Kuina manga vs live action

Despite falling down stairs in the anime/manga and an unnamed accident in the live-action series, some have held out hope that Kuina will be revealed to actually have been alive this whole time in the hit pirating adventure.

In the One Piece anime and manga, the similarity between Tashigi and Kuina would not be immediately noticeable if Zoro didn’t make a habit of mentioning it every time Smoker’s unit cruised into view. Without Zoro, fans likely would have struggled to draw any connection between the two characters, but – to the Straw Hat swordsman, at least – Tashigi is the spitting image of what Kuina would have looked like if she hadn’t died so young. Curiously, Julia Rehwald really does carry a passing resemblance to the actor who played live-action , Audrey Cymone.

The Tashigi-Kuina parallel is not a plot point Netflix’s One Piece necessarily needed to adapt. Not only does it have minimal narrative impact, but finding a great Tashigi actor who could also be realistically compared to Audrey Cymone would have been a tough ask. Animation and manga can change any character’s appearance with a pencil stroke, but real faces aren’t quite so malleable, making live-action casting more restrictive. Nevertheless, One Piece has taken great effort to cast a Tashigi actress who looks vaguely like an older Kuina, suggesting Zoro, echoing the source material, will be mesmerized by Smoker’s right-hand woman when they meet in season 2.

However, it isn’t until much later that Kuina ends up dying. In the One Piece Live Action series, the cause of her death is not explained. However, in the original manga, it is revealed that Kuina ended up falling down the stairs and dying. While this might appear bizarre to some fans, it actually exists in the story for a reason.

As someone who has read and loved the manga, I am kind of satisfied with the live-action. Unlike most other Netflix adaptations, it has soul and well conveys the spirit of the original – mystery, tension, and thrilling.