 Remember that time back in East Blue when Zoro challenged Mihawk, and unfortunately the smallest weapon Mihawk had on hand at the time was a YouTube subscribe button. So like the absolute legend he is, not only did he defeat Zoro, but he also subscribed Zoro to the Grand Line Review, which to this day still uploads regular One Piece content straight into Zoro's YouTube feed. Want a boss? Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today it's time to talk about swords, or more accurately, those who wield swords. And I've been holding off on making a video like this because the great shame of Wano is that it has introduced new sword users left, right and center, but I do feel like we have reached a point of solid grounding where we can begin to finally discuss those who may be classified as the finest bladesmiths in the series. And with this list I want to make it very very clear that we will only be ranking characters based on their demonstration of clearly perceived skill in the art of blade work. Just because one character is higher than another on this list does not mean that they should necessarily be considered stronger or more powerful overall. And they do need to make that very clear because people are going to jump to poorly thought out conclusions if I don't. In fact this is the internet so that's probably going to happen anyway, but at the very least I've warned you. Oh and something else I'll say right here and now is guess who is not going to be on this list? That's right, a certain green-haired sword obsessed, sleepy lost alcoholic straw hat. And why do you ask? Well it's simply because at the time of this recording he just has not shown quite enough for me to comfortably put him above all of the profound world figures that we're about to go through. And so maybe he does belong here, but maybe he doesn't. Not yet anyway. Time will tell. Also all swordsmen on this list here today must be canon despite the fact that we are talking about swords rather than projectiles. But with that out of the way let's begin. Welcome to the top 5 best swordsmen in one piece. Number 5. Vista. Starting here today we have the phenomenally moustached dual-blade wielder known as the Flower Sword and the 5th Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates. Now Vista comes into this as an extraordinary master of the blade as demonstrated during the events of the Paramount War in which Vista was able to combat many world-renowned figures including the fearsome then Admiral Arcaino, as well as gaining the attention of Senpai himself Dracule Mihawk, who let's not get ourselves is most certainly going to be appearing later on this list. Boilers I guess. And Vista is a great user of both armament and observation hockey which work in tandem with his swordplay however he also has a very peculiar effect that takes place during battle which is the production of various flower petals which we've only seen depicted as rose petals thus far but Vista has stated that he is able to produce other types as well. And you know it's actually very reminiscent of Robin's Devil Fruit which has that petal-like effect when activated so it's entirely possible that Vista is a fruit user and that this flower power is used in tandem with his swordsmanship to make him that much more potent. Although if he is able to produce them through the sheer power of sword alone then that only means that he belongs here that much more. Now if everyone on this list, Vista is the only character I would consider as a legitimate candidate to be replaced by a post-times skip Zoro. Zoro is an undeniable powerhouse with his triple blade business going on that has only become more overwhelming during the events of Wano but it's very difficult to scale him against Vista because we do know that Vista was able to competently fight against Mihawk but as of right now we have not seen Zoro face off against well any competent opponent and so I really feel like I'm left with no choice but to surrender the opening spot on this list to the master of the flower sword. Number 4 Kozuki Oden, the man of the hour of legends is here. Another dual blade wielder as well, having possessed both the Ame no Habakiri and Enma to become a supreme force in this world and if you're not a Manga reader I'm actually going to put in a spoiler warning here because Oden's feats aren't going to be animated for an awfully long time to come I'd say about a year from the publication of this video so if you're determined not to hear anything then please do skip to this time but for everyone else let us continue. So Oden comes into this with a mighty distinction of being the only individual to ever mark the Emperor Kaido with a permanent injury and that is already a mighty step up from the feats that we've seen displayed by Vista. However Oden was also capable of using his supreme sword skill to face off in a fearsome clash against Whitebeard who would come to be known as the world's strongest man as well as at least attempt to go at it with the eventual pirate King Goldie Roger although that particular skirmish didn't go too well for Oden but one of the greatest indicators of Oden's skill as a swordsman comes from the rather simple mastery and his casual use of Enma which is probably the most unruly blade that we've seen in the series to this point demanding an absurd reservoir of armament hockey and forcing it out of its user whenever it is swung or even simply held and that's something that Zoro is grappling with at the moment although he seems to have reached a fine level of usage with the blade which only adds to the fact that yeah maybe he should potentially be on this list but at the moment Oden remains the undisputed master of Enma as well as one of the greatest swordsmen that Oda has ever put to page in One Piece. 