 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a short review of opening 21 Super Powers. And I'll start by saying that this one has me a bit conflicted. Going through it the first time didn't really take me, but after the second and then the third, I have to admit that the song is pretty damn catchy, especially at the chorus. It's been a couple of days since its release and I have to admit I'm actually pretty hooked on it now. But then again, I'm an easy sucker for any sort of high energy music. It's just so easy to move to and it really does get me pumped up when seeing it alongside some Luffy vs. Karakuri scenes. But I also love that it's high energy right from the get-go. It's not one of those slow burn one-piece openings that takes an awfully long time to get to the point of the song. So Super Powers is a pretty great choice for an opening that will cover the climax of a huge arc like Whole Cake Island. With that said, I was cringing just a bit at the very first part where they just repeat, yes, we've got super powers four times. It's a nice powerful lyric when it's being used in the super energetic chorus. But I feel like the song hasn't really earned the right to use those words right in the beginning. I mean like maybe once as the one-piece logo appears, but not four times, it just sounds lame and repetitive. But just to reiterate, I quite enjoy the song in general and I am very keen to hear the full version of it. I do however think it's a very weird spot in the series to be inserting a new opening. Even accounting for the horrendously slow pacing of the anime, this opening would surely take us into the reverie arc, at which point this opening becomes entirely irrelevant. And I say that because recently the anime openings seem to serve anywhere between 40 to 60 episodes and God help us all. If Whole Cake Island takes anywhere near that long to finish, I mean we're just so damn close. Not close enough to the finish to be free from spoilers though. There are a few main moments, but pretty much everything that happens from the chorus onwards is a spoiler. I will say that Toei has gotten a lot smarter about avoiding quite literally shoving the spoiler in your face. So you know it just looks like a vague shot of Brooke running on Nami summoning Thunder or even Kartakuri removing his scarf. But to Manga readers, we know exactly what they're referencing in each situation, which is great. Satisfies both anime watches and Manga readers, fantastic. Unfortunately Superpowers does have some pretty major spoilers within it though, and Toei you can silhouette them all you want, but after watching this opening you know that Carrot can transform, Luffy has a New Year 4th technique, and you see the exact direction that Endgame Big Mom is heading in. Those are pretty huge spoilers and I personally love seeing them, but once again I feel bad for anime only watches. You try so valiantly to avoid spoilers and then Toei forces them down your throat like this. And not only that, but it does so with pretty subpar animation. This opening makes me very sad from a visual standpoint. I mean there are some really great shots, like select portions of Luffy vs Kartakuri and the German stuff during the second chorus. Well, except for Yonji who just looks like a derp. But there is good work here. Sadly Superpowers is assaulted on all fronts by incredibly cheap and lazy animation, and there's no better example of this in the section right at the very end where we have the irrelevant straw hats pop up again, perform an action, and cut to something whole cake island related. The animation of the straw hats performing their various movements is clunky as hell, and just far too slow. But what's worse is the rubbish that we cut to after said action. I mean the first shot with Sanji in the wedding cake is literally just a still 2D image with the zoom in effect. And the others are just 2D images floating across the screen. It's the quickest and easiest thing in the universe to do. Watch I'll make it happen right now. Yes we have superpowers. And you might say that this effect is nothing new to one piece, and yeah you'd be right. This sort of thing was used as recently as hope, but not quite as blatantly if that's the right word. There's still usually some semblance of animation happening. But I'll just stop there because getting on the Toei Complaint bandwagon is a dangerous place to be, and I just never stop. What I will say is that I enjoyed that superpowers broke up the traditional one piece opening structure. You know the one where we start on the Thousand Sunny for the first verse, watch the straw hats doing some daily life stuff, then we have some irrelevant action for the first chorus, and from there onwards we give shot to shot spoilers of everything coming up in the next 20 or so episodes just so that you have absolutely nothing to actually look forward to. Superpowers was very different. After the one piece logo it was non-stop action. And while I do have a lot of issues with it, it's nowhere near the worst one piece opening we've had, not by a long shot. So superpowers deserves all the praise in the world for that. I mean I don't like it as much as hope and it definitely wouldn't even crack my top five, but I do think that superpowers is an incredibly decent entry into the series. But that pretty much does it for this quick review of opening 21. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe. And if you are in any way inclined to help support this poor independent channel then please feel free to check out my Patreon, Discord server or Twitter, the links to which are in the handy description below. And finally please do comment with your thoughts on the opening. This has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.