Netflix's One Piece S01E02 Review: Chop Chop Festival

One Piece, Season 1, Episode 2: The Man with the Straw Hat

This is probably my favourite episode of the One Piece Netflix episodes I've watched so far? It's not that the episodes are bad, however... it's just that this one is really, really good. And a good part of why it's good? Buggy the Clown. Buggy, Buggy, Buggy, who everyone in the world has decided is the best part of the show. And he is! But a good part of why this episode is so good as well is the focus on Monkey D. Luffy. Restructuring the Windmill Village flashback so it plays out over the background of the Alvida, Morgan and Buggy fights over time ends up working out surprisingly well! Admittedly, reducing the amount of time that our heroes spend at Orange Town and removing them befriending the locals does rob this episode of a certain thematic 'I protect those who can't protect themselves', but at least they still save the villagers from certain doom. 

But yeah, the episode starts up with little Luffy trying to practice his Gum Gum Pistol in Makino's bar, leading to some exposition from Makino about the legends of Mother Ocean hating those who consume the Devil Fruit -- and this weakness gets a bit played up in the subsequent fight against Buggy. We also get to see Luffy's absolutely disappointed, crestfallen face as Shanks tells him that this is the trip and they're not coming back... which doesn't really gets played up that much, but might have a bit of a follow-up in Buggy insisting that Shanks 'betrayed' him, albeit in a completely different way. 

We do a bit of a follow-up from the first episode, with Nami finally managing to crack the log and giving us our own exposition about the geography of the world, with the four blues, the Grand Line and the Red Line. It's much-appreciated, and I really do like the show, like the manga, makes use of Luffy's airheadedness and Zoro's IDGAF mentality to allow characters like Nami to give exposition to them. We also get to see just how protective Luffy is of his straw hat, panicking when Nami knocks it into the wind. 

In a slightly-reinvented version of the Muggy-Balls from the manga, our heroes are surprised by a giant, flashy explosion in the skies above them which turn out to be... sleeping gas! It's an interesting change that I think the adaptation did for the better, removing the Buggy arc's obsession with Buggy launching big explosive cannonballs and going all-in on the mad clown circus aesthetic.

Also, I do appreciate that they still keep the relevance of the Grand Line map as a plot device everyone is hunting for, and Luffy just... swallows it whole. 

Our three heroes find themselves captured in a box by the Buggy clowns, leading to an actually rather hilarious conversation as Nami tries to be the one sane woman in the situation, while Luffy is happy that pirates are there since they're 'nicer than Marines', while Zoro agrees for a completely different reason -- pirates are disorganized and easier to kill. Luffy also insists that he can talk to them, pirate-to-pirate, which is very Luffy, while Nami continues on insisting that there's only one kind of pirates, foreshadowing her absolute hatred of pirates that'll pop up in the Arlong arc. 

And then they get let out of the cage and we get to see the Big Top (is this the Big Top? It's a big top, anyway) with lots of wacky circus people running around... and it's definitely something that works amazingly for this live-action adaptation. The set is unexpectedly gorgeous for a set that I don't even remember existing in the manga! Now the one big complaint is that a lot of the goons get reduced roles -- Mohji is a glorified cameo that didn't even get beaten up, and Ritchie is absent entirely. And... the lion I honestly I can see being gone entirely with no huge loss to the story, and I can understand that the main focus of a live-action episode would have the respective 'big bads' fight against the whole crew at the end. I don't think this is better or worse than the manga formula of Luffy having to be the one to 1v1 the big bad, it's just different. 

Buggy's evil plan is also a bit different here, where he's holding the town hostage in a bit of a different way. In the manga he is using his giant cannonballs to destroy the town (and there's also a subplot with the adorable hachiko-expy). Here, we do get to see a bit of that aftermath when Nami walks out into the devastated Orange Town, but to tie into the clown aesthetics more, Buggy has chained up the entirety of the townspeople and held them hostage and basically force them to laugh or applause -- a literal captive audience. 

