Warning: SPOILERS for Netflix's One Piece.
Summary
- Netflix's live-action adaptation of One Piece stays faithful to the original series, with unique character themes and instruments complementing each other perfectly.
- The soundtrack for One Piece is four hours long, which is condensed compared to what was actually composed for the show.
- The music composers were fans of One Piece and were able to stay true to the manga's spirit and heart while giving the adaptation its own distinct voice and identity.
Netflix’s One Piece, the first live-action adaptation of the longest-running manga series of all time, has set sail. The series has the blessing of Eiichiro Oda, the creator of the manga, and has been praised as a largely faithful interpretation of the series despite some key changes from the original One Piece. Netflix’s One Piece also works beautifully as an introduction to Oda’s world, as it has more than enough heart, whimsy, and excitement to win over any uninitiated viewer.
From One Piece’s opening moments, it’s clear that the series has been a labor of love by all involved. This is especially clear when it comes to the music, which was composed by the duo of Sony Belousova and Giona Ostinelli. The pair composed hours of music for One Piece with a meticulous—and incredibly rewarding--focus on theme-writing and instrumentation. In this One Piece, each character is their own hero with their own unique theme and signature instrument; what’s even better is that just like the Straw Hats themselves, the themes and instruments complement each other perfectly.
Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli spoke with Screen Rant about the themes, instruments, and intention behind their fantastic score for One Piece. Note: This interview was conducted during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and the show covered here would not exist without the labor of the writers and actors in both unions. This interview has also been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sonya Belousova And Giona Ostinelli On One Piece
Screen Rant: The soundtrack is four hours long; are you okay? I can't even imagine the amount of work that you all did on this.
Giona Ostinelli: It’s not just us. It’s also Greg Hayes the mix engineer, Dave Collins the mastering engineer—
Sonya Belousova: Every soloist, every artist... Aurora, Marcin, Flawless Real Talk, Wondagirl, our orchestrators, the whole team, the music prep team… literally the whole music department. They are such rock stars. We’re so grateful for this fantastic team, because we couldn't have done this without any of these people and any of these incredible artists. And four hours long—that's actually great, because if we're talking about a feature film, usually, when you release the soundtrack, it's about three-quarters the length of the film. In this case, that’s probably not even half of what we wrote for the show. It’s in fact a very, very condensed version of what we wrote for the show.
Giona Ostinelli: And we knew it was very important for the fans to have as much of the music released as possible, because every two episodes we're meeting new villains, and we're in new islands. We were like, “We need to include all the different things from all the islands and all the different themes from all the villains.”
Sonya Belousova: It's a very character-driven show. We have our Straw Hats; there are five of them, and these are our main characters. But then, as Giona said, there are all these incredible villains. Every character in this show is very unique in terms of their thematic material and in terms of their instrumentation, so not giving that to the fans [meant that] we would have been receiving so much backlash right now.
I'll tell you more. When we did The Witcher, we had the song called "The Song of the White Wolf", which plays in two versions. It plays with a solo violin at the end of the episode, and then it plays with the vocals performed by Declan de Barra in the end credits. Well, we just included the end credits version with the vocals, and we're still hearing back about that—that we did not include the solo violin version. It's the same exact piece of music, just the solo violin version. We're still hearing that from the fans. So hell yeah, four hours long.
Giona Ostinelli: Yeah, it was perfect for us to release as much as we could.
Did your experience on The Witcher make you feel even more pressure coming into this? I know you liked One Piece and were [fans] already, [but] were you worried about what people were going to say and think?
Giona Ostinelli: Here's the thing. While working on One Piece—because we're huge fans of One Piece—we were writing as fans. “What do we want to hear as fans of One Piece in One Piece?” When we were writing, we were getting excited, like “This is so cool.”
Sonya Belousova: How this all started for us [was that] even before we got officially on board on the project, we learned that Netflix was making the live-action adaptation. This was after having done The Witcher. We released The Witcher; the album right now is at half a billion streams, which is just insane. “Pass a Coin to Your Witcher” was number one on Billboard not just in the soundtrack charts, but in the rock charts. That was the summer when Panic at the Disco released “High Hopes”. I love that song, but they were number two on Billboard, and we were number one, which was insane.
