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Iñaki Godoy
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Will There Be a ‘One Piece’ Season 2 on Netflix? What We Know
Yo ho! New stills of the live-action Den Den Mushi, also known as Transponder Snails, from Netflix’s upcoming One Piece adaptation has fans in a chokehold. Many are responding to the images of the realistic creatures with a myriad of emotions ranging from fear to excitement to unashamed pride.
In One Piece lore, these fantastical gastropods are a species of organic, living snails that can be used for long-distance communication, similar to a cell phone.
According to the One Piece Wiki, Transponder Snails first appeared in Chapter 94 of Eiichiro Oda’s popular manga series and Episode 43 of the long-running anime series. In addition to being a communication device, they are also used surveillance purposes.
Due to the creature’s history in the other two mediums, fans were accustomed to the friendly, cartoon-like depictions — and boy, were they in for a surprise!
In response to the new images, one fan wrote, “I can’t wait for people who have never seen One Piece to watch this show and be weirded out by all the little quirks.”
Another added, “On the one hand this is nightmarish. On the other hand, I am just blown away at how much they’re willing to adapt. I’m getting a lot of loving vibes from this production team.” Others deemed the snail depictions as “terrifying,” “uneasy,” and “unsettling.”
“Transponder snail just became my new sleep paralysis demon because I never thought of the implications of turning the cute little snails into a real thing, like they’re so cute in the anime,” one fan said. Another just begged Netflix to “delete.”
For the first season, the production team created four fully animatronic transponder snails that were roughly the size of a house cat. “We had this cool opportunity to make puppets and it was just so much fun to play with them. We have an animatronic device that plugs into the inside of the puppet that can make the eye stalks bend and rotate. They also have different detachable eyeballs so we could give them a variety of expressions and add a little bit of movement to the face – sometimes they’re sleeping, so the little eye stalks droop. They were so much fun,” said co-showrunner Matt Owens in press notes provided by Netflix.
Another quirk of the snails is that they share an appearance with their owners.
“We didn’t want to shy away from any of the weird elements that make up this world. We’re just telling the audience, ‘Hey, phones are snails in this world. It is what it is. Accept it,” Owens added.
The streaming giant’s live-action adaptation premieres with six episodes on August 31, 2023 and follows young dreamer Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) as he leaves his small village in search of treasure. Over the course of his adventure, he assembles a pirate crew to assist him in becoming King of the Pirates.
In addition to Godoy, the series stars Emily Rudd as Nami, Mackenyu as Roronoa Zoro, Jacob Romero Gibson as Usopp, and Taz Skylar as Sanji. Owens and Steven Maeda serve as showrunners with original creator Oda as an executive producer.
As fans continue to express their appreciation for the imminent series, it’s becoming obvious that Netflix snailed it with this adaptation!
