The team behind Netflix's 'One Piece' knew the anime's diehard fans would be looking for mistakes in their visual effects

• Netflix's "One Piece" lead character Luffy D. Monkey has the special power to stretch any part of his body.
• The show's VFX supervisor Victor Scalise told Insider that this was the main challenge for the team.

A visual effects supervisor for Netflix's "One Piece" live-action adaptation said the team was worried about how closely diehard fans of the original anime would inspect the new show for mistakes.

The live-action series about a group of wacky pirates, which premiered on Netflix in August, was adapted from a manga series of the same name. However, there is already an ongoing popular anime series based on the same comic.

In an interview with Insider ahead of the release of the show, VFX supervisor Victor Scalise said that one of the main challenges for the team was making the special powers in the show seem realistic.

For instance, the lead character Luffy (played by Iñaki Godoy in the Netflix series) eats a special fruit that magically turns his body into rubber, allowing him to stretch whenever he fights.

"It's one of those things that when you first look at it, you think it's going to be a very simple effect to pull off," Scalise said about creating the stretching effect. "It took a lot longer to develop than we probably originally estimated."

When asked if he felt any pressure due to the success of the anime, Scalise said he wished he was back in the time before streaming when fans wouldn't be able to pause and watch TV shows frame by frame.

"You'd go to a movie theater, you'd watch faces melt in 'Indiana Jones,' and it was the most spectacular thing in the world because you couldn't frame through it," Scalise said. "That actually is why Luffy's punches were so difficult. Because if you play them, they look fine. But if you stop on a couple of frames, there are frames where it's literally just a streaky blur."

He added: "That's always the scary thing for visual effects — people do stop on frames and go through it when it's not truly built to have that happen. It's still moving pictures so it's really meant to be played and watched. And so it does require a lot of extra work on our part to frame through."

The supervisor also said that at times, the team would finish editing a stretch scene but then go back to check to make sure there were no mistakes if people rewatched it frame by frame.

Despite that fear, the first season of "One Piece" was widely considered a success. It was the first anime adaptation to be genuinely praised by fans, and Netflix renewed it for a second season in September.