 Before we hop into Return to the Reverie, I have a fan series of my own to announce which is Return to the Subscribe button for the Grand Line Review. The story that will feature incredible twists and turns as well as granting you regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece and today we are really going to stretch that definition because this is going to be a short video reviewing the first chapter of a fan passion project known as Return to the Reverie. So from what I understand, this is meant to be a six part series investigating what actually took place during the Reverie which as we know was left incredibly yet tantalizingly shrouded in mystery for both manga and anime fans. The conference began and then we swiftly moved into Wano where we then received some vague pieces of information regarding it between acts. So this project very much aims to fill that gap which I have to say is a neat little idea. I'm not usually a big fan of this sort of thing whether that be fan manga or even fan fic because I think it's supremely difficult to recapture the essence of a series but this project did catch my eye and it is leagues above I think anything else I've ever seen like it before. So I should say that Return to the Reverie was written and produced by a figure some of you may be familiar with being the library of Ohara aka Arta and illustrated by Professor Gemini which I have to say right off the bat the art does a damn fine job. We'll get into that though and according to the credits a whole host of other people were involved in proof reading and general consulting many of which were also one piece YouTubers like Joyboy, Ohara and Mr. Morge and that sort of collaboration does very much interest me because I do think the only way you could pull something like this off would be to have a great concentration of one piece passion and knowledge more so than any one person could ever be capable of conjuring. But as of right now we have a single chapter of the series with new ones to be released over the next five weeks and obviously there will be a link to the chapter in the description below as well as a link to where you can watch the chapter because Arta has also turned it into a video which is, it's interesting I'll say. Oh and I should also just issue a standard warning here because there are actually manga spoilers for anime only watches in this initial chapter. Arta has seemingly elected to take full advantage of more current knowledge and inserted some of that into the project. Although you know what, at the same time there are actually some pretty big departures for one piece in return to the reverie. So if you were an anime only watcher, I'm not entirely sure. If you would necessarily pick up on the spoilers or if you would assume that like much of the project it was just a nifty little piece of fan cannon. Potentially interesting discussion to have there. But diving into a review of the chapter it plays out pretty much with the exact kind of experience as a regular one piece chapter right down to the cover page which I believe was done by a guest artist and man it looks fantastic. Love all the detailing of the background but the chapter also has roughly the same number of pages of a weekly installment although I would say that it has less panels per page on average. In fact, almost everything about return to the reverie adopts a principle of simplifying one piece which is very evident in the aesthetics. There are a lot more blank backgrounds than usual and where there are backgrounds and an environment to look at they are once again very much simplified incarnations like say the water in this panel. If you give it more than a passing glance it's clearly just like a splattering of scribble lines and I should also say that I don't mean that as criticism either. I really like that return to the reverie does embrace what it is which in the end is a fun fan project and as much as it does replicate one piece in a very uncanny way it does have its own style which I think is necessary. Personally, I feel like one of the most foolish tasks one could ever set themselves would be to perfectly recreate someone else's work because other than being used as a learning tool there's not a lot of artistic merit to that particular practice. So I do love that Professor Gemini has a very distinct and unique art style of their own and it's actually quite lovely to see the one piece world so faithfully recreated with said style because as much as I do use the words simple to describe it simplicity is also a beautiful thing and Professor Gemini comes equipped with a wonderful mastery of light and shadow as well as a keen eye for perspective which makes certain panels a real treat to gaze upon. And with all of that said there are even a collection of panels in this chapter that do look like they were ripped straight out of one piece one of which is this cool one here of Shanks and honestly, if you showed me this out of context I don't think I would look closely enough to see the difference. I would have just gone, huh, yeah, it's manga Shanks looking as badass as ever but now for the story which is arguably the most important factor for something like this Arta has set himself an intriguing task because it's not really enough to make a competent story going into something like this due to choosing the reverious subject matter the standard is set insanely high because those six chapters of manga were some of the most powerful and amazing that one piece currently has to offer. So there's a huge and arguably necessary desire to follow and maintain that reverie hype which has resulted in some fascinating story choices I'll say even within this one single installment there are a lot of, I guess we would call them reveals in canon so we'll call them fan reveals here. In fact, there's a segment of this chapter where Garp is talking to Hina and there are like five fan reveals any one of which would send the fan base into an explosion of discussion if they were real and to use the least spoiler-ish and impactful example Arta chooses to reveal what the Emerald City actually is which if you don't remember the Emerald City I don't blame you. It was a location very briefly mentioned by Bellamy during the gyrock and nothing has ever really become of it since but the connective tissue like that is pretty cool. However, this scene did go on to drop fan bombshells involving the national treasure, a particular thing about dragon, something about Whitebeard, stuff about God Valley and it even very boldly mentions the strongest devil fruit in existence. So that's quite a lot to take in during this one singular scene so much so that it's kind of like an overload and it's probably the most evident portion of the chapter that this is indeed a fan-made project. It can sound a bit like so there's this cool thing and there's this cool thing and oh my God, this cool thing and that's just one scene. The reveals definitely don't stop there. Whereas even in crazy pieces of story like the Reverie Ark in One Piece, Oda will still prefer to strategically drip feed information. So there's a pretty big difference in style there. Is this a problem though? No, not really because you need to remember that this is just a bit of a fun project at the end of the day. It's an interesting exploration of this world, its concepts and these characters in the hands of someone else and it does quite a competent job. For a fan project, it sits at an incredibly high standard of work and all I can say is congratulations for bringing something like this to life. This was clearly not easy to put together. I could not fathom the amount of time and effort that would have gone into just the single chapter let alone a further five to come. So yeah, look if you're at all interested and please do feel free to check out Return to the Reverie. 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 and 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 into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Ground Line Review and I'll see you next time.