 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. Now today is a monumental moment in the history of the series because I am proud to say that after a hiatus of well over a decade, the One Piece anime is officially back in action. That's right, we have a review of episode 892, The Land of Wano to the Samurai country where cherry blossoms flutter. And I have to say, I am pretty damn blown away. Yes, all of the trailers were promising huge changes to the anime and they looked great and all, but I really needed to watch this with my own eyes and the new aesthetic is simply stunning. The character models are 100% on point, so much so that I actually feel like these are the characters that we see in the manga. For far too long, there has been a huge disparity between how characters are presented through Oda's art and the sort of shambled bastardizations that they come across as in the anime. But throughout this episode, everyone just looked exactly as they should. And even that is enough to spark tears of joy from me, but we certainly did not stop there because that doesn't even take into account the wonderful line art, the colors and the extra attention to lighting that has really brought Wano to life in a way that I can confidently say no other portion of the anime series has ever managed to achieve. On top of that, the factor that I'm going to give the highest praise is most certainly the music. Wano has come equipped with a completely new soundtrack and the life that it has breathed into this episode is it's staggering. For the first time in God knows how long one piece felt fresh and exciting with this wonderful selection of tracks that can handle super high energy samurai fun times as well as more dramatic and slow moments that at times very much evoke the still yet compelling nature of Japanese theater. My favorite track is the one played during our introduction to Wano, which was wonderfully synced up with the animation of the shamisen player in the mask. And just on that, Margaritas I'm not going to spoil who that is. Although anime watches, if you look closely enough, you'll probably put two and two together just from watching the opening, which that's a thing we'll get to. But while we're still on this, I love the general introduction to Wano. Along with the cool yet classical energetic music, we were treated to gorgeous colorful establishing shots with a nice amount of foley atmosphere in the background and the shots of Zoro wandering through the streets were handled really well for what they were. Like there is really nothing to them. For example, there is a shot where it's only Zoro moving and the background is entirely still with a slow zoom and a couple of cherry blossoms sluttering in the foreground. This kind of animation is nothing special. I really want to emphasize that. It is super cheap, but with this new art style and direction, it's actually effective. Whereas a similar shot in the previous incarnation of the anime would have drawn a lot of attention to the fact that it was nothing special. And it would have done that through a variety of extra means such as having an off model character or lingering on the shot for far too long in order to fill time. Or just by not having a compelling soundtrack in the background to add the necessary energy to build on the minimal animation and create that illusion of movement. It's a lot of little, little things that have gone into making this episode as far as I'm concerned with One Piece, a master work of art. All of which is the work of the director to coordinate and I want to dump all of the credit I can possibly gain access to right onto Tatsuya Nagamine, the new series director. He has the creative eye that One Piece has so sorely been missing and I sincerely hope that he can keep it up because it's all well and good to produce one fantastic episode, that the real test will take place over the course of a series. With that said, amazing start. But look, as much as I love what's happening in the episode, I do also recognize that there are many issues that have carried over into what I guess I'll now start referring to as the Wano era. But for example, there is still a bit of odd pacing. In this episode, I noticed it a lot when we were doing the whole Usopp toad oil thing. Usopp would say a line, perform an action and then there'd be this awkward pause for a second or so before he said something and all moved again. And there were little things like that scattered here and there. Like it also happened with Frankie talking to Minotomo where he'd say a line, pause and then say something else. But I will say that it is much, much more forgivable because the art style is now something that my eyes actually want to look at. So taking our time, especially in the early stages in the introduction to Wano is not necessarily a bad way to extend things in my opinion. And you know what the other feared F word comes up in this initial episode as well. That F word, of course, being filler. And it's pretty amazing for how enjoyable this episode was, there is actually a shocking amount of filler which was almost everything featuring Zora. For some perspective in the manga, we immediately find him in front of the magistrate about to commit seppuku. But in this episode, we spent a great deal of time going on this journey of events that brought him there in the first place. However, this was filler in what I consider to be its highest form because it did not take anything away from the experience of the episode. Generally when I criticize filler, it's because it adds nothing and more often than not, it's intended to add nothing because it's not allowed to develop the story and its whole purpose is just to artificially extend things for money. But the events of this episode absolutely get away with it because it isn't made just with the idea of extending the runtime but actually expanding the world in the process. And it does this through a couple of things. Firstly, through the expansion of the magistrate character. It's cool to see him actually conducting his evil deeds and then clocking Zora being caught. And then when we finally get to the main event, we've had this simple but solid character arc that has been formed and it makes it all the more satisfying to see him cut down. And secondly, this whole section expands the