And then Buggy walks in, and Jeff Ward (previously featured in this blog as Deke Shaw from Agents of SHIELD) is easily one of the strongest actors in this show. He's channeling Joker a bit, sure, but the bombasticness of Buggy and just how hammy he is when he yells that 'it's all wrong', with the lack of a dancing lion and the spotlight shining elsewhere -- because he's just that flashy of a nutjob that he's putting on a show for three pirates he's planning on executing anyway -- is gloriously scenery-munching. He then rants about his many titles when Luffy gets his name wrong (a gag they thankfully kept from the manga), and we get a knows/nose pun. That in and of itself isn't particularly funny, but Buggy ranting about how they stole it "right under my nose" and then kicking himself mentally for it being stuck in his head.

Luffy and Buggy gets into an argument about the pirate king stuff, and the episode doesn't actually reveal anything about the manga revelation that Buggy was a chore boy in Roger's crew... but I do really feel that the writers and maybe even the actor knows exactly about Buggy's backstory that has been revealed in the manga, and the nature of the 'betrayal' that Shanks did to him. 

Speaking of betrayal, it seems to be a theme in this episode as Nami immediately tosses away Luffy's hat to reveal his Gum-Gum powers to distract the Buggy Clowns, though she gets re-captured rather quickly as she gets shocked by the destroyed Orange Town. Zoro and Nami gets dragged off to a holding room while Buggy tries to torture Luffy.

And then... we cut away into something I did not expect to be adapted into the Netflix series. This is arguably one of the biggest changes in the show, and one that I didn't realize does actually serve the storyline better -- it's the adaptation of the Koby-Helmeppo Training Arc, and integrating it into the East Blue saga. Koby and Helmeppo get dressed up as recruits, while Garp and Bogard (who gets lines!) debrief Morgan who talks up a bunch of lies about how he scared off a bunch of savage, unstoppable Devil Fruit users. Koby realizes that Morgan is talking shit, and Garp also quickly catches on to Morgan's bullshit. But then Garp gets distracted when he sees Koby, and it's not Garp seeing Koby's potential or whatnot, but actually Garp being suspicious about Koby being newly-recruited into the Marines so soon after a pirate attack. That's actually pretty damn smart of the writers.

We do cut back and forth between the scenes, but the Garp stuff basically ends with Garp and Bogard interrogating Koby. This leads to Garp wanting to know everything about Koby due to his suspicious activities and backgrounds, and through this Garp ends up learning about Luffy's identity as the mysterious straw-hatted pirate that both defeated Alvida and raided Shells Town. And I don't know how intentional the Garp/Koby focus is that went on in the manga a couple of months prior to the release of the Netflix show, but this sequence -- of Garp realizing that Koby really embodies the spirit of the Marines because he's willing to tell the truth no matter how detrimental to himself it is, ends up being what made Garp truly believe in Koby. That's great. Koby, like his comic-book counterpart, very flatly tells Garp that he doesn't owe Luffy any kind of allegiance, since he's a pirate... and this interesting dynamic between Koby and Luffy is, again, is exemplified pretty well in the first episode as well. 

Ultimately this leads to an offscreen investigation, and Morgan being trussed up on the cross in his own yard as Garp basically exposes his corruption and cover-up. And I really did wish that the show perhaps leans a bit more into Morgan's corruption and violence, maybe in this episode if not the former, but leaving Morgan's ultimate defeat to Garp is a nice little rearrangement of the scenes that actually happened in the manga, and also helps to make Garp feel a bit more competent compared to his manga counterpart... and as an evil Marine, Morgan does make for an interesting villain for Koby to ultimately bring down with the power of justice. 

Anyway, back on the side of the pirates, Nami and Zoro get a bit of an argument about the moralities of a thief versus a bounty hunter, and then we get the glorious showcase of Nami pulling out a lockpick... not because the Buggy Pirates are stupid enough not to check her, but because they only found three out of four lockpicks she hides on her person. 

