- [Liam] Hello, and welcome to the Grand Line Review,
your source for everything "One Piece",
and today, we are here with a very unscheduled video
because opening 23 has been revealed,
which is "Dreamin' On", and I have thoughts.
Many thoughts, some good, some bad,
and since this channel very much acts
as my "One Piece" thought dump,
well then that means that you are lucky enough
to get slash unlucky enough to be subjected to hearing them.
And I should say immediately
that this opening has a lot going for it,
which does surprise me, because when I saw a preview for it
a couple of weeks ago or so now, I felt that it would be
another pretty meh "One Piece" opening,
which does occur roughly every two to three openings,
or one that just doesn't particularly strike me anyway.
But to be fair, it was a fairly low quality preview,
which might be part of the big reason why I think I was,
for the most part, kind of blown away by "Dreamin' On".
And if you were also blown away,
then please do let me know
by subscribing to the Grand Line Review
for regular "One Piece" content uploaded straight
into your YouTube feed.
And if you disliked or just plain hated "Dreamin' On",
then please do let me know by subscribing
to the Grand Line Review
for regular "One Piece" content uploaded straight
into your YouTube feed,
and we'll see whose opinion prevails.
There are definitely issues with "Dreamin' On" though,
such as the fact that this opening spoils quite possibly
the entire next year's worth of episodes.
And in fact, it spoils content that this anime opening
might not even get around to covering.
And it also follows the terrible example
that was set by "Over The Top" with the opening filler,
which is just pure evil genius from Toei.
Like say what you want about how annoying it is,
but you have to admit that
this company has single-handedly managed
to innovate the entire concept of filler,
and at a certain point, you just need to respect the hustle.
We'll get into both of those things in a bit though,
because I do want to start with some positives,
and a big one would be the song itself,
because I think I really like it.
This is the sort of song that appeals to me
because it is super high energy, and the sort of music
that I can see myself going running to.
That is something I also really enjoyed
about "Over The Top", "Super Powers" and even "Hope".
So this last batch of openings has really hit me
right in the musical feels.
What I will say in strong favor of "Dreamin' On" though,
is that I enjoyed the song the very first time I heard it,
which is very rare for me, I must emphasize that.
With every opening I just mentioned, which I do now love,
I was not sold at all musically the first few times
I heard them, especially "Super Powers".
Man, I thought that was the cringiest crap I'd ever heard,
but after rewatching it a few times,
it hooked me something shocking,
and I will now sing the praises of "Super Powers"
for the rest of my days.
And I think that "Dreamin' On" for me is going
to have a solid place for a very long time,
because I've only listened to it a handful of times
at this point, but I already love it.
So, solid song.
Very solid song, in my opinion.
And when it comes to animation,
that is also nothing short of superb.
There was some serious effort put into 90% of this opening
that makes it a sheer pleasure to watch.
I especially love seeing all of the Straw Hats
in the very beginning in their various Wano raid outfits
launching towards the camera.
That's a technique that has been used a lot before,
specifically in "One Piece" openings,
but it works especially well with the attention to detail
when it comes to the fluidity of movement.
And in general, there's a lot that serves
this opening well artistically,
one of which being the sheer mastery of color
on full display throughout.
Everything about the use of color
in opening 23 feels very cohesive,
and I'd like single out this shot of Big Mom, Kaido,
and Orochi as an example.
Pink, blue, and green, all vibrant and very nicely neon.
The pink and blue contrast each other, but in combination,
they are also able to form a contrasting background
to Orochi's green.
And there were some other great examples as well,
like the orange and purple hue placed across Kinemon
in that one shot, and I really do enjoy stuff like this,
because it sounds really basic,
but color is super easy to mess up.
I do it all the time in YouTube thumbnails.
So good job to "Dreamin' On" all around with that.
But now let's move on to some more controversial-ish stuff,
which to be fair, none of this should be unexpected,
not at this point anyway,
but this opening has an incredible amount
of very striking spoilers.
