It’s been a long two and a half years, but at last we now officially enter into the Grand Line – and the world of Netflix’s live action One Piece, Season Two.

In my review of season one, the news was all good; animation, story, characters in both appearance and personalities all falling into line beautifully with the manga and Toei Animation’s rendition to near perfection. And in turn, season one’s harshest critics, the fans, gave it their blessing. So, let’s catch up on this new season and the reception it’s received so far.

Season Two was engaging enough for our household to binge the bulk of the episodes as soon as the weekend came around. You know you’re hooked on a series when most of your day centers around the thought of wanting the time to pass quickly just so you can get home from work, sitting down with dinner in one hand and the remote in the other.

Bigger, crazier, with lots of new monsters, new enemies, new adventures, new islands and new pirates, to quote the bonus content accompanying the Netflix series, sums this exciting new season up nicely. Despite the limit of having only eight episodes, they smoothly fit in the best parts of the Loguetown, Reverse Mountain, Whisky Peak, Little Garden, and Drum Island story lines. 

The Straw Hats first stop is Loguetown — a special place for Luffy where he gets to see the execution platform of Gold Roger’s last, bold declaration to all pirates that if they could find his treasure, the One Piece, it was theirs.

From there, the brutal trek up the waterway Reverse Mountain into the Grand Line takes place. We go on to meet Laboon, the giant whale left behind by the Rumbar Pirates and as with all of the island towns, it was a practical set, being a five-story, full-realized set creation of the stomach inside a whale, complete with the Straw Hat pirate’s ship, the Going Merry, stomach acid, decomposing bodies and every disturbing feature you could imagine in such a beast!

Breathtaking detail is given to every set, every storefront inside and out, every island town and location featured, all inspired by the creator of One Piece, Eiichiro Oda. 

The costumes this season, too, especially for Baroque Works evil agents, are bigger and more colorful than ever. And we are treated to many more of them this time around as our pirate heroes begin their trek in earnest into the Grand Line. The assassin’s diverse personalities shine, as well as their unique and fascinating powers. We also get introductions to the heads of Baroque Works: Miss All Sunday and Mr. Zero.

Behind the scenes, season one was about the actors training and learning how to do all the stunts, whereas this season they are now more comfortable with them and have more confidence, having continued their training, even in between seasons. Everything is scaled up, “bigger, crazier and more creative,” as the stunt team coordinator describes. The fights are, “a lot larger and far more complicated than they were last year”. Luffy’s actor, Inake Godoy, tells of having gymnastics and acrobatics training, playfully demonstrating in the bonus content behind the scenes shorts that he can now do a backflip.

Some of my favorite scenes are Reverse Mountain, Zorro’s fight in the bar in Whiskey Peak, defeating 100 Baroque Works agents within 10 minutes (talk about INSANE choreography!) and his other fight with Tashigi, Captain Smoker’s assistant. 

Netflix’s series of shorts delve into the amazing practical work bringing King Wapol to life, as well as the newest member of the Straw Hat crew, Tony Tony (not a typo) Chopper – one of the only full CG rendered characters (aside from the whale Laboon). The voice actor, who is a woman, by the way, goes through her process — from casting to recording, as well as the special effects department’s care in mirroring her facial expressions and even the shine’s direction in the final creation’s eyes. The actors who interacted with Chopper have nothing but praise for their work as well. They also gave me a deeper appreciation for the work that went into the sets, the costumes, the stunt team’s work, the amazing attention to detail, easter eggs hailing back to the manga and how deeply devoted the production crew and actors were to bringing Eiichiro Oda’s world to life as accurately as humanely possible.

The behind-the-scenes highlights give interviews with Emily Rudd (Nami) and Inake Godoy (Monkey D. Luffy). The latter has some wonderful, in-depth conversations with Oda, who reveals how impressed he is with the stellar work of the cast and crew and how much love everyone involved obviously had for the project. The first interviews are done via translation, but imagine my surprise when in the last one, Godoy actually spoke to the creator in surprisingly fluent Japanese!

The fan reception has been overwhelmingly positive, with many viewers calling it an improvement over the first season. The toxic fandom that seems to follow other sci-fi, fantasy and indie creator’s properties have been refreshingly silent about One Piece. I had to look hard to find negative reviews, which seem limited at least on Twitter to one-off individuals. 

 The show is currently scored at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and debuted as the most watched show on the platform. Season 3 has already been given the go-ahead and will cover the Alabasta arc of the series.