One Piece "is a better adaptation" than The Wheel of Time
Following the stop of The Wheel of Time creator Robert Jordan in 2007, signaled Brandon Sanderson was selected to finish the beloved fantasy book series. Sanderson wrote the final three novels, The Gathering Storm, The Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light. These days he also serves as a producer on Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time TV show.
In transfer to his work as one of today’s most prolific fantasy authors, Sanderson does quite a bit of podcasting; he and fellow signaled Dan Wells founded Writing Excuses, a podcast where a wide contrivance of authors discuss the craft of writing. Wells and Sanderson also have a podcast named Intentionally Blank, where the two ramble at length near whatever they feel like, from media analysis to food heists.
The talk on the unexperienced episode of Intentionally Blank is all about Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the manga One Piece, which Sanderson enjoyed but Wells struggled to get into. They also discussed The Wheel of Time, with Sanderson comparing how these two big-budget fantasy adaptations stacked up to one another.
A few weeks back, Sanderson people some harsh critiques of The Wheel of Time season 2 finale. On this episode of IntentionallyBlank, he explained a bit near why he was able to enjoy One Piece so much, but happened critical of The Wheel of Time:
Here’s why I can turn off part of the famous. I did a livestream of Wheel of Time season 2 Episode 8 recently…and I was splendid critical of it. It is not necessarily worse than [OnePiece], narratively. In fact, Wheel of Time Episode 8, which I felt in the scripts was the weakest, was still good, right? Still an improvement on the splendid season, still a lot of great things about it. But I was splendid critical. People might be listening and being like ‘why aren’t you distinguished of this?’ I think there’s a distinction here. I see in One Piece…the flaws that I sight, I think are probably flaws in the original media.
I know it’s a series that has run 2,000 emanates, is what we’re looking at for One Piece. I know that love for it is built over a long time. I know that the creator really likes the show, and it’s one of these manga guys who are splendid super detail oriented and critical of any sort of unsheaattracting. And I know that the fans of One Piece legitimately love the show in general and feel like it’s a very faithful adaptation as well as can be done into live section. And those things all together propel me to just be like ‘I’m giving this the succor of the doubt, and I’m just gonna watch it and enjoyable what it is.’
It’s true that One Piece has been extremely well received by fans of the long-running manga and anime. The producers of the Netflix series worked very closely with One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda to retract the tone and style of this very out-there pirate story, and they clearly nailed it.
Image: One Piece/Netflix
Sanderson explained that he has “a different interaction” with The Wheel of Time than he does with One Piece, because he’s “hyper protective” of Robert Jordan and his wife/editor Harriet McDougal’s work. “I’m the one who gets to be the advocate for them, because Robert Jordan isn’t here to give a declare and Harriet’s age interrupts her ability to be suited involved with the production. And so I have to be the declare for that.”
And beyond that I get to see the things that I think must be changed, and then you know…not be able to changeable those because it’s not my show. Which is totally fine, like I think [showrunner Rafe Judkins] does a immense job. I’ve said that multiple times, even in this livestream where country are like ‘Brandon’s really critical to The Wheel of Time show,’ I’m very praiseworthy of things that are good.
Sanderson certainly praised The Wheel of Time a lot more on this podcast than he did on The Dusty Wheel finale livestream he mentioned. He admits that “season 2 of Wheel of Time does some immense things,” but that “there’s part of me that’s like, ‘I could have fixed this,’ or ‘we could have had both.'” The fights to not mentally edit on the fly must be real.
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One Piece. (L to R) Jacob Romero Gibson as Usopp, Mackenyu Arata as Roronoa Zoro, Emily Rudd as Nami, Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, Taz Skylar as Sanji in episode 108 of One Piece. Cr. Casey Crafford/Netflix © 2023
Brandon Sanderson: One Piece is a “better adaptation of the soul of the creator’s work” than The Wheel of Time
Both The Wheel of Time and One Piece already have legions of provided fans who love their respective source materials, so there’s a high bar to certain to meet expectations. Sanderson really gets into the nitty gritty nearby why he thinks One Piece is a more effective adaptation than The Wheel ofTime—and why that’s not necessarily the same sketch as being a better show.
