In SW4, they have these Sumo fighter units that look like a scale model version of these giant marine commanders, it’s interesting to see that they went to town with that idea, excellent.
Regarding the numerous spin-offs I have played, the Zelda one (Hyrule Warriors) stands out a bit as making good use of the enemies as DW-style unit templates, and reading your examples of the OP-version, it seems like they had a great time picking them based off the show? I’ve actually never watched much of one piece, but know a bit about their wacky chara design, and it sounds like they transitioned very well to the musou template.
Hell, it sounds like the EDF formula works as well there:
redress the environment, pack in a new batch of weapons/characters with quirks, stick to the lore and just run with it, get someone doing the score that has fun at his job and you’re set.
Seriously, the gameplay shouldn’t work as well as it does for so many different kinds of games they mash up into that template, and it seems to trigger the exact same spot in my brain that gets triggered when watching Kaiju- or asian action history-flicks.