After The Witcher, we were looking for our next project--the type of project that would require very unique, intricate, complex music world-building. As soon as we learned about One Piece, we knew that that was the right project for us. Before we got officially on board, we shot a very quick three-minute video. It was a video pitch, just because we got so excited about it.
In that video, we literally outlined the whole concept behind the music world-building that we would create for One Piece and what kind of themes we would assign to all of our characters, and with what kind of instruments. Then, at the end, all the instrumentation that we would assign to every one of our Straw Hats would combine in Luffy’s theme, because he's our captain and the glue of our crew. Then, we played Luffy’s theme. That was like a year and a half ago. Now, a year and a half later, the show is out, the soundtrack is out, and all of those concepts that we outlined in that video, and even that main theme that we came up with, stayed one hundred percent true. So, I don't think it was about pressure. I think it was just more about excitement, what we would want to see in a show like that, and how we would want to approach this music universe.
So you were writing all this before you saw scripts, or at least [that’s when] you had your ideas. How much did your musical ideas change once you saw the casting and saw these actors embody these characters the way they do?
Sonya Belousova: I don’t think they changed at all.
Giona Ostinelli: I don't think they changed because we're fans of the manga and the anime. We already had our images when writing, like, “They’d better be similar to the manga, because otherwise…”
Sonya Belousova: What the show, I think, does so well, is that it was of paramount importance to all of us that the live-action adaptation would have its own distinct voice and its own distinct identity, including its own distinct music identity, but at the same time all of us wanted to remain true to the spirit and the heart of the manga. I think when we started having all these ideas, even before we were able to read the script, see the cast, or see any of the rough cuts, we kind of hit the mark right away just because of being familiar with the property and understanding what the fans would want to see and hear in an adaptation like that.
I was reading some of your other interviews and the amount of intention you put into, like, having instruments for each of Zoro’s swords, is amazing. Did the showrunners ask for any of this?
Sonya Belousova: All of that literally comes from that video pitch. We have five Straw Hats, and they're all so unique and so different. They're a crew, but they're not quite a crew basically until we get toward the very end of this season, so it made sense that every single one of our characters would be so distinct and so different. Matt and Steve were one hundred percent supportive of that idea; they wanted to make every one of our characters very different and unique.
Giona Ostinelli: A few months ago, we were working on some scenes, and I remember either Matt or Steve coming back with a note, like, “Here, we're hearing the theme of this character. It should be this other theme.” We were like, “Oh my gosh, they're so familiar with the themes.” It gives us an amazing opportunity to have such a creative dialogue with them on how to interpolate everything.
Sonya Belousova: By having those themes and instruments for every one of our characters, the whole team—Matt and Steve, Tomorrow Studios, Netflix—got so familiar with the themes and instrumentations. It’s very rare when you get to have such an in-depth conversation about all the themes and instruments, like “Hey, what about using this theme over here?” or, “Maybe we have this character on-screen, but what if we use the instrument of the other character because he's just about to appear on-screen?” These are really in-depth, meaningful conversations that all really stem from that video. In that video, we outlined the instrument for every one of our characters. So we have Luffy and that's hurdy-gurdy--
Giona Ostinelli: And a little fiddle and banjo—
Sonya Belousova: A little fiddle and banjo because let’s be diverse, but hurdy-gurdy is at the forefront of that; it's a pirate show, so we need a hurdy-gurdy. Then, we have Nami, and her instrument is the flute. We mainly have her theme performed by flute throughout the whole season before climaxing into her theme’s most powerful song rendition, which is called “My Sales Are Set” at the end of episode eight and which is performed by AURORA. Then, we have Zoro, and I absolutely love that character because, musically, he gave us so many opportunities. He has three swords, and the idea was, “What if we assigned a particular instrument to every single one of his swords?” So, the first instrument was bansuri, and the reason behind that is very simple.