3. Silver's Rayleigh Also known as the Dark King and the most trusted confidant of Goldie Roger himself, Rayleigh is also one of the most legendary of names in general within the entire history of One Piece and it would seem that his primary style of combat would be that of sword play which is interesting because more often than not Rayleigh isn't seen with a sword nor does he have a blade that he wields consistently as it did change during the time skip. In any case this does make some sense because Rayleigh is for all intents and purposes retired but that doesn't stop him from taking a casual stroll down the road for some old man groceries and get into a fight with Admiral Kizaru along the way showing that Rayleigh's swordsmanship combined with his exceptional mastery of haki still allows him to fight at the pinnacle of power in this world which is kind of terrifying because Rayleigh himself has admitted that his skills with a sword have very much doubled over the years so if anything it's entirely possible that a prime Rayleigh could have come to top this entire list but even with that in mind Rayleigh is still the beneficiary of time and experience he has far more of it than any other character that we will be mentioning here today and it has earned him an innate mastery of the sword one that can only be overcome by placing that level of mastery in a much younger package capable of using it to 100 efficiency and speaking of number two red head shanks here we have another former member of the roger pirates and while he was never in his prime while Rayleigh was shanks is certainly in that phase of his life right now being a single blade wielder of the legendary Mito great sword known as griffin and while we have never seen shanks in any level of serious combat what we have seen from him in the series thus far all emphasize his skill with a blade one such moment would be during the return to water seven arc where shanks invoked griffin to clash with whitebeard which resulted in the very sky above them splitting open meanwhile at marineford shanks was able to use his sword to stop a certain Sakazuki right in his tracks and go on to end the entire war and this showed that shanks at the very least had a skill comparable to that of silver's Rayleigh being able to comfortably tank an admiral level opponent with a low durability but the greater feather in the cap that is shanks comes from something we've only heard about which is his rivalry with drake your mehawk and knowing that these two used to engage in constant jewels that echoed throughout the grand line makes it very difficult to play shanks any lower than this because if there was any argument to do so it would be that shanks did lose one of his arms in east blue saving luffy which put mehawk off facing him again in the future indicating that loss of an arm did come to significantly impact shanks as a sword wielder which is a great shame in some ways because it implies that had that event not happened shanks may have gone on to be considered the world's greatest swordsman but i guess he'll just have to settle for the consolation prize that is the emperor title though because the former now belongs to number one drake your mehawk so i don't think there was any possible way that i could have made the pinnacle of today's list a surprise i mean when you're literally referred to as the world's greatest swordsman every time you appear then it's hard to generate any form of suspense but with all of that said i think we should take this bit of time to appreciate just how utterly dominant mehawk is in the art of swordplay of every character we've mentioned on this list here today mehawk is the undisputed champion of the sword and in retrospect that's kind of ridiculous because this list includes two former commanders of the world's strongest man the right-hand man of the pirate king and one of the four emperors and yet mehawk is considered to be more skilled than any of them what a profoundly ridiculous existence this man is and that isn't to say that mehawk would certainly defeat them in an all-out brawl but in the game of swords nobody can even come close to his domain with basic feats such as chopping up 50 battleships slicing through an icy tsunami and while this isn't canon in one piece stampede he easily dealt with a meteor that a post time skips are struggled significantly with not at all canon but a very believable depiction of just how far above mehawk is from any other individual and to be honest the only hope of defeating him in this world comes from zora but to be fair that's only because mehawk trains zora himself during the two-year time skip so it's kind of cheating in a way i mean using your immense skill to mold an individual designed specifically to take yourself down one day but i suppose that's just the curse of success when you are the world's greatest swordsman and that pretty much does it for the top five best swordsmen in one piece if you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general then please do consider donating to the ground line review patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible and if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime and manga series then please do feel free to check out my second channel in your world review for all of your wider needs and if you'd like to join the fun at any time then please do head over to my discord server where a wide array of shinali retakes place on a daily basis and finally please do comment with your own favorite swordsman in the series this has been the ground line review and i'll see you next time when you watch anime do you listen in dubs or watch in subtitles or does it depend on the dubbing some stuff you watch have the best dubs i have ever heard so yes these days i watch exclusively subtitled anime because i just prefer to have that connection to the original intent of the series some dubs are fantastic but i think a lot gets lost in translation with them plus actors quite rightfully so by the way put their own individual flavors into various characters and most of the time i would just prefer to stick to the original and this might just be because i don't understand fluent japanese but sometimes i just feel that english dubs tend to be a bit cringy especially when any form of localization or attempted colloquial language happens of course that didn't used to be the case though i like everyone my age got into anime exclusively through english dubs of stuff like pokemon dragon ball and the adult swim lineup like dragon full mental alchemist neon genesis and so on and so forth in fact the only real reason why i switched to watching subtitled anime was more out of necessity because the dubbing process took so long and back in the day it was far easier and quicker just to download some shiftily sourced fan sub to material so after years and years and years of doing that my initial preference must have just switched to wanting to hear the original japanese plus something else i'm not so keen on in the english world is that there is a very very small pool of voice actors and that's a problem for me because there's only so many times you can hear a johnnie young bosh on matt Mr performance before you just recognize them as those people rather than the character they're playing it's kind of a kinderd singing Brad Pitt a film you look at him as Brad Pitt rather than the character he's meant to be playing and it does get that level watching subs as well you recognize a lot of voices here and there but i think that the language barrier helps to hide that but japan also has a far more diverse pool of performance available due to the quantity of their output but long story short i like subs