very angry

of course they fight differently

[fraeuleintaka]

Some points regarding Luffy's role among the Straw Hats, the way he inspires people and him being portrayed as "weak" by OPLA. I've seen a good amount of anime/manga watchers/readers complain about Luffy's portrayal in S2 and that he's too weak in terms of strength and fighting skills to make the crew's confidence and belief in him feel justified and believable. As an OPLA only watcher, I want to get into why the way OPLA portrays Luffy isn't a problem in its own context. I don't want to argue if they changed anything about Luffy or not because I can't judge that. I only say that he works the way OPLA is portraying him.

First, some points in favour of "nerfing" OPLA Luffy in comparison to his anime/manga counterpart:

It gives the other members of the crew more time to shine.

I've often seen people argue that it's completely fine that Luffy (or, more broadly, the monster trio) are by far the strongest fighters in the crew because the other characters have other skills that make them equally useful and indispensable. In theory, a group of characters having all kinds of different skills which makes all of them important in their own way is completely fine, ideal even, but it really depends on what the story considers narratively important. How many major, arc defining conflicts in OP are solved by not punching the bad guy in the face? The only one so far, as far as the LA goes, is the Reverse Mountain and Laboon situation, the former of which majorly depended on Nami's navigation skills (win! But even then it was only possible because of Luffy's specific strength) and the latter of which Luffy managed to solve anyway (and was originally about fighting in the manga). There are, of course, moments and scenes where other skillsets and the respective characters are relevant but the narrative importance, the meat of the story, lies in the fights and physical feats. Therefore, any character who doesn't contribute in the fighting automatically contributes much less to the story as a whole than any character who does. It's not as extreme in the LA because the screentime the fights take up is greatly reduced but it's still there because the nature of the conflicts (with few exceptions) doesn't change. If this were e.g. a heist series where the major conflict resolution is not only achieved by fighting, I could believe that other skills are just as important and relevant, but that's not where the story puts its focus. To give a concrete example of what I mean: Nami predicting a storm before arriving at Drum Island VS Luffy scaling a mountain – both actions arguably save the entire crew/situation at hand, but which of the two gets significantly more page/screentime and is, therefore, considered the much more narratively important achievement?

It removes the need for Luffy to be constantly incapacitated in the early arcs just so the conflicts can have some tension.

Early OP often has Luffy and Co. face villains that are way beneath Luffy's level. To still have some tension in these conflicts Luffy is often artificially removed from the action because having him there would solve the problem too easily. „Artifically“ in this case is not only about any given individual situation but how constructed the entire plot sequence feels. (Does it flow naturally or is it noticable that the author is deliberately constructing things this way to make specific scenes happen?) Avoiding having to run into this situation, i.e. always having to find a way for Luffy to be otherwise occupied, from the get-go by putting Luffy closer to the level of the other characters is already better writing in a series in which physical battles are the main method for dealing with conflicts.

It makes the villains more threatening and avoids turning them, or the average person, into pathetic jokes.

Early OP has a lot of „technically“ threatening villains (i.e. threatening for a normal person) that Luffy and Co. can deal with like jokes. E.g. Wapol and most of the Baroque Works agents fall into this category (a technically super-scary assassin group but Luffy and Co. one-hit pretty much all of them except the absolute strongest of the strong). Personal preference maybe, but I just prefer the protagonists, in the context of the story, to be closer to your average (very strong) human than absolute freaks of nature. If Wapol is so terrifying to Drum Island's entire population that none of them can even hope to deal with him but Luffy and Co. treat him like a pesky fly, that doesn't make me go „oh wow, Luffy is so strong!“ but „oh wow, everyone else in this world is pathetic and can't do shit!“ I don't want the power gap to be this ridiculously vast, personally, which would also raise a lot of questions about how this even works, like why are some people like Sanji randomly on this level but others aren't? This fix, yet again, also provides more tension to the story and gives the protagonists more challenges that are actually challenging for them to overcome.

It makes the fights more strategic.

