Summary

• One Piece & Avatar: The Last Airbender excelled in casting, engaging viewers with relatable characters.
• The pacing in both shows was successful but different, with One Piece adapting more content.
• One Piece is superior due to faithful adaptation, strong characters, and handling its source material better than Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Avatar: The Last Airbender will also receive a second season, following its successful live-action debut. However, based on both shows' pacing, interpretations of their respective characters, and innovative handling of their well-established lore, one show is a clear winner over the other.

Much of One Piece's praise is directed at Netflix's handling of the first few arcs in the beloved manga/anime series, and the way in which Avatar: The Last Airbender successfully blends the hard-hitting martial arts with the series' whimsical lore also makes it one of the better live-action adaptations in recent memory. While One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender both benefit from the various ways in which they adhere to their source material and deviate from it, both shows do certain things exceptionally well, and there are other things that one show does better than the other.

One Piece & Avatar: The Last Airbender Both Nailed Their Castings

The lead and ing characters' casting greatly increases audience engagement.

One Piece's casting not only works because of the actors' strong resemblances to their characters, but it also works because of their ability to embody their essence almost completely despite the first season having to condense a lot of key information. Although Usopp and Sanji didn't receive as much development as the rest of the Straw Hat Pirates, the overall chemistry shared between the protagonists more than made up for any other misgivings. Furthermore, in the case of minor characters like Zeff and Ruina, One Piece does a great job giving them stronger characterizations than in the source material.

While Fire Lord Ozai is given more depth in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which significantly improves his character from a writing perspective, since he was fairly flat in the source material. Daniel Dae Kim's performance as the intimidating ruler also gives Fire Lord Ozai enough charisma for his co-stars, both ally and foe, to bounce off of in engaging ways. In addition to each show's excellent casting, they both pace the action very well.

One Piece & Avatar: The Last Airbender Both Had Good Pacing

Both shows have a different yet successful approach to their pacing.

One Piece covers the main and a few minor events from the Romance Dawn Arc through the Arlong Park Arc with a flourish that satisfies the expectations of viewers familiar with the source material, while also providing engaging entertainment for newer viewers. As demonstrated by the live-action YuYu Hakusho's poor pacing, a live-action adaptation can suffer tremendously if the key events aren't developed properly. One Piece largely solves the pacing issue by spending as much time with multiple characters and locations, effectively filling out its roughly sixty-minute-per-episode runtime.

One Piece covers the main and a few minor events from the Romance Dawn Arc through the Arlong Park Arc with a flourish that satisfies the expectations of viewers familiar with the source material, while also providing engaging entertainment for newer viewers.

Although a common criticism among critics regarding Avatar: The Last Airbender centers around the show's handling of the animated series' first season, it still succeeds in endearing the key characters to viewers. The original Avatar: The Last Airbender's first season consists of twenty episodes, but the Netflix version only has eight. Nevertheless, viewers get a clear sense of who Aang, Fire Lord Ozai, and the rest of the major characters are while delivering a satisfying degree of worldbuilding via their interactions. While Avatar: The Last Airbender has a decent amount of content to cover, One Piece has even more.

It Makes More Sense For One Piece Live-Action To Exist Than Avatar: The Last Airbender

One Piece has more material to adapt than Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A live-action adaptation of One Piece makes sense because the density of its source material could prove a little too daunting for newcomers to properly settle in to. With the live-action adaptation's approach to condensing key information into a more palatable form, it provides an easier way for viewers to engage with the material. Furthermore, the generally positive reception of the adaptation makes it possible for new audiences to go back and give the anime a chance if they themselves appreciate the efforts made by the live-action adaptation's interpretation of events.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is much shorter by comparison, which raises concerns about why a live-action adaptation is on Netflix. The level of character development, relatable characters, well-written drama, and engaging fights all contributed to Avatar: The Last Airbender developing the reputation as the best Nickelodeon show of the 2000s. While One Piece has a similar reputation in the anime and manga worlds, the sheer amount of material that One Piece could adapt and reinterpret is compelling in its own right. Although both Netflix shows are good, One Piece excels in one area Avatar: The Last Airbender fails.

The One Piece anime currently has 1096 episodes, and the manga currently sits at 1,015 chapters. Avatar: The Last Airbender has sixty-one episodes.

One Piece Made Fewer Major Changes To The Source Material

A common complaint regarding Avatar: The Last Airbender is its handling of certain characters and moments.

One Piece does make changes to the source material, such as the introduction of certain characters, but it largely remains faithful to the early portion of its source material. Avatar: The Last Airbender, on the other hand, takes many liberties with its source material that weren't viewed too favorably by critics and viewers familiar with the animated series. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, all three seasons of the series are divided into books: water, earth, and fire, and they thematically influence the storytelling as much as determine the atmosphere and setting of events for the action.

Avatar: The Last Airbender makes the curious decision to skip through key moments that were crucial to not only developing the original series' world and characters, but also to endearing the characters to its target audience. Another thing that One Piece does well is handle the optimistic tone of its source material while also ensuring that its more mature approach to certain moments all blend. While Avatar: The Last Airbender's grittier tone is ambitious, it never quite matches the established feel of the original series. As such, Avatar: The Last Airbender comes up short by comparison to One Piece.

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, all three seasons of the series are divided into books: water, earth, and fire, and they thematically influence the storytelling as much as determine the atmosphere and setting of events for the action.

One Piece Season 1 Was Better Than Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 Overall

One Piece's Rotten Tomatoes score is 85% whereas Avatar: The Last Airbender's is 59%.

One Piece's handling of the characters, key story moments, special effects, and faithfulness to its source material all contribute to the show's better performance with audiences and critics than Avatar: The Last Airbender. Even though viewers didn't get to see each member of the Straw Hat Pirates the Going Merry in the first season, One Piece's approach to how it handles the earlier moments works in a more condensed format. Additionally, One Piece season 2 will introduce the remaining Straw Hat Pirates and some of the series' deadlier enemies, which only increases the anticipation.

One Piece's handling of the characters, key story moments, special effects, and faithfulness to its source material all contribute to the show's better performance with audiences and critics than Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Avatar: The Last Airbender does many things right, such as casting each of its characters appropriately and displaying excellent fight choreography. However, it suffers from the condensed approach to storytelling, as viewers don't get enough of the necessary context to fully engage with each character or the world. Avatar: The Last Airbender's second season will provide an excellent opportunity for Netflix to learn from the shortcomings of the first season and improve upon them. Despite the differences in perception, One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender are objectively great for the future of live-action adaptations.

• 	One Piece (Live-Action)	Avatar: The Last Airbender
  Cast	Jacob Romero Gibson, Taz Skylar, Iñaki Godoy, Mackenyu, Emily Rudd	Ian Ousley, Kiawentiio, Gordon Cormier, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Dallas Liu, Daniel Dae Kim
  Release Date	2023-08-31	2024-02-22
  Seasons	1	1