‘One Piece’ Finds Its Groove in Its Second Voyage

The first season of Netflix’s live-action One Piece series dropped like a miracle. What felt like a forgone conclusion—that an anime adaptation, especially one from Netflix, would be a disaster—ended up becoming the standard of excellence against which other adaptations would be measured. Instead of being a crap shoot, it drew in long-time fans and even people who don’t watch anime into the charming allure of its grand, intimidatingly lengthy pirate adventure.

Its second season, Into the Grand Line, mostly recaptures lightning in a bottle, sharpening its action and fully embracing its own cartoony charm while playing like a scenic detour, stretching out its journey toward the thrilling chapter waiting just over the horizon.

After assembling what will constitute the core crew of the Straw Hat pirates, Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) finally embarks on the first leg of his journey to find the One Piece by venturing into the treacherous seas of the Grand Line. Charting a route toward the sought-after treasure is only one of the crew’s 99 problems. As the Marines trail their ship and slap increasingly high bounties onto their heads, the Straw Hats also find themselves contending with Baroque Works—a secret organization whose agents wield Devil Fruit powers of their own. Together, these threats form a deadly cocktail, testing the crew’s mettle as they juggle the first of many obstacles, proving they’re made of tougher stuff in pursuit of their dreams when push finally comes to shove.

Going into this season, one of my biggest worries was whether the show would rest on its laurels, repeating what worked the first time around without venturing to color outside the lines of the manga and anime, as superhero media often treats its source material as a storyboard. To my surprise, the series continues to do the opposite.

As with season one, OPLA takes full advantage of the hindsight the original anime and manga never had, giving more focus to the characters on the other side of the Straw Hats’ grand voyage. This time, that spotlight lands on newcomers Smoker (Callum Kerr) and Tashigi (Julia Rehwald), whose hard-ass mentor-and-in-over-her-head mentee dynamic perfectly mirrors and evolves the Admiral Garp (Vincent Regan) and Koby (Morgan Davies) relationship from last season.

As before, Into the Grand Line excels at filling in the gaps for its cast, villains, and adversaries, making the world feel more multifaceted than what we explicitly see from the Straw Hats’ wide-eyed perspective alone. This becomes especially profound when the otherwise cartoony series shifts into more serious waters, with the crew becoming unwitting revolutionaries as they encounter injustices across the many islands they jet across at the start of their adventure

If season one proved the Straw Hats had the chops to make fans nod in agreement that they’re the spitting image of their anime counterparts, season two shifts into second gear by highlighting their chemistry. Godoy’s Luffy is still delightfully goofy and intense; Emily Rudd’s Nami is a revelation as the crew’s “mom friend” keeping everyone in check; and Taz Skylar’s Sanji is somehow more palatably lovelorn than in any of his previous iterations.

But the cast members who get the most needed shine this season are Jacob Romero’s Usopp and Mackenyu’s Zoro. Romero, in particular, feels far more comfortable this time around—his jokes land with an off‑the‑cuff looseness and natural swagger that isn’t so tightly tethered to what other versions of Usopp might say. And as the Straw Hats’ sword guy, Mackenyu manages to break the facade of a one-note tough guy, delivering a performance that’s equally soft and vulnerable, just like the rest of the crew.

Another charming quality of OPLA that carries into Tomorrow Studios’ second go-round is the show’s balanced tone. More than ever, OPLA feels like a blend of Saturday-morning cartoon hijinks staged like a play with the campy action of a tokusatsu show. And while that first vibe has led some to jokingly call the series “CW-style cosplay,” the show goes the extra mile, being both visually charming and emotionally stirring. Tomorrow Studios shooting on location and building practical sets gives the production an earnest, how-did-they-pull-this-off wow factor, where its props and craftsmen somehow bring the impossibly cartoonish world of One Piece, from its anthropomorphized animals to its giants, to life in a way that is more charming than awkward to look at. 

What’s even clearer this season—especially in its third, Zoro-centric episode—is how much the action has improved in the show. Its swordplay alone blows last season’s already impressive feats out of the water, with Mackenyu delivering sequences that stretch for what feels like 20 uninterrupted minutes, inviting you to lean forward in your chair and take in every detail of its sweeping camera work, jungle gym set, and stunt choreography.

That being said, one aspect that still needs refinement is Luffy’s stretchy actions. Although the show doesn’t shy away from letting its resident stretchy boi do stretchy things, its effects are still in that awkward, slightly stiff, uncanny space—which is saying something in a season featuring dinosaurs, giant whales, and a roster of Devil Fruit users with body‑horror‑tinged powers.

While the show continues to be a triumph with new additions like Mikaela Hoover’s oh-so-cute Tony Tony Chopper and Lera Abova’s mystifying Miss All Sunday, adding new wrinkles to its winning formula, Into The Grand Line feels short of being a complete package. Much of the season plays like reading over someone’s shoulder as they take their time turning the page, inching toward a chapter everyone knows is coming and is far more exciting than its preface. Although this slower pacing helps flesh out the world and characters, like Charithra Chandran’s Miss Wednesday, the season ultimately feels less like a full arc and more like the first cour of a half-told story. What OPLA has to say is a compelling moment-to-moment, but it feels unremarkable when measured against the scale of what’s clearly being set up, leaving you with a sense that the real fireworks are being saved for later.

As things stand, the red skies hanging over Into the Grand Line lean more toward delight than warning—but a lot of that hinges on whether its third season truly blows things out of the water or keeps things on a low boil, as this season has. For now, OPLA‘s second season remains a step up from its triumphant debut, delivering more action, heart, and political commentary in a package that’s far less intimidating for newcomers and just as rewarding a trip down memory lane for longtime fans.

One Piece: Into the Grand Line is now streaming on Netflix.

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