Written works are now breathing to life through series or movies and more often than not, the on-screen adaptation gets compared to the material where it is based on. Two huge adaptations recently made waves with their releases: Netflix's One Piece, and Amazon Prime Video's The Wheel of Time. After the death of the creator of the latter, author Brandon Sanderson was given the task to continue the book series and he was asked to give a critique to the show which he compared to Netflix's One Piece.
With the demise of Robert Jordan, the creator of The Wheel of Time fantasy book series, it was Brandon Sanderson was picked to be the one to continue to narrative wherein he wrote the last three of the novels titled The Gathering Storm, The Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light. As Amazon Prime Video picked on the title to bring to life, Brandon Sanderson was also called to be a producer of the TV show. On top of his career as a writer and producer, he got into the world of podcasting with Dan Wells, a fellow author, named as Writing Excuses.
Speaking with Intentionally Blank, the topic was Netflix's adaptation of One Piece, a classic and iconic manga series by Eiichiro Oda, and Sanderson got the chance to talk about the show and even compared it to The Wheel of Time. Sanderson was quite harsh to the series where he is the producer and he shared that he enjoyed One Piece:
Here’s why I can turn off part of the critic. I did a livestream of Wheel of Time season 2 Episode 8 recently…and I was super critical of it. It is not necessarily worse than [ One Piece ], narratively. In fact, Wheel of Time Episode 8, which I felt in the scripts was the weakest, was still good, right? Still an improvement on the first season, still a lot of great things about it. But I was super critical. People might be listening and being like ‘why aren’t you critical of this?’ I think there’s a distinction here. I see in One Piece …the flaws that I notice, I think are probably flaws in the original media.
Sanderson further explained that One Piece is a "faithful adaptation" of the source material:
I know it’s a series that has run 2,000 issues, is what we’re looking at for One Piece . I know that love for it is built over a long time. I know that the creator really likes the show, and it’s one of these manga guys who are super super detail oriented and critical of any sort of thing. And I know that the fans of One Piece legitimately love the show in general and feel like it’s a very faithful adaptation as well as can be done into live action. And those things all together propel me to just be like ‘I’m giving this the benefit of the doubt, and I’m just gonna watch it and enjoy what it is.’
Sanderson also revealed that he advocates for the work of Robert Jordan whilst being critical to the show:
I’m the one who gets to be the advocate for them, because Robert Jordan isn’t here to give a voice and Harriet’s age interrupts her ability to be super involved with the production. And so I have to be the voice for that. And beyond that I get to see the things that I think should be changed, and then you know…not be able to change those because it’s not my show. Which is totally fine, like I think [showrunner Rafe Judkins] does a great job. I’ve said that multiple times, even in this livestream where people are like ‘Brandon’s really critical to The Wheel of Time show,’ I’m very praiseworthy of things that are good.
How did Netflix break the live-action adaptation curse with One Piece?
In today's age, there is the so-called "live-action adaptation curse" with the live-action versions of manga series where the fans are not satisfied with the former for not reaching the level of greatness of the latter. Usually, the reason behind this curse is that the live-action adaptations contain changes that are not in the source material, whether it would be an over-exaggeration or something quite far from the manga. More often than not, the live-action adaptations even include scenes or characters that are not in the manga.
The curse brings low ratings to the live-action adaptations. However, this changed recently as Netflix managed to break this curse with One Piece. Of all the live-action adaptations, One Piece became the top show in 84 countries across the globe and the viewership of the series is so high that the show was, overall, well-received by the audience. This is because while One Piece covered more or less 100 chapters of the manga into 8 episodes, it remained faithful to the source material which is most likely the reason how the show broke the curse.
One Piece is currently available on Netflix. The Wheel of Time is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