In one case, a literally striking spoiler in it.
And look, if you're an anime-only watcher
and you don't wanna hear about this sort of stuff,
then here is your fair warning
to click on another one of my fantastic videos,
but I won't be speaking about anything
that we did not quite blatantly see in this opening,
so don't accuse me of spoilers if you choose to proceed.
And I would say that there were three, maybe four,
very major, major things that were spoiled in "Dreamin' On".
And I'll start with a basic and debatable one first,
which is that it goes ahead
and fully reveals Kozuki Oden to us.
He's just there in all of his glory,
which I have to say, is super hype for me to see,
but his actual reveal is an awfully long way away
from where the anime is at this point.
And I guess it's not the biggest deal in the world
because the anime has practically sort of revealed him
in the past.
You know all of those questionable silhouetted filler
they added of him?
Whereas in the manga, those were very brief
and complete shadows.
And I know that this probably isn't something
that bothers a lot of anime-only viewers,
but Oda is very, very intentional when it comes
to how he reveals his characters.
The moment where their faces become known
to us for the very first time is meant
to be an engineered experience
that gives us all an important first overall impression
of whoever it may be.
And in my opinion,
doing stuff like this does take away from that.
I won't say the circumstances
under which Oden was introduced, but it's not at all
what this opening would have you believe.
However, this is one of those things
where I just have to get off my manga high horse
and accept the fact that the anime experience
is a different beast.
That is fine.
However, I do have quite serious doubts
over whether or not we'll still even be watching
this opening when Oden's reveal actually happens,
which makes me question the entire idea of putting him
and a lot of other stuff into it.
And that's because when you look back at "Over The Top",
there are events in that opening
that still have yet to be animated.
We've moved on to an entirely new opening,
and we still haven't covered everything
that "Over The Top" presented us with.
And as a manga reader, seeing "Over The Top"
for the first time was this insane experience,
because it included something
that we'd only read a month prior.
So I think that "Over The Top" definitely bit off
more spoilers than it could chew,
and "Dreamin' On" might be in the same boat,
because there is a lot of stuff in this opening
that I am almost certain we'll not get to see
unless the opening is planned
for an extraordinarily long run, like a record-breaking run.
And there is a lot of stuff as well, it's not just Oden.
And the most obvious of the obvious would be everything
that takes place in the flashback realm.
We have a lot of brief scenes
of the young Roger Pirates, young Whitebeard,
and even this amazing clash of Roger versus Whitebeard,
which once again, I have to say, it looks stunning.
Seeing it in this opening is everything
I would have wanted it to be after having read it.
Although if anything, with this rate at which Wano is going
with animating key scenes,
I'd expect the actual thing to be even better than this.
So there is a lot of hype for that.
But I don't get why you would put it in this opening.
One of the greatest features
that "One Piece" capitalizes on is surprise moments.
You know when a chapter drops
and something world-shaking happens,
seemingly out of nowhere.
Those are the times when "One Piece" is trending on Twitter
and breaking the internet,
or whatever metric you want to use.
And I don't know, putting stuff like that in an opening...
Look, I guess it certainly builds expectations
and hype from watching it,
but it removes that element of surprise.
I mean, it actively tells people
what is going to happen in the future,
which I suppose is called a spoiler.
So after having seen this opening, there is an expectation
that this exact clash will happen in the future,
rather than it being an amazing surprise gift.
And it almost makes me long for the days of "Wake Up!",
which had some pretty absurd scenes
of the Straw Hats fighting the admirals and stuff.
And when it came to that, even anime-only watchers knew
that in the context of the events
that they were currently engaged in,
that was simply not going to happen.
So I guess my main hope for anime-watchers is that
they look at this stuff and either overlook it completely,
or that they assume that this is dreamish fun animation
for the sake of it.
And that certainly is not the last major thing
that gets spoiled, though.
There are a lot of characters that pop up in "Dreamin' On".
You know we see shots of Jinbei, Sabo and Ace,
which is an interesting choice.