Luffy can't just overpower every enemy with pure strength alone. He needs to fight in clever ways which is a lot more interesting to watch than two guys just mindlessly hitting each other. I also like the teamups of our main group for different fights, it gives even more opportunities for different strategies and teamwork. Not for every single fight, of course, but for e.g. Wapol it would've felt completely stupid for Vivi not to get involved and help as she wasn't busy doing anything else and Wapol is a far more personally relevant antagonist to her than he is to Luffy.

With that out of the way,

How is OPLA Luffy inspiring?

when he isn't by far the strongest fighter and can't curbstomp pretty much any villain the Straw Hats have come across at this point?

Maybe not having the original context from the anime/manga helps in seeing what OPLA does more clearly and on its own merits. In the context of OPLA, I never got the sense that Luffy was supposed to be this absolutely unstoppable force or this massive ray of hope who is definitely going to save the world at this point. He primarily inspires his own crew who want to follow their dreams alongside him and causes enough of a stir with the people he comes into contact with to remind them of Gold Roger and be afraid of/interested in what he might end up becoming. (Even in the manga Smoker beats Luffy soundly yet he still fears him becoming the next Gold Roger. That's not about his physical strength.) The Straw Hats are good people who help when they come across situations where they can help but they didn't set out to save the world, they set out to achieve their own dreams.

In OPLA, Luffy doesn't inspire Zoro, Nami, Usopp and Sanji by being the toughest fighter around, but by how hard he believes in his dream, how he doesn't give up no matter what others try to tell him and how far he's willing to go for it and for those he cares about. (That's arguably what the Garp fight at the end of S1 is meant to hammer home, Luffy can't physically beat him but he still won't be deterred or stop believing that he can achieve his dream.) Zoro, Nami, Sanji and Usopp all have moments where they witness these traits of Luffy in different contexts and that's why I find it very easily understandable why they believe in him so much and depend on him. Sure, he needs a certain strength to back up this determination but nothing in OPLA so far has led me to believe that Luffy doesn't have the strength to pull through in the end because, so far, he always has. Maybe he won't physically punch his way through in every situation but he will find another way to get through somehow (e.g. the Laboon situation, he couldn't physically fight or beat the whale but he still „won“ in the end, i.e. he got his crew out). So why shouldn't his crew members believe the same? Like Zoro and Nami assuring Vivi that Luffy would come through for them in E5 isn't because they know he can punch stuff the hardest but because they're so confident that Luffy would move heaven and earth to save his friends no matter what he's up against.

(Some more notes on the Little Garden situation specifically, Zoro and Nami don't even know how physically strong Miss Goldenweek is so they have no reason to believe that she would be physically stronger than Luffy. They know her weapons are psychological so knowing Luffy's indomitable spirit is even more reason why he should be able to fight through and beat her. Physical strength doesn't help him at all in this situation. Same situation with Mr. 3 and the wax cake, Mr. 3 himself is very fragile and Usopp breaks the wax cake without any physical strength on his part either which Luffy is fully confident that he will manage.)

Luffy doesn't explicitly need the highest physical/fighting strength to back up how inspiring he's supposed to be in OPLA. On the contrary, I find it much more meaningful if fighting isn't literally the only thing Luffy is good at or the primary reason the others rely on him for. (Which also wouldn't justify him being the captain in this case because a captain needs to do much more than just punch people. It's arguably the reason why Zoro isn't the captain despite his fighting prowess, though his subplot in S2E6-8 does a great job of establishing why he's the first mate, i.e. takes over command in a crisis when Luffy isn't there.) It's more that he gives them hope, makes them believe and shows them a way forward when they think that there isn't any.

