According to a recent piece from ArtsHub, Netflix's live-action One Piece has become something of a case study in how to translate anime to live-action without losing the soul of the source material. A big part of that success? Casting choices that actually honored the characters fans have loved for decades.
Why This Matters Beyond the Grand Line
The One Piece adaptation's warm reception has reignited a broader conversation about which anime properties deserve the same treatment — and more importantly, who should be in them. For every One Piece that lands, there's a long list of adaptations that stumbled at the casting stage. Getting the Straw Hat crew right wasn't luck; it was a signal that live-action anime can work when the people behind it take character fidelity seriously.
That's exactly the kind of conversation the fancasting community lives for. With Netflix clearly committed to the One Piece universe and Season 2 in the works, there are still dozens of iconic characters waiting to be cast — and fans have opinions.
What myCast Fans Are Saying
The myCast community has been dreaming up One Piece casts across multiple stories, and the results reveal some genuinely compelling picks worth talking about.
The most-voted story, One Piece, has racked up 26 total votes across 18 roles, and one pick stands out clearly from the crowd: Lewis Tan for Roronoa Zoro, earning 10 votes — by far the highest single-role vote count across all three One Piece stories on the platform. Tan has the physicality and the screen presence, and fans who've seen his work in Into the Badlands know he can handle a sword. For Sanji, Eduard Badaluta leads with 4 votes in that same story, while Usopp fans have rallied behind Justice Smith with 3 votes. LaKeith Stanfield as Brook — the skeleton musician — has earned 3 votes, and honestly, the energy tracks.
Over in the story covering 73 roles, the fan picks start to get into deeper-cut territory. and are both in the running for Sanji, which is a fun debate in itself — Skylar brings intensity while Briney (fresh off The Summer I Turned Pretty) would be a more unexpected choice. Meanwhile, as Usopp is a pick that deserves more attention than it's gotten.