Giona Ostinelli: It's a very long Indian flute, and it looks like a sword. Every time someone says, “You’re playing the wrong note,” I use it as a sword, like, “Ha-ha! Fight!”
Sonya Belousova: The second instrument is a frame drum.
Giona Ostinelli: A really big frame drum.
Sonya Belousova: It's, like, a 43-inch frame drum. We have several frame drums in the studio, but we obviously chose the biggest one because the sound is just so mighty and so thick. It's just perfect for one of the swords.
Giona Ostinelli: It’s very uncomfortable to hold it. I’m still trying to figure out how to hold it in front of a microphone, but... small details.
Sonya Belousova: It's huge. The third instrument is the duduk, which is originally an Armenian instrument. Zoro has this sword—it's called Wado Ichimonji—and it's a very particular sword. It has a lot of history as a sword, itself, but also has a lot of personal history for Zoro. He doesn't use it very often. He only uses it on very special occasions, so having a very special instrument with a mystical and sacred quality like duduk is a perfect representation of that sword.
Giona Ostinelli: And it's so cool, because every time Zoro reaches for the Wado Ichimonji sword, that's when we use the duduk—just for those specific moments. It was such a helpful idea to have an instrument for each sword, because whenever we need to change the texture, we have the toolbox for that.
Sonya Belousova: Then we have Sanji, who looks very sleek and very jazzy. He's wearing a black suit with his hair falling over one of his eyes, so he definitely has a jazzy feel just from looking at him. We're like, “Why not represent him with a big band jazz/funk fusion ensemble?” Also, he uses kick-based martial arts, so Giona here—
Giona Ostinelli: We were thinking, “What if we follow that with cool, jazzy drum grooves? That’s going to be cool.”
Sonya Belousova: So Sanji is kicking there and Giona is kicking right here. It worked just fine. Then we have Usopp, who, as of right now, is still cowardly, but his biggest dream is to become the bravest pirate out there. As of right now, his instrument is a ukulele, and it's actually a bluesy ukulele. There is no such genre, really, but there is now in One Piece, because there are no boundaries in this universe.
For now, we have it as a ukulele, and then in further seasons, as Usopp grows as a character and becomes braver and stronger, his instrument literally will also start growing. From a small ukulele, it will keep getting bigger, bigger, and bigger. Maybe we will eventually reach a 12-string guitar.
Giona Ostinelli: Not maybe. Bigger.
Sonya Belousova: Maybe even bigger, yes. So, that's going to be a journey for Usopp. But having all those instruments was absolutely essential because the show is so elaborate. It’s eight episodes, featuring pretty much eight hours of music. It's a lot of material, and it's very easy to get lost when there's so much going on. Having a very cohesive narrative not only on-screen but also musically is absolutely imperative for a complex show like this.
Giona Ostinelli: It’s so much fun writing for it, also, because this approach is not just for the main characters, but also for all the villains. The Going Merry has its own theme. For example, we hear the Going Merry theme when Luffy first sees the Going Merry, but then in episode eight when they're doing the barrel pledge, that whole scene starts with the Going Merry theme. Then, on top, when we have each character saying what they're pledging, we have each character's instrument, or snippets of their theme, on top of the Going Merry theme all blending together.
Sonya Belousova: It's all about creating that dialogue. Just as there is a dialogue on screen, there is a dialogue happening musically. That's what makes all of this cohesive and unified.
Giona Ostinelli: In one piece.
With all these instruments, are these all things that you've used before? Did you have to learn anything new?
Giona Ostinelli: I sacrificed myself with mandolin. I'm originally a drummer. I played drums, then I started playing piano, and then during the pandemic I started learning guitars, bass—all the stringed instruments. So, I was like, “Oh, it would be cool to do mandolin. Oh my gosh, the strings on the mandolin are so thin.” I was like, “This is the torture of this instrument.”
Sonya Belousova: You also recorded some ukulele. We had an incredible soloist—his name is Johann Frank, and he's just fantastic—but there were a couple of scenes where we didn't really need Johann, and it was just about like some textures and other cool things, so Giona took over ukulele. What else?
