 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. Today we have a manga review of chapter 926, The Prisoner Mine. Now, despite that seemingly heavy title, what we have this week is an incredibly light-hearted chapter full of fun, which makes a lot of sense really because generally when the story of One Piece moves to a dark atmosphere, Oda likes to amp up the humour in order to balance that all out, which is why Impel Down is one of the funniest arcs in the series, and finding ourselves in another prison seems to be no different. I really enjoyed seeing Luffy and Kit competing with each other moving the blocks, and even when eating their own ginormous piles of kibidango. It's actually quite refreshing to see a member of the worst generation rise to the challenge of Luffy's generally outlandish personality. Thinking back on it, the former alliances that have been made between Loa and Capoe, they just felt very much like they were tolerating Luffy, and adjusting their own actions accordingly. However, what we appear to have on our hands here is a wonderful recipe for pure chaos. As direct rivals, the actions of one would surely only inspire the other to become even more chaotic in nature, and with that in mind, I feel like these two are by far the most dangerous combination of worst generation members. They're also more than likely to be the most entertaining. In fact, my favourite panel in this entire chapter is the one where Luffy and Kit are completely bloated after consuming their kibidango, and you know Kit looks even bigger than Luffy, which is fairly impressive, but I suppose it's also impressive on Luffy's part as well because he's reached this size without the aid of his devil fruit. The same goes for Kit, I guess, although I don't think his fruit would assist him in the art of consumption or that much. Some other shenanigan retakes place in the prison as well, and I'd like to draw some attention to the character of Dobon, who is a hippo smile user. He is absolutely ridiculous in the best possible way. The gag of the hippo closing its mouth while he was still talking had me laughing for far longer than I'd like to admit, and that particular drawing of the hippo was just so damn adorable. However impractical it is, I love this fruit. Obviously, it's also drawing pretty strong parallels to Holden's smile fruit, and I have to say I want more headliners like this. The idea of smile users whose animals just randomly hinder them has a lot of comic potential, although Holden possibly wasn't the best way to introduce this concept. His design was just a bit too… I don't know, what's the word? Shit. But I love everything about Dobon, and I feel like it's being pretty heavily hinted that he will eventually become an ally courtesy of Tama's power. I mean, Dobon loves Kibidango, and Tama makes Kibidango, so they're practically meant to be. Also in the prison is a very sneaky cameo by a certain Karabu. I mean, I say sneaky, but he does have a whole tiny panel dedicated essentially to him, but if you're not looking carefully you could miss it. And I'm not going to say it's nice to have him back in the story because I really feel that thus far he's served very little purpose. During Fishman Island I had faith that Oda would make Karabu quite relevant, but in the end he was just… there. Then he had a 46 page cover story, and I guess it's nice to know how that ended up. Drake beat him, and he was imprisoned. Job done. So this time around I hope that he ends up making his own existence worthwhile. I mean, he does seem like a natural candidate to join the jailbreak squad, along with the pair of eyes in the shadows who was flagged once again during this chapter, looking very bored I might add. Moving elsewhere, in Wano we have another new name dropped right at the beginning of the chapter, a character by the name of Kamazol the Manslayer, which has to be a reference to Potosai the Manslayer, which is Kenshin's epithet in Barone Kenshin. As many of you probably already know, Oda worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki, the author of Barone Kenshin. So this is a very nice little nod, especially since one piece had a similar nod in Volume 19 of Kenshin, with a bun that had the jolly Roger of the straw hat pirates on it. But as for Kamazol the obvious thought is that he is one of the three samurai that Kinemon wants to gather, either Kawamatsu or Denjiro, operating under an alias. In fact, the portrait of him in this chapter looks a hell of a lot like one of the three silhouettes that appeared when Kinemon mentioned these individuals. Interesting that he seems to be another criminal type like Arshuo Doji, although I suppose that former Kozuki clan supporters have very few career paths that they could have transitioned into. But there's also another figure introduced named the Witching Owl Boy, who probably is not one of the samurai that Kinemon is hunting for due to him being described as a boy. And the fact that he doesn't fit any of the silhouettes. Not that we should go by silhouettes, silhouettes have been wrong before. But the Witching Owl Boy's name seems to indicate that he seems to strike between 3 and 4 am, which is known as the Witching Owl or the Devil's Owl in a wide variety of folklore which describe this as the period of peak supernatural activity. So I guess we'll have to keep an eye out for the parts of the one-awak that take place at night, because that is where this guy is being ceded to appear. And now for something I think brought down the chapter quite a bit, the whole sequence with Nami and Shinobu. There was a very funny moment initially when Nami got her own one-awak style introduction box and was tagged as a novice konoichi. The panel of Nami and Shinobu running away in terror was also pretty great. Oh, and according to miscellaneous people on the internet, that whole part were the two dudes drinking as a parody of a famous type of skit in Japan. So that's pretty neat, I suppose. But after that I got pretty sick of this sequence pretty quickly. The gag is that Shinobu is somewhat of an anti-ninja, incapable of moving around silently and even being scared of sharp objects. I don't know, it just didn't do it for me. This might actually be one of those moments where the anime has its chance to shine and really amp up the comedy through vocal performance, but as for right now, I definitely thought that this was the low point of the chapter. There's also a short section with Sanji this week, with him being not quite as inconspicuous as he perhaps should be. In fact, he's drawing some rather unwanted attention by yet another shadow-clad figure, lots of new characters this week actually. As for who this could be, I'm not sure, and I'm not sure that it's worth speculating. It could be some super important guy close to Orochi, or a member of the Beast Pirates, or even just some shmuck with a rival restaurant who's going to be used for comical purposes. And that's kind of it, really. After such a content-rich chapter like last week, I can't help but feel slightly disappointed by this chapter in comparison. There was more of a spotlight on random events in Wano, and what the straw hats were up to, then I thought there might be considering Luffy's current situation. And I definitely would have preferred more of a focus on the prison events in general. But that pretty much does it for chapter 926. If you enjoyed this video, then feel free to like, favorite, or subscribe. And if you aren't in any way inclined to help support this independent channel, then please do 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 chapter. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.