Nakama ties Netflix’s One Piece together

Netflix’s One Piece has let me revisit One Piece in an honestly convenient and comfortable way. Many years ago, I read through the East Blue Saga, the Baroque Works Saga and the Skypiea Saga before I wanted to read more than just One Piece. So I’m not a serious fan but I am familiar with the series.

The outrageous success of One Piece is built on three things: over the top world building, unrestrained goofiness and the fact that Eiichiro Oda is an insane genius. I remember he wrote that he make Luffy a rubber man so that there would always be some silliness even when the story got dark. (And One Piece can get pretty intense) One Piece carries such a strong sense of fun even when it makes you cry.

One Piece is set in a world of seemingly endless strange and unique islands and its hero is Monkey D. Luffy who has stretchy powers and whose dream is to become the king of the pirates. It has been going weekly since 1997 and has a cast of over 1,100 named characters so trying to summarize it in any more detail is more than I want to tackle.

It’s a lot.

And that’s why this live-action version was easy for me to approach. It condensed the East Blue Saga while still hitting the major story and emotional beats. More than that, it captures emotional vibe of One Piece. That is  the value of friendship and dreams, the idea of nakama (a word I only know due to One Piece).

I’m not going to spoil it because it’s worth seeing. I do understand that Oda has a big role in it (How did he find the time?!) which may be why the series did such a good job condensing the story and pulling later elements in to make a more solid narrative.

Of course, when you transition from art to live action, that has to be some adjustments. Having human beings somehow humanizes things. It brings an extra layer of nuance. And One Piece somehow balances having the characters be believably human while still being true to the source material well. And that, more than anything else, makes this One Piece a joy.

Inaki Godoy’s Luffy is wiser and much more empathic than his manga counterpoint. Which actually works well because you can believe that this Luffy can bring a band of misfit toys together to form the Avengers. (Does that analogy work?) I could write about every character but that would double the length of this blog.

Every medium has its own tools and requirements. This version of One Piece has adjusted to the medium of television while still being One Piece. Which is dumbfounding and amazing.

Poorly organized, mildly incoherent thoughts about the Sandman TV series

Having finished the Sandman tv series, this is my opinion as a longtime fan of the comic book: it’s okay if this is your only exposure to Sandman.

(Mind you, the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz proved to me that the movie can be better than the book. And after Robert Downy Jr said ‘I am Iron Man’ in 2008, all bets were off. If you refuse to read the original Tolkien books, though, you are dead to me)

That said, I can’t help but approach it as a comic book fan and compare the two.

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Neil Gaiman has been very active in the creation of the television show. And, at least for the first season, I feel like I was watching him take this as a chance to do a do-over.

For many reasons, I feel that the first storyline in the  comic books was the weakest. Gaiman and his collaborators were finding both their voice and the direction of the comic book. One obvious  change was pulling out all the DC characters. I’m sure that was for legal reasons but it also worked for artistic reasons.

One of the things that struck me about the translation of the first two storylines of the comic book was what I think of as the Margaret Hamilton effect. The 1939 movie made the Wicked Witch of the West the through line of the story, instead of a character who shows up for two chapters. The Corinthian serves as that through line, bridging the two stories.

I also enjoyed many of the changes they made to characters. Morpheus was more vulnerable, which was good because he is close to omnipotent most of the time in the comics. This Morpheus is easier to sympathize with. 

And I just erased three paragraphs about character developments. There’s plenty of room for argument but I am glad that Gaiman and crew took chances and made adjustments for the medium and thirty years of cultural shifts.

Speaking of adjusting for medium, I was surprised by how much 24 Hours was toned down but I think that was a very smart choice. Not because I think viewers would be shocked and offended but because I think the extreme of the original work would have broken the suspension of disbelief.

Wow. This has been more random bullet point than I expected. Summing it up: the creative team not only did a good job adapting the work, they made a product that can stand on its own.

Does anyone else remember Mulberry?

Every once in a blue moon, I remember an obscure little British show called Mulberry. It was never finished (and it clearly has an ending built in) and may have been underrated. It did have a beautiful sad, sweet theme song and a killer concept.

Miss Farnaby is a sour, sullen old lady living with her equally elderly maid and gardener. Into their lives comes Mulberry, her new manservant, who is blessed with humor, vibrance and an astonishing area of vests. Mulberry breathes new life into their home.

Ah, but there is a twist! Mulberry is actually the son of the Grim Reaper. He has come to take Miss Farnaby away. However, he has a sweet and tender side from his mother, Spring, and he wants to give Miss Farnaby a chance to enjoy life before she had to give it up.

Damn, but that’s a hook!

It has been probably decades since I last watched Mulberry. And, at best, I watched it intermittently even through there were only thirteen episodes. But if my memories of it are true, it often fell into sitcom shenanigan and didn’t really live up to its high concept.

I think that Mulberry could be rebooted very effectively. Not darker or edgier but with more drama. Lean into the melancholy and sweetness and you’d get an unwritten Peter Beagle masterpiece.