Buggy, meanwhile, does the rather... stupid method of trying to torture Luffy. By quartering him... which, for a rubber-man, just means stretching his limbs to ridiculous lengths in the carnival tent. He's forcing Mayor Boodle to keep stretching Luffy, while Buggy himself tries to be a bit more... well, here's the more Joker-esque vibes of Buggy that makes him a fair bit more cerebral than his manga counterpart. You can totally see Buggy doing something like this, would you? Especially in a situation where he's in control and not panicking all the time? He quickly figures out that Luffy has someone to impress -- a lost love, an absent parent, an idol he worshipped... and I think Buggy can get this very, very easily because of his own connections to Roger and how he once also worshipped Shanks and was disappointed that Shanks didn't go straight for the One Piece after Captain Roger's death. 

That, of course, is all manga-exclusive material and one that wouldn't be told until all the way in the Wano arc... but it really does speak to the writers that they're incorporating Buggy's close-knit relationship with Shanks into this adaptation. 

The way Buggy wistfully talks about his relationship with Shanks, and how they served together in the same pirate crew when they were young... until Shanks betrayed him. Buggy doesn't give any of the 'he forced me to eat a Devil Fruit' reason or even the real reason, but it would make sense for Buggy to distort that so much that he rants about how Shanks wants to keep him out of the spotlight. 

This gets interrupted when Mayor Boodle starts to refuse to do what Buggy wants and continue torturing Luffy, causing Buggy to start menacing little children -- and we know that Buggy's likely not that kind of evil clown, but it's still rather creepy particularly with the zoom-ins to Buggy's face and Jeff Ward's fantastic portrayal. Luffy breaks free at seeing the child get threatened by Buggy, and does a Gum-Gum Pistol... which is an amazing way to debut Buggy's Chop-Chop Fruit, where Luffy's punch literally sends Buggy's head decapitated off of his head and landing in some poor lady's lap. 

We get a brief description of Buggy disassembling himself -- and I do really like what a showboat he is -- before his hand flies behind Luffy and gasses him with another Muggy Ball. Man, Buggy really should've used these sleeping gas balls a lot more in the subsequent fight, huh? 

Meanwhile, we get a surprisingly fun adaptation of Cabaji, of all people. First of all, it's just a spot-on live-action adaptation of a ridiculous but ultimately pretty fun-looking character from the manga, and while the Netflix adaptation's been pretty great at adapting the essences of these characters, I feel like Cabaji is one of the few that just pops out of the manga. Cabaji reveals, surprisingly, a brand-new backstory that he never had in the manga but makes some sense to help build up Zoro's dreaded status as the 'Pirate Hunter'... Cabaji was one of Zoro's victims, and Zoro actually killed his brother in the swamps of Goa Kingdom (which in itself is a fun easter egg) leading to a neat little enmity between the two.

In lieu of an actual fight between a three-swords-style user and a lunatic on a unicycle, Cabaji instead spins Zoro around on a wheel of fortune and starts chucking daggers at him. Which... not as cool as a three-sword-style user fighting a lunatic on a unicycle, but I can understand that it's probably one of the hardest action scenes to visualize in live-action. I really did with that there was a bit more of a fight between Cabaji and Zoro, even if I do like the scene of Nami breaking free and Zoro basically muscle-choking Cabaji to unconsciousness.

It's at around this point that after another Koby scene, we get the flashback to Luffy's childhood, leading to the arrival of Higuma the mountain bandit for the second time. Unlike the first time around, he starts strangling little Luffy and threatening him, which leads to Shanks and the Red-Haired crew deal an absolutely deserved beatdown on the silly-ass mountain bandit. The way Lucky Roo murders one of Higuma's minions is particularly cool, too, with Shanks making a fake gun motion to distract everyone before Lucky Roo shoots the guy dead in the head. 

We get a pretty short but fun little action scene, with the highlights being Roo beating the shit out of some fool bandit with a shank of mutton, and Yasopp clearly having a good shot but deciding to make it cool and instead ricochet his shot off the side of a railing just because he can. 