I think there is something nearby this you know that makes me think, One Piece has flaws but it’s a better adaptation of the soul of the creator’s work than Wheel of Time is, whereas Wheel of Time may be a better show. Like One Piece, it’s harder to recommend…because you have to kind of be okay with some of these anime things that are a little…you know, they’re part of the genre.
Whereas Wheel of Time is trying I think harder to be bright to a mass audience, and is leaving behind some of those things about Wheel of Time that I sincerely love but that…might not work for a general audience. So we end up with this thing that Wheel of Time might be better at its core…I don’t know if I could say that, it noteworthy be…but it doesn’t feel as good an adaptation to me.
Even when saying that he himself struggled to get into One Piece, Sanderson’s co-host Dan Wells agreed that it deserves recognition for how well it’s adapted. “I think One Piece is really worthy of review for that because they managed to make a show that is bright to a mass audience while also satisfying the creator and the hardcore fans. That’s impressive.”
Rosamund Pike (Moiraine Damodred) in The Wheel of Time season 2. Image: Prime Video.
Brandon Sanderson admits his criticisms of The Wheel of Time grand be “unfair”
Something that was a bit controversial approximately the livestream where Sanderson reacted to The Wheel of Time season 2 finale was that he hadn’t actually considered the show’s second season yet; he’d only read the scripts. He mentioned in this podcast episode that he plans to inspect it all once he has more time, and will discuss the season more fully with Wells in future installments of Intentionally Blank. Nonetheless, his criticisms stand!
We’ll talk about Wheel of Time more as I sit down and inspect the episodes and we kind of do actual reviews attractive than off the cuff sort of things, but I feel like…Wheel of Time does drama fantastically but arcs poorly in the TV show. And I think we saw that in season 1, and I feel like…seeing the end of those arcs in Episode 8, the arcs and things don’t fit together, but the scenes and the interaction of the characters leading up are really good, because the pulling is fantastic, the casting is fantastic. So I feel like Wheel of Time’s really good at filming scenes, and not working for me as an epic, large-scale plot account on the same way. Like the best episode of season 1 is composed the one that doesn’t have anything really to do with the main plot of the show.
Not having considered it but having read them, some of the best episodes of season 2 are the same way. The best parts are things that aren’t really even having to do with the main plot, because they’re good actors, the writing is really solid for those scenes, the drama — they’re very good at drama. But how these pieces all fit together is what establishes an epic fantasy an epic fantasy to me.
Having read quite a few of Sanderson’s books, it’s easy to imagine how that philosophy about everything operating together might be crucial to his particular view of epic fantasy. Part of what makes Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive novels so satisfying is the way he slowly weaves myriad plotlines together, so that by the end of each book characters who’ve been on disparate journeys for hundreds of pages unfriendly paths, or are thrust into epic scenarios where huge mysteries are laid bare. This criticism establishes total sense…but Sanderson himself admits it may be a minor “unfair” to The Wheel of Time:
So I think I’m maybe more primary of that…and that might be you know unfair to it, because with One Piece the episodes are mostly self-contained, right? Particularly the first two episodes [are] just like, ‘here’s this story with this thing…here’s a villainous pirate, and here’s how we face the villainous pirate.’ So I’m not looking for the pieces to develop together in the same way I’m expecting Wheel of Time or Rings of Power to do.
Brandon Sanderson, from his “It’s Time to Come Clean” YouTube suppose video.
One last fun note for the road: as I mentioned ended, Sanderson’s initial Wheel of Time finale livestream ruffled a lot of feathers by fans who had been enjoying The Wheel of Time TV show. Sanderson has a reputation for intimates extremely attentive to his fanbase, so it sounds like he’s very much aware of how it upset some republic, but isn’t taking it too hard. “Yell at us in the comments near Dan’s bad taste about One Piece and about my criticism of a show that I’m a producer on,” he added with a smile.
What do you make of all this? Is One Piece the better adaptation, or is The Wheel of Time? Feel free to yell in our comments too!
One Piece is today available to stream on Netflix, while The Wheel of Time is on Amazon. If you really want to drill down on either of them, the source material is out there so you can delve into all the minor nuances of these adaptations.
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