world through the very simple decision to have these filler events take place at night which shows us one in quite literally different light which manages to keep things fresh and visually intriguing rather than trying to play out this sort of filler scene with the same lighting that the rest of the episode invokes which is what these sort of attempts would usually consist of previously. Once again, it's about those small decisions. On paper, there is not a hell of a big difference in deciding to insert a filler scene about Zora's encounter with the magistrate versus any other implied filler we've seen in the anime that I have endlessly criticized. But this episode has made it very, very clear to me that it's all about how it's implemented and this filler was not merely acceptable but also enjoyable. And now I admit a fair chunk of that may also have to do with the fact that we are following Zora, a character who I haven't seen animated in such an absurdly long time and that goes for the rest of the reintroduced Zora hats as well. I was surprised at how much I'd missed their voices and how my mind just sprang to life when I heard Frankie and Usopp in particular. Their voices were such a welcome reintroduction into my life. And even though they've been back in the manga for a long while now I have missed this full experience of seeing and hearing them. And I think the anime should 100% take advantage of that while it has the chance because these characters won't be exciting just by the fact that we're seeing them forever. So go ahead and bring on that implied filler which I suspect is the strategy going forward because the adaptation rate of chapters to episodes simply cannot change to increase the pacing of the overall story unless one piece becomes seasonal. However, after this showing I am more than willing to give our new filler strategy a chance. I just really hope that it holds up. My biggest fear is that eventually they may run out of creative ways to insert the sort of stuff and revert back to the kind of lazy filler that we had before because Wano is going to be a mega arc possibly longer than even dress Rosa. And that's going to come with some serious fatigue no matter how good the story and art is. And even more so if it needs to be artificially extended every week but still I am optimistic at this stage. Next we also need to discuss the new opening and first of all I am so, so sorry. And I'm only fans because once again the opening has spoiled probably every major event for the next God knows how many episodes. I'm not going to dwell on what all of these events are in case you've not noticed them or actually there's also some people out there who have told me that they never watched the openings for exactly this reason but there is one huge thing I cannot ignore. So if you don't watch the opening just skip to this time because I'm very briefly going to get into what was shown in it which you would most certainly consider a spoiler. So here we go. First up Luffy versus Kaido looks amazing. I love the dark tones of the background juxtaposed with the super bright and vibrant figures of Kaido and Luffy, Kaido especially but as much as I love how it looks I can't help but think it's a bit of a dick move to reveal his dragon form this early on. I mean in the manga I just remember that being such an amazing reveal and anime fans who watch the opening are not going to get that. And there's a lot of other smaller dick moves in there as well that ruin big surprises and story beats like not only showing Sanji holding the raid suit but also even revealing what he looks like once he puts it on. For the record though he does look pretty cool. And then you've also got one of Hawkins's crazy moves and actually you know Hawkins himself that is a big spoiler. The one that shocked me the most though was definitely seeing Yasu. Like this is probably meaningless to anime fans at the moment but as soon as we actually meet this character in Wano this is a massive spoiler and it really just doesn't need to be in the opening because it's not a huge action centerpiece like Luffy versus Kaido nor is it a super hype character like Hawkins. So just leave Yasu out of it please. All right, spoiler talk over now. And one more thing I'd like to say is that I love the new eye catchers. The classic Japanese remix straw hat themes work so so well. And the two we saw of Luffy and Zoro here are so good that it will probably be a highlight of my future episode viewings to see each crew member's individual bumper. But in essence apart from the overall art style there were not a whole lot of changes made to One Piece for the Wano era. Not a lot of big changes anyway. It's all just a collective of smaller decisions. Like the recently mentioned remixing the straw hat themes. These tiny, tiny things add up to create a stimulating experience. And what I think One Piece really needs going forward is just a steady injection of those small things. Because there is most certainly the danger of running with all of this new stuff for so long that it eventually becomes stale and say 50 episodes from now will be entirely sick of the anime once again because it stagnates once more. It needs to keep evolving with little innovations and changes here and there but this is a better start than I could have possibly hoped for. To put this into some perspective this is probably the first episode of the One Piece anime that I would not be in any way ashamed to show to a friend to try and get them into the series. It represents what One Piece is during the Wano arc so damn well. And not only that it has actually enhanced the manga material. After watching this episode I looked back at the manga material covered and I realized that I enjoyed watching it far more than looking at it on the page and that is what a good anime adaptation should do. And so I offer my heartfelt gratitude and congratulations to Toei Animation for producing something that isn't just going to be a cash cow but something that they can actually take some artistic integrity in. It has reinvigorated my interest in the One Piece anime and I imagine that it's going to do the same for so so many more people. Keep up the good work and I cannot wait for next week. But that pretty much does it for episode 892. 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