Paralleling little Luffy in peril in the past, as well as Shanks deciding to fight to protect a little guy, Luffy finds himself tossed into a tank of seawater for his troubles for protecting his little guy. Buggy continues to mock Luffy for being abandoned by his crew, constantly projecting his own feelings of abandonment by Shanks onto Luffy. Again, it's pretty fun seeing how Buggy can alternate between being a bombastic showman to a bit of an unhinged psychopath to him letting slip some of his true ambitions to be the king of the pirates... all just so everyone will love Buggy. 

As Luffy is being drowned by Buggy in the present day, we immediately cut back to the past again, which, once more, is a pretty nice little juxtaposition as Higuma takes little Luffy hostage on that boat. Their boat is capsized by the giant Sea King, the Lord of the Coast, and... we sadly don't get an explicit shot of Higuma being eaten alive, just him being pulled under water. 

Shanks rescues Luffy, of course, and the scene of him facing off against the Lord of the Coast is treated basically extremely faithfully, with the Sea King rising from the depths of the ocean, Shanks allowing the giant beast to snap at him to shield Luffy from it, before flexing his eyes so hard that the Sea King gets intimidated and fucks off. We don't quite get the reverberating auras of what we now know as Conqueror's Haki (and I almost wished we had) but it's faithful to the source material, so I can't really complain. The Lord of the Coast looks pretty dang impressive as far as CGI monsters go, and for what little role it had. 

We cut to the present day, where Buggy taunts Luffy about being abandoned by his crew. This coincides with Nami and Zoro taking out Cabaji. What comes next is basically a pretty long action scene that spans around the last 10 minutes of the episode. Zoro and Nami arrive to free Luffy from the cage of water, leading to the nice shot of Buggy struggling to reach the map that Luffy vomited out while Luffy goes for his straw hat, illustrating, I think, their different treasures. 

The lighting turns blue as Buggy starts getting serious, and we get a fun little sequence of Zoro trying to slice Buggy up only for Buggy to instantly split apart in accordance to Zoro's slashes. Again, the lighting I think makes Buggy (and Luffy's) powers feel a bit more believable thanks to the darker shading, and makes Buggy's (unnamed) Chop-Chop Festival as he splits his body into a whirlwind of body parts a lot more impressive. Particularly cool is the shot as Buggy reassembles himself from the many, many pieces flying around. After a fun sequence where one of Luffy's punches just pushes a circular part of Buggy's stomach into the distance, we get the glorious and appropriately hammy 'Chop Chop Cannon' 

During the fight, Buggy manages to pierce Luffy's straw hat with one of his knives, and I actually do think that this adaptation does a great job at showcasing just how utterly indestructible Buggy is at this point in time. Luffy's punches can't do anything, Zoro's slashes can't do anything, and Nami's staff can barely block Buggy's body parts. 

The way they defeat Buggy is probably one of the biggest improvements over the original, where Nami just happens to tie up Buggy's body parts with rope... really making it weird why Buggy doesn't just split up his body parts into even smaller pieces to get past the rope. Now Luffy notices some crates, and the three Straw Hats start batting Buggy pieces into the crates to reduce the parts available to him. This is fast-paced enough that when Buggy realizes what's going on he's already too late to stop them. 

And, of course, poor Buggy gets reduced to the absolutely comical 'head, hands and feet' version of himself and as he rants at Luffy about wearing someone else's hat, Luffy declares how he knows exactly who he is, proclaims himself as the man who will become the King of the Pirates... stretches his arms back and unleashes a Gum-Gum Bazooka, knocking chibi Buggy out of his tent. 

Luffy just hands the map over to Nami without even questioning it, calling her his navigator. Luffy also immediately decides to free all of the chained-up villagers, and I do like the brief bit where Mayor Boodle is actually terrified that these new pirates will become their new oppressors. Of course, Luffy's a different kind of pirate, the kind that saves civilians who did him no wrong from evil pirates. I covered all the Koby/Garp scenes above, but at around this point is also when we are showcased the 'good' Marines as well with Garp stringing up Morgan. 