Giona Ostinelli: We did some other percussion. We started using bongos, congas, and other stuff.
Sonya Belousova: After The Witcher, we were able to assemble such a huge collection of instruments that we pretty much didn’t have any space in the studio. But if after The Witcher there was still some space, now there's no more space in the studio. It’s just full of instruments. Beyond mandolin and ukulele, which were new for this project, we also got a bunch of drums. We have very specific bongos and congas that we're using throughout the score. Then we have a log drum.
Giona Ostinelli: It’s a rectangular piece of wood. It's like a box with tongues carved into it.
Sonya Belousova: You can produce so many different sonorities. The cool thing about it is that it sounds very peculiar and maybe slightly off, but very quirky, which was just perfect for the show.
Giona Ostinelli: On The Witcher, Sonya had basically all the vocal solos, but on One Piece, it was my opportunity to show off my vocal capabilities. We realized I could sing higher than Sonya.
Sonya Belousova: On The Witcher, it was mainly me doing all the background vocals, because we needed that kind of magical, Witcher-y sonority—
Giona Ostinelli: Are you trying to say that I don't sound magical when I sing?
Sonya Belousova: As much as everybody loves you, Giona, probably not. On One Piece, that was Giona's opportunity to truly shine on his vocals. For example, in episode one, when there's a courtyard fight and they're fighting Captain "Axe-Hand" Morgan, this is where Giona's vocal talents are at the forefront.
Giona Ostinelli: I remember when we were recording it, we did a few takes of different stocks--like one octave, then an octave higher--and remember Sonya was like, "Do it once more," and I was like, "Tomorrow. Please."
Sonya Belousova: We forgot about Buggy. Buggy is another one of our main villains. He's such a fantastic villain; he is really very powerful, but he's also an unhinged clown, so there is a whole circus vibe about him. We really had to find a circus way to represent his theme but with a cool twist. What we do for Buggy is, we have Buggy’s theme, and that theme features a really fast-paced riff. Buggy’s signature move is “Chop chop” because he can chop his body into multiple parts. When he does his signature move, it's like “Chop chop, cannon”. The idea was, “What if we literally incorporate ‘Chop chop’ into his musical theme?” So when you hear that riff, if you pay attention, what you actually hear is, “Chop chop chop chop chop”.
Giona Ostinelli: I recorded myself doing, "Chop chop chop chop chop!" We recorded it and stacked it.
Sonya Belousova: Back to hurdy-gurdy for a second. We used hurdy-gurdy on The Witcher. We used it quite a bit, but the thing about hurdy-gurdy is that it's actually a really incredibly versatile instrument. It was created in medieval Europe, and it was mainly used to accompany dances. The way we used it in The Witcher was more or less in the traditional sense, because we have a lot of dances when Ciri is at Cintra.
With One Piece, we really went all the way. Beyond, for example, using hurdy-gurdy for Luffy, we also used hurdy-gurdy for Kuro, who is one of our villains and the captain of the Black Cat pirate crew. For him, it's used in combination with a shrieking dulcimer, and when you put them together in a particular way, the sound that they produce really sounds like cats meowing. Because Kuro is the captain of Black Cat pirates, having that cat-meowing type of sound was just perfect for him. In fact, when we sent that track to the team, Matt and Steve were like, “Guys, do you have a cat in the studio? Did you record a cat?” We were like, “No. Hurdy-gurdy.”
Giona Ostinelli: Also for Kuro, because his trademark weapons are claws, we were like, “What better way to match that than recording the sound of when you're sharpening knives?” So, we grabbed knives and we started sharpening right in front of a mic. It was tricky trying to figure out now to cut the microphone in the process.
Sonya Belousova: Good news: no composers were hurt in the process, and no microphones were hurt in the process.
Giona Ostinelli: And a very precise direction we had from Matt and Steve was to use just acoustic instruments for the Straw Hats. For them, we didn’t want to use any electronic instruments whatsoever, but for the Marines and Arlong, we could use electronic instruments. The Marines are more technologically advanced, so we could use electric guitars or synthesizers. So, we got a couple of hardware synthesizers and we had fun.
