“It allowed Buggy to go darker”: Netflix’s One Piece Director Revealed Real Reason Behind Making Buggy Darker Than Eiichiro Oda’s Version
Mia Phillips
Updated on April 03, 2026
When the One Piece live-action series was released, many One Piece fans expected that it would follow a similar emotional genre to the manga and anime. It will majorly be a humorous adventure with some amount of dark and villainous elements to it. And the only character that best adapted this was Buggy the Clown.
Buggy is played by Jeff Ward and he did a brilliant job in bringing out the insane and overly dramatic clown who wants to terrorize people and also has a big streak of selfish nature. However, the only difference between the live-action Buggy and the One Piece anime Buggy was that the live-action Buggy is much darker than Eiichiro Oda’s version.
Marc Jobst, the Director of One Piece’s live-action adaptation on Netflix, in an interview, explained the reason why he wanted Buggy to be much more darker and dense than the anime version. He also explained how it helped other characters and the series in particular.
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Marc Jobst Explains The Reason Behind Buggy Being Much Darker
In an interview with Variety, One Piece live-action director Marc Jobst talked about the reason behind making Buggy much darker. According to him, Buggy going darker helped Luffy in bringing levity to the series and vice versa. This helped in maintaining a balance in the series thus resulting in its success.
He stated:
“If you go too funny and wacky and goofy, you lose the depth that ‘One Piece’ has. And the more levity you bring, the darker you can actually go. So Nami and Zoro are still undecided about Luffy, this goofy character who seems a bit simplistic in every way — everything is fine and fantastic and amazing, even creatures like Buggy — and they’re not really providing a huge influx of joy and levity. But because we have Luffy to lend the levity, it allowed Buggy to go darker.”
He also explained that if he had gone too funny or goofy, the series would have lost its depth and to make it a much more interesting series, Jobst had to bring levity which was done by the character of Luffy which allowed Buggy to go much darker.
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One Piece Live-Action Buggy Showed More Emotions
The One Piece anime Buggy has shown emotions but they are usually greed, excitement, goofiness, and stupidity. However, the Buggy in the live-action series is much more inclined towards the negative and darker side. Jobst also explained the reason behind this.
He stated:
“The task with [adapting the character] Buggy was to both honor his clown [attitude], but never forget that he’s really dangerous and he has eaten the Devil Fruit. Also, he has a history. There’s that big moment where he’s holding the straw hat and he’s saying, ‘Shanks,’ at the hat. He feels betrayed by him and then he turns to Luffy and says, ‘Did he betray you, too?’”
Emotions like betrayal which were shown as a comic aspect of One Piece anime, were taken much too seriously in the live-action version. This made Buggy look much more serious and devious compared to the anime.
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And it also worked in the favor of the series because the fans liked the new darker version of Buggy and now are eagerly waiting for his performance in the upcoming seasons of One Piece live-action.
You can watch One Piece live-action on Netflix.
