One Piece live-action showrunner explains why Buggy didn’t die in Season 1

The showrunner on Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece has explained why Buggy didn’t die in Season 1.

One Piece is one of the most popular franchises, so every fan doubted the decision of the live-action project when it was initially announced. Well, that is understandable because fans were not ready to afford even one bad project from this franchise.

However, the perceptions changed when the first trailer for One Piece season 1 was released. Everyone was happy to see the cast that seemed similar to the original characters – especially Iñaki Godoy, the live-action version of Luffy, who looked pretty similar to the one the anime has blessed us with.

Besides the Straw Hat Crew members, some other characters’ live-action versions also came out well, and one such character is Buggy The Clown, played by Jeff Ward.

One Piece showrunner explains why Buggy didn’t die in One Piece Season 1

Buggy was indeed the first villain to overwhelm the Straw Hat Pirates by almost killing Luffy. However, he couldn’t succeed in his mission because our heroes are obviously more skilled than the Clown.

On their first encounter, Buggy hides his ear in Luffy’s hat so that he can follow the heroes all the time. Despite the terrible things he did to Luffy and his pals, he is still around and will definitely get screen time in the second season of the Netflix show. This makes fans (especially non-anime fans) wonder why Luffy did not kill Buggy, even when he had a chance to. Well, Owens spoke to Deadline about this.

When the showrunner was asked why he didn’t kill Buggy, he replied that in One Piece’s universe, every character has dreams, especially the villains, and of course, they do everything just to achieve those dreams. But what if their dreams get shattered? Well, according to Owens, Oda created a world where achieving dreams is more important than living for most characters, including the bad guys.

Buggy has a dream similar to Luffy, which is becoming the King of the Pirates. Well, Luffy didn’t have to kill Buggy because after getting defeated at the hands of the rubber boy, the Clown realized that it wouldn’t be easy for him to achieve his dream after all. And the possibility of not fulfilling his dream because of Luffy is a fate far worse than death for Buggy.

Owens continued explaining the words of Eiichiro Oda, saying: “What’s worse than death is a dream being taken away. So when you see a lot of the villains that we meet, they have these machinations, they have these desires — often nefarious — and the Straw Hats take those away from them.”

In the interview, Owens also revealed that Oda wants his villains to get an impactful death, and that is why he avoids unnecessary death sequences every now and then.

You can check out our other One Piece coverage here, and our other anime coverage here.