And I wonder if we should expect
to see any of them during Wano, maybe?
And then there's also some lingering shots,
like say, this one of Kyoshiro,
which seems highly symbolic of some kind of character
that we may or may not become aware of
in the far, far, and I mean, far future.
And have I mentioned the word future enough yet?
This opening is actually madness,
because to a manga reader,
it almost feels like we've skipped an entire opening.
All of this cool stuff should be in opening 24,
you know, whenever that happens,
because I feel very strongly
that we are not going to get too far into act three
or even into act three at all
while this opening is still playing,
which is where all of these events
just so happens to take place.
And so I guess there's a silver lining in that
because here's the really good thing about "Dreamin' On"
when it comes to spoilers.
It doesn't actually spoil much for the remainder of act two.
So every episode that you're going to see
for the rest of the year at least will have nothing
to do with this opening.
So in a very weird way,
having seen all of this will make a lot
of the act two events a pretty massive surprise,
which as we've established, I do like, I do like indeed.
But it does come at the cost
of blowing the surprise later down the line.
And it's setting a very dangerous trend
of openings covering events
that its actual episodes won't touch on,
which did begin with "Over The Top".
And you know something else that began
with "Over The Top" is something that I, quite frankly,
just utterly despise, which is that entire 20-second segment
of showing scenes from the very episode that you,
the viewer, are about to watch anyway.
And hate is a strong word,
which is why I'm choosing to use it.
I hate everything about this.
Firstly, because it's filler.
It's a device implemented save time, money and energy
on animation costs to produce a two-minute opening.
And that's because the openings need to be two minutes,
which is still far too long,
all as a result of Toei ditching the entire concept
of endings a long, long time ago.
So what we have now is a montage of scenes
that tend to give away every big moment of the episode
that you are about to see, which is in and of itself,
a sort of series of micro-spoilers.
It's almost as if Toei does not want their viewers
to be surprised in any way, shape or form
with the anime experience.
You need to go into it knowing exactly
what is about to happen.
But what I really don't like
about this segment is purely musical.
They choose to place this montage
during the chorus of the song.
The chorus.
You know, the point at which the music is at its peak.
And in this song for me,
it achieves a pretty damn incredible headbanging peak.
I actually can't wait to listen to it again
after I finish recording this.
But during that time when the music is
at its strongest, fastest, and most climactic,
the scenes that are coupled with it
are the slowest, tamest, and most out of place.
And that's because they come from the actual episode.
You can tell that they were not animated
in the same schmick creative way
that the rest of the opening was,
and they just don't match the music
like everything else does.
I mean, think of the lightning fast ways
we see young Blackbeard attack the camera,
or the powerful clash between Roger and Whitebeard.
That is the sort of stuff that should be playing
during the chorus, not a mundane scene of say,
Zoro having a casual conversation with Hiyori.
It honestly reminds me of AMVs
that I would make back in high school.
You know, a bunch of random scenes put against a song
that I thought was cool at the time,
but that didn't blend at all with the music
for many, many reasons.
Maybe those scenes linger too long,
or just feature a character standing there and speaking.
And that is this segment in every episode of the Wano era.
A poor AMV thrown together by some likely highly underpaid
and highly overworked Toei employee.
And it's a true shame because everything else
in terms of music and animation is just so damn solid.
But then when you get to the chorus, the part of the song
that the rest of the song has been building up to,
also known as the main meat of the music,
well, when you get to that,
we get served the equivalent of a bland frozen meal.
With that said though, let's end on a positive.
Despite the money-saving issues
and spoiling a lot of fairly major stuff,
"Dreamin' On" is nothing less than a superb opening.
I don't see how it's possible to watch this
and not be incredibly excited
to start the episode that follows it.
It's not a perfect opening,
but no opening in the last decade has been, so, yeah.
But what do you guys think?
Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below
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And if you'd like to see more videos like this,
then please do go and check out some of my other content
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But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review,
and I'll see you next time.