Its alright. It just doesn't have the epic One Piece feel to it. More corny and silly.

For example, the battle at Baratie with Mihawk, where Zoro on his defeat asks if [Luffy] the Pirate King has a problem if he never loses again.

Nope. No mention of the first mate calling him the Pirate King, foreshadowing so much adventure. It also occurs out of sight of nearly everyone but the crew. Like someone found a back alley entrance (on a fucking ship in the middle of nowhere), even though the restaurant seems more populated with people than in the manga/anime.

I can say that I don't hate it because it would be considered a poor version of the 'book' 30 years ago. With cultflation that's like gold flecked cocaine these days.

It's apparently watchable, which is a massive improvement over every other Netflix live action anime adaptation, but they also cast a transgender actor so I'll never actually watch it.

Just finished watching this myself, gave it a chance on the recommendation of friends who are much bigger weebs than myself swearing up & down that it broke the curse of anime/manga live-action adaptations. Well, it was at least sufficiently watchable that I made it through all eight episodes without feeling like puking my guts out and scooping my eyes out with a teaspoon, which is indeed an incredible feat by the standards of anime/manga adaptations made by Westerners in general and Netflix in particular. The bar it needed to clear was so low, it was chilling in Satan's boiler room. The sets looked good and though some of the stuff from the manga/anime was still too goofy to effectively translate into live-action, I could at least see that they made an effort with their $16 million or so per episode budget, unlike say Bebop or ROP.

Definitely noticed some woke casting & revisions of the source material, most glaringly the racebending of Nami's sister; Koby being portrayed by a pooner; and an interracial kiss between Usopp and Kaya (they're implied to be love interests in the manga/anime, but never get to the point of kissing). But in that regard it was much less frequent & in-my-face than I expected, so I guess Oda was mostly able to contain the script changes demanded by Netflix to minor side characters. He was also adamantly against shoehorning in romances between the cast that he didn't already set up in his original work (ex. the aforementioned Kaya/Usopp), especially the leading Straw Hats but also among the Marines, and the showrunners had to bend to this demand regardless of their personal opinions.

Let’s be honest, if One Piece were any other Netflix original series, Koby and Helmeppo probably would be a thing by now. (Don’t give us that look, you know they would.) But Maeda insists there’s merely a “bromance” between those two Marines, whose stories are both being expanded from the original manga.

“I wanted Koby to have a relationship that grew and changed as they went along, becoming unlikely allies after being hardened enemies at the beginning.”

Yeah, and thank God for that. Just one of many bullets this thing managed to miraculously dodge.

Among the non-woke stuff, Nami herself is still a pale redhead at least, and an oppressed minority is the biggest and vilest villain of the season (Arlong - hilariously, the scene where he interacts with a corrupt Marine captain came across as a BLM activist shaking down a Soros-owned police chief or politician). There's a scene where Zoro's childhood friend/rival Kuina rants about the natural biological edge men have over women, which I am frankly astounded was allowed into a Netflix show in Current Year+8. This is also the first major media production I've seen in a long time where a male character hits on almost every woman he meets, as he does in the original, and isn't constantly crapped on by the rest of the cast & the script for it (Sanji). Latino Luffy and black Usopp didn't bother me since according to Oda himself (in a reply to fan mail from 2009) a real-life Luffy would be Brazilian and Usopp, African.

Finally, I checked out some of the behind-the-scenes clips, including one where Luffy's actor goes to Shueisha HQ; one where he meets Oda himself; and one where the cast thanked Oda & the fandom right before the series started airing. These people either did a good job of seeming like, or actually were, enthusiastic & happy to be there, which must have moved mountains in terms of generating positive buzz among the OP fanbase. Especially compared to the cast & crew of Cowboy Bebop, who ranged from at best apathetic (John Cho) or at worst and far more often downright hostile (Daniella Pineda) to their source material & its fans, or the Witcher writer's room regularly mocking Sapkowski's work & flaming displeased fans on Twitter. Amazing what not being a massively stuck-up, condescending asshole can do for you in the realm of public relations.

So yeah, that concludes my impromptu review of the OP live-action, which I would rate a 6.5-7/10. Generally watchable with some good segments, not-too-shabby fidelity to the source material and the modern woke intersectional trash being kept to the margins, which basically makes it a divine miracle by the standards of anime/manga live-action adaptations. I'm actually curious about the renewal just for being a non-totally-shit adaptation, remains to be seen if Oda can keep breathing down Netflix's neck and sustain anything like this quality going forward. (I'm not optimistic about THAT to say the least, but Season 1 even being basically decent already seemed impossible to me, so who the hell knows.)