‘One Piece’ Production Designer Compares Series to Making Four Movies

"There were so many sets. This is such a big world."

If there’s one thing we know about the upcoming One Piece live-action series is that Netflix went all out when it decided to bring the story to life. Not only the streamer decided to film all episodes on location in Cape Town, Africa, they also made the bold decision to build life size sets for scenarios like the Going Merry ship. The goal is obvious: So that the series looks perfect. But, of course, it took its toll, as production designer Richard Bridgland told Collider's Mike Thomas.

As Bridgland described, One Piece will cover a lot of ground – after all, it’s based on a story that has spawned a 1,000+ episode anime series – and this translated to such a huge scale of production that it felt like they were working on a big-budget feature film. Or four:

“First of all, there were so many sets. This is such a big world. It was like designing four feature films because every two episodes is one part of the East Blue world, and then we move on to a completely new part. We don't see anything from the previous part. We see Garp’s ship and we see the Going Merry a bit later on crossing over, but otherwise, you just move on to all these different sets. We kind of had a running joke while we were making the show, my team, that our favorite set was always the next set that we were building because we fell in love with that one next.”

Another important decision that Netflix made was to have franchise creator Eiichiro Oda on board as executive producer and overlooking every decision that was made in the adaptation. So not only the mangaka got to see his creation brought to amazing 3D life, everything that we end up seeing onscreen will have his seal of approval. But, of course, all of that didn't come cheap.

They say third time is the charm, so if the One Piece live-action series manages to be a hit, it will be another testament to the power of the franchise. Both the manga and the anime series are among the longest-running titles ever created, with the manga first published in 1997 and the anime debuting in 1999 – and both are still running. One Piece has also spawned a slate of animated films, and the fifteenth of them One Piece Film: Red premiered last year.

Netflix premieres One Piece this Thursday, August 31. You can watch the latest trailer below:

Erick Massoto is a Brazilian writer who's always loved film and TV and is obsessed with making lists. Started writing reviews when he was a teenager, so he has heard that he "hates every movie" for a long time now.