‘One Piece’ Production Designer Breaks Down Season 1’s Key Locations — And Reveals The Easter Egg Fans Might Miss

For Netflix’s One Piece live-action adaptation, production designer Richard Bridgland fearlessly took on a task that many would consider impossible: take an epic fantasy manga series – known as one of the largest in the world – and bring it to life with a myriad of colorful and ambitious sets.

The first season of the series based on Eiichiro Oda’s manga follows a crew of pirates, led by Monkey L. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), on a quest to locate a bounty of treasure – called the one piece – and fight off several evil rivals, which includes other pirates, pirate hunters, and the Marines. 

 The season contains 10 episodes, each roughly an hour in length, and sees the crew visiting multiple locations throughout the East Blue, including the floating restaurant Baratie, the outdoorsy Cocoyasi Village, and others. 

While on a Zoom call with Decider, Bridgland revealed that he didn’t initially know of One Piece when he was gunning for the position. In fact, when he heard of the manga’s legacy, he asked his children about it and they were “super excited.”

When approaching the material, Bridgland, who previously worked on The Nice Guys and Resident Evil, used Oda’s manga as a reference exclusively, rather than the ongoing anime series, which has run for 20 seasons. 

“I know a lot of people have watched the anime, but I figured that the anime has changed some things from the manga, so it was best to go back to the original script, which is the manga,” explained Bridgland.

Bridgland was also dedicated to designing the sets “the proper, old-fashion[ed] movie-making way,” rather than relying on visual effects. He felt this helped create a “believable, credible world” for fans, new and old. 

But how did it all come together — especially in a way that feels cohesive to the fantastical world, rather than a series of mismatched pieces? Well, ensuring that One Piece felt like one piece was integral to Bridgland’s creative process. He admits that he had to endure “a lot of research” while working on the project, which isn’t entirely unusual, aside from its grand cast. Bridgland created a history for each of the sets, which involved coming up with a backstory for each character, some of which, isn’t in the One Piece script itself. This allowed every production decision to be a “logical” choice.

“I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about what One Piece was about or what it looked like. I could approach it with completely fresh eyes and try to discover the spirit of Oda’s work and all of the characters, and then translate them into the live-action world,” Bridgland shared.

He continued, “There will be details that are going to be different to how [fans] imagined things, but what we wanted to do was to create a world where the spirit of One Piece is true, even if it looks slightly different to individual imagination.”

Decider had the chance to dig into some of these locations with Bridgland and hear the story behind them. From Luffy’s Going Merry ship to the tangerine tree in Nami’s home island, to the art on the walls in the Baratie – here’s how some of One Piece’s most iconic locations were brought to life by Bridgland and Netflix.

Building Luffy’s Going Merry Ship:

In a way, Going Merry is the heart of One Piece. It is the ship that Luffy and his friends use to sail the ocean on their mission to gathering treasure and earning Luffy his sought-after “King of the Pirates” title.

“We built the Going Merry [from scratch] because nothing looks like it. It had to be an original shape… I think the hardest single thing that I had to design was Going Merry because of the figurehead of the ship,” explained Bridgland. “It’s so iconic. It is One Piece. We were all keenly aware that we had to get that right. What was really helpful was that in the manga, all of the figureheads really embody the character of each of the people’s ships… For Luffy, it is his indomitable spirit. He won’t be beaten down by anything.”

Bridgland felt that the ram’s head emphasizes Luffy’s spirit, determination, and humor. Because of that, he realized “it had to be a laughing ram’s head… but it also had to be a realistic, laughing ram’s head. I couldn’t just take the manga one and create that, it would have looked a little goofy in the real world.”

Baratie and Zeff Easter Eggs:

Luffy and his crew arrive at Baratie, a floating restaurant run by Zeff (Craig Fairbrass), a cut-throat chef with a heart of gold, in Episode 5 of the first season, titled “Eat at Baratie!” Bridgland described the set as “three pirate ships stacked on top of each other” and explained the logic behind it.

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“It’s not just some whimsical fantasy. For the Baratie ship itself, I figured that since Zeff had been a pirate, he already had his own ship. However, he needed more room to turn it into a big working restaurant with a bar. He was going to have a lot of staff and that was going to be a lot of admin,” explained Bridgland. “He went down to the pirate scrapyard, and he bought two more pirate ships and stacked them on top of each other, so that he had some living space for his crew, and room for the restaurant and the kitchen, as well as some quarters for himself on top.”

