Netflix's One Piece director praises South Africa crew for making series work

Netflix's latest anime adaptation, One Piece, has received positive feedback from fans and critics alike, which is welcome relief to fans of the original. 

Turning animation into live action is always difficult, but the team behind One Piece managed in part to succeed by having the best crew, and building some bespoke key pieces.

A majority of filming took place Cape Town Film Studios in South Africa, where there were already some existing ship sets that were used. The key boat, Going Merry, and others were build specifically for the series.

Speaking to IndieWire, the series director Steven Maeda credited the expertise of the area's crew in being able to pull off such an ambitious show. They had all these ships from Black Sails we repurposed, and our production design team did a wonderful job," Maeda said.

"Those ships are three-quarter sized, but they're still gigantic and need to be rigged correctly and sails hung correctly.

"Most of what you see when you’re on those ships is the real deal. We needed the expertise of the crew in Cape Town to pull that off.”

Of filming in Cape Town, star Iñaki Godoy told TUDUM: "There’s a lot of very talented people [who worked on ONE PIECE], but they also did some pirate shows before, so they already had ships and a lot of people that knew how to work in pirate-themed projects.

"So that's why we were there. It was a very beautiful place. The weather is pretty nice. It gets a little bit windy, so with [Luffy's] vest, it can get a bit chilly."