We get the scene of Boodle and the rest of the Orange Town residents (including a cameo from Chou Chou the dog!) thanking and sending off Luffy and crew, which is juxtaposed with Shanks and company leaving behind Windmill Village and being sent off by all of its residents. Of course, this leads to the closing sequence of the flashback portion, with Luffy apologizing to Shanks about how he's not good enough to join Shanks' crew, and how it's his fault that Shanks lost his arm... and in guilt and confusion about his future, Luffy declares his intention to surpass Shanks and become the King of the Pirates once he's ready. Shanks ends up giving Luffy his straw hat...

...and I can't be mad. That's an amazing scene. It lands pretty damn well, and I really do feel like the line delivery from little Luffy and Shanks, and the background music, to be pretty fitting. 

We cut right to the present day where Nami fixes up the straw hat with some sewing, and Luffy quoting Shanks about how things shouldn't be too easy for a pirate crew. Zoro says Shanks is 'all right'... yeah, he doesn't have a left arm, you don't know how right you are, Zoro. And Nami slinks away... to reveal a secret, recessed compartment on the boat where she pulls out a tiny, little spiral-shaped den den mushi. It's like the bluetooth headset version of a den den mushi, but I absolutely love that it's still working off a rotary dial. And this little bit of foreshadowing of Nami's role in the Arlong arc is definitely very appreciated, particularly with how they are structuring this Netflix season!

Anyway, this Buggy episode is the last properly 'standalone' episode of the season, since the rest of the eight-episode season will all be two-parters focusing on Syrup Village, Baratie and Arlong Park respectively, and... I haven't finished the season yet, but I actually still do think that this episode is the strongest adaptation. Buggy was excellent, the cutting back and forth between the present-day Buggy storyline and the iconic Luffy/Shanks flashback was done amazingly well.

One Piece Easter Egg Notes:

• 
  Each episode's title has its own customized jolly roger, including the altered 'I'. While most of the others would use the Straw Hats members, this episode has Buggy and one of his daggers. 
• As mentioned in the review itself, while most of Buggy's crew is there, Mohji the lion-tamer is reduced to basically a distinctive background character while his lion Richie is cut out entirely. Buggy actually points this out, demanding to know where his 'dancing lion' is.
• There is a poster with a lion in Buggy's backstage, which is the best we can hope for a Richie cameo. 
  
• Cabaji mentions being chased by Zoro throughout the swamplands of the Goa Kingdom. While we don't exactly see swamplands, the Goa Kingdom is very famously shown as the location where Luffy grew up. 
• Chouchou's subplot is cut out, but the cute little pooch still shows up at the end after the villagers were freed. 
• Among Buggy's epithets are "the Flashy Fool" and "Genius Jester". "Genius Jester", in particular, is a name that Buggy would be given after he became a member of the Shichibukai in the manga.
• Among one of the wrong misnamings that Luffy does towards Buggy is "Boogie". In supplementary material, author Eiichiro Oda would say that Buggy's original name was "Boogie the Clown" until he ended up changing it almost last-minute after watching The Nightmare Before Christmas. 
• The bottle of whiskey on Makino's bar is "Old Cactus Whiskey", which seems to be a roundabout reference to Whiskey Peak, which is on Cactus Island. 
• Inside Morgan's safe, in addition to the Grand Line map, Kuro's wanted poster could be seen. Morgan in both the source material and the adaptation gained fame after taking down Kuro, so it makes sense he'd be happy to keep that wanted poster around. There's also interestingly another appearance of the Baroque Works card, though I don't think Morgan is someone that Baroque Works would recruit.
• In the flashback, Kid Luffy sits next to a crate with the Galley La logo stamped on it.
• He doesn't get any lines, but the memetic Woop Slap makes a cameo in this episode next to Makino. 
• I'm not going to list all of the origins of the Straw Hats' outfits, because they do change clothes every other episode, but they're all taken from color spreads and cover artwork, an amazing source to get 'canon' clothing.