But what about the bar built inside of the ship’s fish figurehead? Bridgland recalled that the fish mouth figurehead in the manga was inspired by a real restaurant in Vietnam. However, that wouldn’t be the case for Zeff. “This one had to be a big fish sculpture that, maybe, they found all the way out in the scrapyard, and Zeff just bought it for fun… Then I came up with the idea of putting the bar inside the fish head’s mouth. It makes such an original and unique set.” 

Another element of the ship that excited Bridgland was the artwork inside of the restaurant, which he said was inspired by Zeff’s potential travels. “The show is full of easter eggs. I really urge fans to look deep into the background of all the sets because there are so many easter eggs that we put in,” the designer told us. “For instance, in the Bartie restaurant, if you look on the walls, there are all these paintings. Every single one of them is one of the places in the One Piece world that Zeff might well have visited. We know he visited some and we thought he could well have visited the others. I got these landscape paintings made and put on the wall. They’re quite unique. They’re not in the manga. It was just something to give some more depth and detail for fans of the show.”

Cocoyasi Village and *That* Tangerine Tree:

The beautiful Cocoyasi Village where Nami (Emily Rudd) lived as a child was shot on location. And yes, that means the tangerine farm, as well.

“We got so lucky with our locations. We found that location for Cocoyasi Village, where Nami lived. Her house is just outside of the village and it had to be next to a tangerine farm,” Bridgland said. “I thought we were going to have to plant all these bushes and put plastic tangerines on them. But no, we found an actual tangerine farm that had a perfect view of where we can build the set and we were able to shoot it exactly at the right time of year when the tangerines were just right.”

Arlong Park

Bridgland recalled having the “same luck” with Arlong Park that he had with Cocoyasi Village. “I briefed the location manager and I said, ‘You’re never gonna find this, but what I really need is a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the middle of the woods… but obviously that doesn’t exist. So, you know if you can find me the clearing and I’ll put the swimming pool in, that would be great.’”

Arlong Park is the base for the Arlong Pirates, and consists of a tall building with a weapons room and a map room, as well as a large outdoors area where the pool that Bridgland mentions is located. Bridgland recalls being taken to a farm that was roughly 30 minutes from the studio by the locations manager. “We drove down all these little tracks and into this clearing in the woods, and there was already a giant kidney-shaped swimming pool. It was like that place was waiting for One Piece to be made.”

Captain Morgan’s Office

Lastly, we spoke about Marine Captain “Axe-Hand” Morgan’s (Langley Kirkwood) office.

“Morgan’s office comes in during the first couple of episodes, and it’s in the military base in Shells Town. When the showrunners,  Matt [Owens] and Steven [Maeda], originally conceived it, they had been thinking it was going to be similar to a general’s office in a regular barracks. When I came on to design, I was like, ‘it can’t just be a regular office because he’s such a larger than life character.’ I mean, he’s lost an arm and he’s replaced it with this crazy axe thing. He’s this incredibly fierce,  narcissistic, terrifying man. His office has to reflect that.”

Bridgland continued, “We ended up creating this almost royal-looking office with marble steps up to his desk and an incredibly high ceiling because I knew we were going to be using these really wide lenses. Then there are two giant statues that are based on old Soviet heroic style statues, which were of past Morgan. I put these huge paintings in there that also showed Morgan rescuing a child in the battlefield and winning a battle at sea.”

What to Expect in One Piece Season 2:

Of course, we had to ask Bridgland about a potential second season — and especially, what that would mean for the sets he has designed.

“The thing about One Piece is that it’s such a big world. I don’t think I’ve seen such a huge world in a single TV show for a long time. It was a bit like designing four separate feature films,” the production designed explained. “Every two episodes Luffy is in one part of this world, and then he moved to another, and it’s completely different. We never go back to those. It’s like a travel movie.”

Bridgland suspects that going into Season 2 will be “a different world view all over again” as, in the finale, Luffy and his crew have left East Blue. “The only sets we’d carry would be the ships. I’m sure you’ll see the Going Merry in Season 2. Whether you see Garp’s warship, I couldn’t say, but that would really be it. You’ll just leave the East Blue behind and move on [to] new and wonderful worlds.”

Well, if that’s the case, I’ll take a painting from Baratie, please!