dreamland names its theme songs in a second trailer

The anime dreamland has a second trailer, and with it two theme songs: Faulieu. performs the opening, movin'on, and Ai Tomioka performs the ending, dream catcher. The trailer went up on 18 September on Amuse Creative Studio's anime channel, a fortnight before the series starts in Japan.

What the second trailer shows

The series follows Terence, a boy left terrified of fire after his mother died in one. The fear follows him into sleep as recurring nightmares until, one night, he realises inside a dream that he is dreaming. That is the moment he stops being afraid, and the moment he wakes as a dreamer — someone who can travel Dreamland, a second world built out of other people's dreams and nightmares. He does it with fire in his hands, which is either the neatest piece of storytelling in the premise or the cruellest, depending on how the series plays it.

A French comic, handed to Japanese voices

dreamland began as a comic by the French author Reno Lemaire, and it is directed by Juan Pablo Machado and Joe Celse, with series composition by Jean-Luc Cano and Antoine Maurel. Bénédicte Ciaravino designs the characters, Constance Berthoux handles the 2D work and effects, Fabien Nataf writes the music, and Ellipse and La Chouette Compagnie produce. The Japanese version is a localisation rather than a remake: Amuse Creative Studio handled the dub, with Soichiro Kubo as sound director and Tohokushinsha on sound production. The Japanese cast leads with Sho Hatano as Terence and Asami Tano as Eve, alongside Kaede Hondo as Lydia, Takuya Masumoto as Ben, Serika Hiromatsu as Nity, Shin Furukawa as Servia and Daisuke Namikawa as Nail.

When and where it airs

The series begins on 17 October in Japan on ABC TV and the wider TV Asahi network, in the ANiMAZiNG!!! slot that the network schedules at 2am on Saturday nights. The official description warns that broadcast times can shift with scheduling, which is the standard caveat for a late-night slot. No UK or European streaming home has been announced, which matters if your only route to it is a subtitled simulcast.

A co-production that is not hiding it

Most anime that arrives with a European name attached turns out to be a Japanese production with a foreign licence. This one is the other way round: a French comic, a French production team and a French studio pair, with Japan supplying the voices, the sound direction and the broadcast slot. It is the arrangement that gave Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Arcane their energy without forcing either to pretend it was made somewhere else.

Our opinion

The theme songs are the least interesting thing here, and that is not a knock on Faulieu. or Ai Tomioka — a second trailer that leads on its music usually means the animation footage is still being finished, which is normal for an October show in September. The real question is whether a French comic that has never needed a Japanese audience can survive the transplant. Handing the dub to Amuse Creative Studio with a Tohokushinsha sound team and a cast led by Sho Hatano and Asami Tano is the safe version of that bet: competent, familiar, and unlikely to add the off-kilter quality that made the original worth translating. The dream-logic premise is strong enough to carry a series on its own, so the risk is not that dreamland fails, it is that it arrives as a very good adaptation of something that was stranger before anyone touched it. Fire that used to mean his mother's death becoming the thing he wields is exactly the kind of idea that needs to stay uncomfortable.