As I mentioned, it was canceled before it could end and I wondered if the plan had been for Mulberry to somehow extend Miss Farnaby’s life. However, I found an interview with Bob Larbey, one of the writers. In it, he said Miss Farnaby would die in her sleep and Mulberry would meet her in the garden to guide her awayZ

Which makes sense since that’s the ending that’s baked into the core concept.

Target made me underestimate Patrick Troughton

As I’ve written in the past, I come from the generation of Doctor Who fans whose primary source of Doctor Who was the Target novelizations. It was certainly a different experience from a world where so much can be streamed at the touch of a button! That said, if I hadn’t had those books as a source of Doctor Who, I never could have become the fan that I continue to be today. 

However, there is absolutely no denying that the books simplified the stories. They were aimed at younger readers. Which was okay since I was a younger reader at the time! I have even read that Terrance Dicks, who wrote over sixty of the books, may have helped British kids learn to love reading more than any other author. (I would love to see an actual study that claims that. Still, better him than Enid Blyton)

So, when I actually got to see stories that I only knew through the books, I was often amazed at how much depth and nuance there was.  And, yes, a lot of that had to do with the actors and their acting.

I was underwhelmed by the novelization of the Three Doctors, which was a major milestone by its concept alone. And the actual episode wasn’t meaningfully different. (I am convinced that Terrence Dick often worked with the original script in one hand and a typewriter in the other) But Stephen Thorne as Omega hammed it up to eleven, chewing the scenery to the point where you’d think he was trying to eat the TARDIS console. It was over the top and kind of ludicrous but darn if it wasn’t entertaining.

And while the books never undersold the Master, you actually have to see Roger Delgado to appreciate his charm and lovely creepiness. There have been many fun interpretations of the Master but the character would have never gotten off the ground without Mister Delgado.

But I think Patrick Troughton is the one who got the worst of it. The books portrayed him as a clown, a cosmic hobo. Sight unseen, he was my least favorite Doctor.

However, actually seeing Patrick Troughton act, there is a presence and gravitas that I had no idea was there. More so than any of the Doctors who followed him (except maybe Sylvester McCoy), there is a thin layer of silliness over a core of steel. Troughton’s Doctor would see things to the bitter end and he would make them right. 

The more exposure I have to Troughton’s Doctor, the more impressed I am and the more I like him. William Hartnel was where the Doctor got started but Troughton is the one who has informed every portrayal afterwards. 

Yeah, didn’t get that from the books.

I am very glad that I had the Target books. In a world before the internet and streaming, they were essential. But, yeah, getting to actually watch the show is better :D 

Loki takes the MCU into Doctor Who land

 I do love me some MCU. And Loki may be my favorite mini-series out of the current wave that Disney is cranking out. (WandaVision is tough competition though. I like weird, meta fiction)

Only one episode has aired as of me writing this, which means that I’m not too worried about spoilers. However, I’ll still try to be cryptic.

I do find it hilarious that the powers-that-be resolved Loki’s character arc in the Infinity War and they are getting away with still doing more stuff with Loki. They are having their Tom Hiddleston cake and eating it too.

But to be fair, I think the last time anyone has accused Disney of not knowing how to make money was when it took Sleeping Beauty eleven years to turn a profit (thanks to its astronomical production costs) And the comic book version of Loki has certainly been through a lot of story arcs.

My first impression is that Disney has put Men in Black, Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Who into a blender. Well, if the Men in Black was a malevolent organization. To say that the Time Variance Authority is morally ambiguous is being generous past the point of reasonable.

Loki, at least as of episode one, has the title character enter a completely new setting, one that I don’t think has been even hinted at existing in the MCU. And one that like Guardians, it’s a used, Star Wars-like setting where there’s lot of stuff going on we will never learn about. 

I enjoy quirky science fiction. I was bitten by a Jon Pertwee serial at a young age and it’s affected me ever since. So I am so one of Loki’s target demographic. It has moments that are truly funny and others that are honestly bittersweet but it is strange and snarky all the way through.

Stranger Things lovingly deconstructs the 80s

While I don't watch a whole lot of TV, too many friends told me I had to check out Stranger Things and I ended up having a good time when I did.

I really want to limit my spoilers here. I did my darnedest to not spoil Stranger Things for myself. The basic premise is that after a middle schooler disappears in the woods, his friends find a mysterious girl with psychic powers. Mysterious government agents and an even more mysterious creature stalk them as they try to find their lost friend.

Stranger Things is set in 1983 and very much an homage to 80s films, ET and the Goonies in particular. As my gray, thinning hair will attest, I was around when those movies first came out and I still think they are pretty darn nifty.

However, what I really took away from Stranger Things is how it didn't slavishly imitate those films but it examined and explored elements from them, to the point of deconstructing them. Not in a disrespectful way but it used them as a foundation to build on.

One of the biggest examples of that for me is the character Joyce Byers, the mother of the missing boy. She initially seems to be going insane from his disappearance and looks like she will shape up to be a useless adult who will give the kids a hint.

Instead, she proves to very intelligent and very observant. Joyce ends up being a strong character who helps drive the plot and has as much claim to be a protectionist as any of the kids.

Really, looking at virtually all of the characters, they all subtly subvert the archetypes that inspired them while never rejecting the kind of movies that inspired them.

A lot of carful thought and consideration clearly went into Stranger Things.