The Live-Action Adaptation of the popular manga and anime series One Piece witnessed great success in the first few weeks and is still going strong. The series features the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a young pirate who aspires to be the King of the Pirates by finding Gol D. Rodger’s treasure. Season 1 of Netflix’s One Piece nearly adapted the manga’s East Blue Saga’s final story arc. The story covers most of the first 100 episodes from the manga and is appreciated by fans a lot.
But the Co-Showrunner Steven Maeda still had some regrets regarding the first season and the amount of story they were able to cover for it, because of the limitations of episodes.
Steven Maeda Wanted to Include the Loguetown Arc
Loguetown is the sixth and final story arc of the East Blue epic, where the Straw Hat Pirates make one more detour to stock up before entering Grand Line. The city occupying nearly an entire island was initially shown to audiences as the place of Gold Roger’s execution, where he announced the existence of the so-called treasure and encouraged the world to find it. It is located in the East Blue and was introduced in chapter 1 of Eiichiro Oda’s manga. But the further inclusion of the last story arc in the series could not be possible and Maeda explained the reason behind it in an interview with ScreenRant. He said:
“The biggest one for me that we didn’t get to do was Loguetown in the present day, and we needed two more episodes to be able to do it and there wasn’t the budget, there wasn’t the screen time. And there wasn’t room in the eight episodes to do it the way that it deserved to be done. And so we see Loguetown in the very beginning with Rogers’ execution. And then, of course, I wanted to come back to Loguetown and just couldn’t fit it in the eight episodes. I felt like we were rushing, and it was also a very expensive build. And so that’s a regret, for sure.”
Steven Maeda stated that in the series, we see Loguetown from the beginning with the execution of Gol D. Roger, and while he subsequently wanted it to return, the plotline could no longer fit into the plot.
Loguetown Arc’s Importance in the East Blue Saga
Not only was the arc of Loguetown cut from the live-action of One Piece, but the showrunners also decided to cut the segment from The Island of Rare Animals up to Arlong. However, because the Loguetown Arc concluded the East Blue Saga of the One Piece manga, it may have been included in the series. Given that it contained the final five chapters of the first 100 in the manga, it would have made sense for Loguetown to appear in the live-action show.
However, saving Loguetown until later may work better in One Piece’s future storyline. The Co-Showrunner’s desire not to rush such a significant arc demonstrates that the team is concerned with remaining faithful to the individual stories as well as the character development.
Source: ScreenRant