Sonya Belousova: That's why I'm saying there’s no space in the studio at all.
Now that this is all out and it's all done, do you have a favorite cue from the soundtrack?
Sonya Belousova: It’s four hours long!
I know!
Sonya Belousova: It’s like, “You’re my dragons. You’re my babies!”
Giona Ostinelli: “Wealth Fame Power” for me, or—
Sonya Belousova: “Wealth Fame Power” is really cool because it's Roger’s theme and Luffy’s theme, and Luffy’s theme—which is the main theme of the show—is a reversed version of Roger’s theme. They have some similarities and similar character traits, so it made sense to find some similarities between their themes, and the way to do it was by reversing them.
Giona Ostinelli: Or, for example, a track called “Let’s Disappear”, which is how episode five opens up. Or—
Sonya Belousova: Obviously “My Sails Are Set”, because AURORA is just brilliant. We’re so happy that we found our musical Nami, because we were looking for a global artist who would be able to portray such a complex character. There’s so much to Nami. On one hand, she's a brilliant and sharp sea navigator and a total badass, but then on the other hand, there's so much depth to her character, a very dramatic past, and childhood trauma. We needed an artist who would really be able to encapsulate all these different nuances of that character while sounding fragile and emotional but at the same time being able to sound very powerful. AURORA was exactly that artist. When she starts the song, she sounds so fragile and so delicate, but then when we get to the last chorus and there is that powerful chanting, she really gives it her all. I love that song, and I loved working with AURORA.
Giona Ostinelli: Also, the scene in episode three when we cut from Nami and Kaya talking. We have the flute and oboe duet moment, then we cut—
Sonya Belousova: I think the track is called “Kaya & Usopp”.
Giona Ostinelli: Then we cut to Usopp and Luffy talking in the kitchen, and we go into the bluesy, rocky ukulele, and then we cut back to Nami, and then we cut back to Usopp and Luffy. Then, when Luffy realizes who Usopp’s father is, and we go into this heroic rendition of the theme, I get goosebumps every time.
Sonya Belousova: I love that track because that's a great way of musical storytelling. Just as there is a dialogue happening on screen between different characters, there is exactly the same dialogue happening musically within their instruments. As we cut to different characters, that instrumentation changes according to those characters. I just love the intricacy of that scene.
Or, “Zoro vs Mihawk” featuring Marcin. First of all, we love Mihawk. Steve Ward, who is the actor who portrayed Mihawk, is just brilliant. As soon as we saw Mihawk on screen, we knew that we had to get an artist who would be able to take all the awesomeness that Mihawk is delivering on screen and translate that into music. Even before we started writing music, we knew that it had to be Marcin. What he brought into his performance… it’s one thousand percent, and I love the track.
Obviously, a season two is not being written and not being filmed right now, but you two have gone above and beyond already. Are you already writing music that you want to include in future seasons?
Sonya Belousova: I want a vacation.
Giona Ostinelli: As of right now, it's a very silent type of music. Very relaxing.
Sonya Belousova: When you go on Spotify and you click, like, “Lounge” [or] “Ambient music”.
Giona Ostinelli: White noise.
Sonya Belousova: That's it right now. But ideas are happening.
About One Piece
Based on Japan’s highest-selling manga series in history by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece is a legendary high-seas adventure unlike any other. Monkey D. Luffy is a young adventurer who has longed for a life of freedom since he can remember. Luffy sets off from his small village on a perilous journey to find the legendary fabled treasure, One Piece, to become King of the Pirates! But in order to find the ultimate prize, Luffy will need to assemble the crew he’s always wanted before finding a ship to sail, searching every inch of the vast blue seas, outpacing the Marines, and outwitting dangerous rivals at every turn.
Check out our other One Piece interviews here:
- Showrunner Steven Maeda
- Director Marc Jobst
- Director Emma Sullivan
- Editor Tessa Verfuss
- Production Designer Richard Bridgland
All 8 episodes of One Piece season 1 are currently available to stream on Netflix.
Source: Screen Rant Plus