OPLA portrays the trust and confidence the crew has in Luffy very well and I have absolutely no criticisms or issues with it. I find it 100% believable and convincing. And that's even with that little stumble he takes in S1E6 when Nami left and he thinks Zoro is dying and he doubts his leader abilities and thinks the crew is breaking apart, and it's Zoro waking up and assuring him that the crew isn't falling apart that gets Luffy back on track. I find Zoro's perspective here especially interesting, no idea if this dialogue is in the anime/manga, but in S1E2 he gets asked why he believes in someone like Luffy. And Zoro answers that he doesn't but that that doesn't matter because Luffy believes so hard in himself and that rubs off on you. So even before Zoro started actively believing in Luffy in S1E6 Luffy still inspired him by believing so hard in his dream that Zoro couldn't help but believe more in his own dream, too. Imo it's much more inspiring for yourself to see someone struggling and still never wavering in their belief. It's easy to „believe in yourself“ if you curbstomp everything and nothing ever challenges you. But being challenged repeatedly and persevering through. Every. Single. Time? That's inspiring! The way I've seen him described, anime/manga Luffy feels more like someone the rest of the crew attaches themselves to, along for the ride kinda way, because he's obviously going to do great things and you want to be there with him. In OPLA, it feels more like a group effort, like he's the one who makes you believe that anything is possible, that your dreams can become a reality, because that's his approach to any given problem, but it still takes all of your efforts to actually get there. Honestly, the more I talk about this, the more I understand why Luffy is by far my mother's favourite character in OPLA. (She's seen and knows nothing of the anime/manga.) He's still too much „typical shonen protagonist“ for me to like him as much as I do e.g. Zoro or Nami but heck, I do appreciate him. I really do.

Does that change OPLA Luffy from his anime/manga counterpart? Yeah, apparently. But it also fixes some writing issues and makes his character and his dynamic with the others more interesting to me so I like it. And it works really well in the context of OPLA.

[assiraphales]

to nami, who was used to making self sacrificing choices based on the common good n protecting people, luffy's decision to let zoro fight mihawk seemed unbelievably stupid and reckless. zoro was going to get hurt, and probably die. but for zoro, it was the right and possibly only move to keep him on the crew. because if luffy had tried to convince him not to duel, showed any hint of uncertainty, zoro would never be able to believe luffy had faith or trust in him again. he would doubt himself and his position as luffy's right hand man. he was badly injured, and his ego was bruised, but instead of leading him down a path of insecurity it turned into a motivator. to become better and to prove luffy's confidence in him right.

[twenty-qs]

Underrated things I liked that were unique to OPLA:

Luffy high-key projecting his own conflict with Garp onto Sanji’s conflict with Zeff during their convo on the Baratie. My boy was way angrier at Zeff than was actually justified.

Sanji and Zeff both offering food and conversation as a means to defuse tension (with Nojiko and with Garp). It shows their father-son connection and also explains where Sanji learned his warmth and charm, despite how he and Zeff seem to always be insulting/yelling at each other. I really like how live action Sanji gets to show off more emotional intelligence, having worked in customer service for so long haha. And it demonstrates why a cook is such a valuable asset to have on your crew. It’s not just about the food; it’s about being able to connect with people.

Garp and Zeff talking about the new generation; a really neat contrast and a way to set up Garp’s larger character arc. He has really cool themes about when the older generation should protect and guide the youth, and when they need to get out of the way. Especially in light of recent manga chapters.

Coby telling Garp that Luffy has always been and will always be a pirate. Idk about you but knowing that Coby’s actor is trans, this little speech hit especially hard.

Luffy’s tangible distress and guilt—yes, that was guilt—after Zoro got injured and Nami left. Luffy has never been a captain before, and he’s afraid he fucked it up. I really love that the live action allowed Luffy to show some of this more human vulnerability. It made it even more beautiful when Zoro told him he did nothing wrong and then swore allegiance as his first mate. That’s why Luffy needs Zoro. Luffy does believe in himself (as Zoro has pointed out). But after the two big losses against Mihawk and Arlong, Luffy’s confidence was genuinely shaken. “My gut isn’t doing so great” not only refers to his appetite, but also to his gut instinct. He’s doubting his own decision making. He needed Zoro to believe in him before he could believe in himself again.

Rearranging the timeline so that Season 1 could have book-ends: Coby and Luffy, Alvida return, Shanks seeing that Luffy is a pirate now, and finally getting the straw hat flag. Just some really tight storytelling; their character growth feels so satisfying.