It’s time to enter Arlong Park, the final arc for the first season of Netflix’s One Piece. This is one of the strongest arcs from early in the series, and features key defining moments for both Luffy and Nami. So let’s see how the live action adaptation handles it.
1. Nami’s Backstory
As I’ve stated before, everyone in One Piece has a tragic backstory, and we’ve been learning about each of them as we’ve gotten to know the characters. Now that we’re in Nami’s arc, we get to learn her tragic past.
Nami’s backstory is revealed to us through multiple flashbacks throughout the episode, showing her as a child with her adoptive mother (Bellemere) and sister (Nojiko), how they grew up poor, Nami’s earliest days of thieving, and of course, the tragedy that befell them when Arlong invaded. As these are spaced out, we only get bits and pieces at a time, until we finally see why Nami joined Arlong’s crew.
It’s no surprise at this point that the backstory is delivered well, as the show’s track record with these scenes has been quite good. It is a properly tragic and heart-wrenching moment as Bellemere tells Nami and Nojiko that she’d never deny that they’re her daughters, even at the cost of her life. And of course, Nami seeing her mother figure killed in front of her is pretty harrowing.
All in all, it was well done.
However, there is one key difference between live action Nami’s backstory and her 2D counterpart. In the original, Arlong forced Nami to become his cartographer after seeing her maps. In the Netflix version, Nami was the one who approached Arlong with the offer. On one hand, this gives Nami more autonomy and means she’s the one who took the initiative to reclaim Coco Village. On the other hand, it means that Arlong having a room where Nami was chained to a desk as she was forced to work on maps doesn’t make quite as much sense, since she was a volunteer, not a hostage. But overall, that’s a minor issue.
2. Luffy’s Intuition and Determination
Throughout the episode, people are telling Luffy to give up on Nami. Zoro and Usopp agree that she made a choice, everyone at Coco Village tells him to leave her, Nojiko tells him she’s a traitor, and even Nami tells him point-blank that she never wants to see him again. Despite all that, Luffy doesn’t believe it for a second.
And, to his credit, he’s right. As he tells Zoro, he knows when he meets someone who’s meant to join his crew, and that is something we’ve seen throughout this season. He basically decided that Zoro and Nami were part of his crew against their objections when they all first met, then Usopp and Sanji were welcomed aboard before they even realized it themselves. I’ve seen it described as a “vibe check” for joining the Straw Hats, but he hasn’t been wrong.
So this episode puts that intuition to the test while showcasing Luffy’s determination. In spite of everything that happens, he refuses to give up on Nami, and only gets angry on her behalf. While this does come around at the end of the episode, it highlights another of his core character traits: his absolute belief in his crew, no matter what they seem to do. It’s this type of character trait that makes him such a likable character, and it comes through nicely in live action.
3. The Next Generation
While the episode’s focus has been on Nami and Arlong, Garp is still chasing after Luffy, and that pursuit brought him, Koby, and Helmeppo to the Baratie. While Zeff refuses to tell Garp anything, the conversation they share brings up another key theme of One Piece.
Zeff may be a chef now, but he was once a dreaded pirate. Although he’s retired, he sees the next generation of piracy in Luffy, and even states that Luffy reminds him of Gold Roger. Change is coming, whether Garp likes it or not, and it’s time for the next generation.
Garp, on the other hand, refuses to step aside or let Luffy go do his own thing. We do see that there is some actual familial concern there, as Garp notes that Gold Roger, for all his exploits, was still executed, and he doesn’t want Luffy to meet the same fate. In this case, he represents an obstacle blocking change, an older generation refusing to step aside.
Continued belowOf course, those familiar with the anime and manga also know that Luffy goes on to become a part of the “Worst Generation,” a term used for a dozen or so pirates with bounties of over 100,000,000 berries each who are responsible for some of the biggest conflicts against the Marines and World Government. So a new generation is absolutely coming, and this scene helps set up the oncoming conflict and the idea of a changing era being at hand.
4. Arlong Park
Now let’s talk about Arlong. This episode gives us more of a look at him, following up on his little speech at Baratie about fishmen superiority last episode.
This episode shows us what exactly Arlong’s ambitions are, and how he plans to go about them. Basically, he wants to take over the world by crushing every human in his way, because he believes fishmen are the rightful rulers of the world. As we can see from his speeches, fishmen were once imprisoned and enslaved, and even though slavery has been abolished (a statement which the original shows is not exactly true, especially for World Nobles/Celestial Dragons, who can still enslave whoever they want), inequality and prejudice remain. It’s hard not to see any parallels to real world racial inequality there, and although Arlong’s own actions are indefensible, it does add more to his character. The original does also delve more into fishfolk society and history in a way that really expands on their place in the series’ world, and hopefully the Netflix series will keep up its quality and momentum long enough to reach that point, but it’s still a long ways away.
The scenes with Arlong and Captain Nezumi of the Marines serves a few purposes as well, mainly in showing that the corruption within the Marines runs deep, and they can be bought off with relative ease. This further blurs the lines between Marine and pirate, while explaining how Arlong has managed to go unopposed for so long.
We also get early foreshadowing for Jimbei, as Nezumi mentions there’s even a fishman as a Warlord of the Sea, a fact Arlong is not pleased about. We can even see hints of the Sun Pirate tattoos on a few members of Arlong’s crew, the meaning of which we as viewers only learn about years down the line.
Finally, we get to see more of his crew, and once again, the makeup and practical effects teams deserve credit for bringing these characters to life. There’s a lot of fishmen in the crowd shots, and each one represents different kinds of aquatic creatures, with designs and features to match.
5. Help Me
The episode ends with one of the most powerful, significant moments from the early part of One Piece. In it, Nami is betrayed by Arlong and has all the money she saved up stolen, leaving her unable to buy back Coco Village. She can only scream helplessly as everything is taken from her, after all the sacrifices she made and people she betrayed to get there. She screams Arlong’s name in rage, and in an act of anger, frustration, and self-loathing, repeatedly stabs her Arlong Pirates tattoo until Luffy stops her.
This is the moment where Nami’s walls fall, and she allows herself to rely on someone else, someone who has never given up on her, and she pleads “Help me.”
Luffy doesn’t even need to think about it, but he does need Nami to ask – it has to be her decision (as we’ll see again with other characters down the line). He places his straw hat on her, a symbol of his trust and faith in her to watch over his most treasured possession, and proclaims “of course I will.” Then as he heads off, we see the rest of his crew waiting for him, posing quite dramatically at the same time.
Because no matter what, Nami is still a part of the crew, and they’ll fight for her without hesitation.
This is a major scene, representing a big milestone for everyone involved to some extent, whether as an individual character or coming together as a crew. It’s no exaggeration to say that Netflix needed to do this right, given what it means for the characters. And they did.
The acting, the timing, the cinematography, and of course, the music all worked together to make it an emotionally impactful scene. It hit the right beats, had just the right emotional resonance, and carried across all the characterization it needed to. So yeah, it did this right.
Next week, we close up season 1 of One Piece and see if they manage to stick the landing as well as they handled the closing moments of this episode.
