 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 dreaming 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 dreaming 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 dreaming 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 dreaming 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 superpowers 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 dreaming 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 superpowers. Man, I thought that was like 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 superpowers for the rest of my days. And I think the dreaming 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 like 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 one or 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 and 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 to single out the shot of Big Mom, Kaido and Orochi as an example. Pink, blue and green, all vibrant and very nicely neon. The pink and blue can trust each other but in combination, they are also able to form a contrasting background to Orochi's green. And there are 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 dreaming 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 want to 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 dreaming 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 to him. Whereas in the manga, those were very brief and complete shadows. And I know though, 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. Like we've moved on to an entirely new opening and we still haven't covered everything that over the top presented us with. And you know, 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 like a month prior. So I think that over the top definitely bit off more spoilers than it could chew and Dreaming On might be in the same boat because there is a lot of stuff in this opening that I am almost certain will 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. 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 one 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 watches 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 watches 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 dreaming 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 one or 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 dreaming 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 it's 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 22nd 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 to 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 like head banging 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 Schmidt 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 Zorro having a casual conversation with Hiori. 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, streaming 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 or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight until YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.