 Now, there's this unfortunately common idea floating around out there that Kaido just up and flung himself off of Sky Island in order to see if he could end his own life. I'm really sick of hearing this, it is blatantly not true, and it is clearly shown in both the manga and the anime that Kaido jumped off of Sky Island in order to very dramatically and quite literally smash the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review, which has now resulted in Kaido receiving regular One Piece content uploaded straight into his YouTube feed. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have one of those discussions, which happens every now and then, which is the utter mystery of exactly how our protagonist, Mr. Monkey D. Luffy, is going to defeat the overwhelming presence that is Kaido. And right off the bat, for anime only watches, there will be no manga spoilers in this discussion. Everything we talk about here will be general enough to not require manga specifics. But instead of doing what I usually do and ramble on from the deep recesses of my thoroughly One Piece infected brain thing, I decided to make this discussion a bit more democratic, and a few days ago I posed this question as a poll to my audience, which received an honestly staggering amount of responses. At the time of this recording, over 20,000 people have cast their votes for this discussion, and I find that to be absolutely insane. I had no idea that random community polls could generate that kind of response, even one on a channel with 160,000 subscribers. So thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to the poll, which presented what I believe to be the foremost likely outcomes of this Luffy kind of conflict, and we are going to go through the ideas here in order of least popular to most popular. I will also point out that I did place an other category in the poll, prompting people to leave alternate responses in the comments, and we will go through some of those ideas at the end. But because YouTube only allows polls to contain five responses at most, I did have to significantly narrow down and generalize discussion. But let's begin with by far the least popular idea, which garnered a total of 3% of the vote, being that Luffy will defeat Kaido with the help of the vassals. But just to be fair, in a poll of 20,000 people, that still equates to roughly 600 of them, who do believe this idea, so that is quite a following. But basically, this is the thought that Luffy is going to team up with Kozuki Oden's legion of vassals, led by Kinamon to strike down Kaido. And it might sound a bit absurd at first, because the idea that Kinamon would be the deciding factor of any fight is a bit hard to swallow. However, this samurai is much more powerful than I think one piece has ever given him credit for. As prior to Wano, Kinamon was mostly used for comic effect, and you know what, even during Wano, that impression still kind of remains. But the vassals are actually nothing to scoff at. Remember the characters like Inno Arashi and Neko Momoshi, were able to fight on par with Jack, and in fact, Ashura Doji made his entire entrance into the Wano arc by getting the better of Jack. And the other vassals aren't exactly far behind in this regard either. Together, they are actually a pretty absurdly supreme force to be reckoned with, that honestly, any Yonko commander position should really come to fear-facing as a collective. So it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility for the vassals to be integral in a struggle directly against Kaido himself. Now to add to this, we also need to examine the idea of Toki's prophecy, which to quote the official translation, is the following. You are the moon unaware of the dawn. May your purpose be fulfilled and cast nine shadows on the night woven of twenty years, and you shall know the brilliance of dawn. Which was interpreted by Orichi, as stating that on a moonlit night twenty years from now, nine samurai ghosts will emerge to kill him and enact their vengeance. But personally, I would not take Orichi's interpretation on the matter, because remember, he's Orichi. He is a fool. And nowhere does this prophecy go and state that these nine shadows will defeat Kaido personally. And in fact, it honestly doesn't even confirm that these shadows are referring to the vassals at all. But it is highly likely. In any case, I do bring up this entire issue, because Toki, in her time-travelling wisdom, is placing a grand amount of importance on nine figures. And by far the most paramount issue of this entire conflict is obviously taking down Kaido. Furthermore, narratively, the vassals are intrinsically linked to Kaido, and it has always been their quest to defeat him, more so than anyone else like Orichi. However, I do acknowledge that this idea is something of a stretch, because there have always been characters like the vassals, who aren't directly linked to the main antagonist. Like Law with Del Flamingo or Vivi with Crocodile, and even way back when with Nami and Arlong. And each time, Luffy stepped up to deal with the main antagonist business, so I guess that's why this option of teaming up with the vassals to beat Kaido only garnered 3% percent. Still, 600 people do believe this is the way to go, so yeah, like I would say it's definitely technically possible. Moving on though, to the next lowest percentage of respondents, and many people actually enjoyed the opposite idea, that Luffy will defeat Kaido on his own, which got 13% of the vote. Now this is an idea that I personally don't find plausible, however it does make sense in terms of one aspect, which is pure storytelling trends. Luffy has a tendency to defeat the main antagonist of an arc, in what is ultimately a one on one showdown. And as much as I don't like the idea as things stand, one piece is still a shounen manga, and so it is always going to be possible that a one on one defeat ends up happening. The main problem is that Luffy is just ill equipped to take on Kaido in every way, shape and form, which we have already seen in their initial confrontation, where Luffy threw everything he had at the Emperor and was swiftly one shot into the realm of unconsciousness. For this option to work, Luffy would need an insane upgrade, like more than anything Gear 4th could possibly provide. We're not just talking about some new form like Snakeman to give Luffy a slightly more balanced array of abilities, it would be a straight up Super Saiyan kind of thingo, like the fabled Gear 5th. And to be fair on this option, Luffy has had the time to develop such a thing, and without spoiling anime only watches, he has also made a certain development in the world of Haki. However, even with that in mind, there is no way that that latter feature is going to be enough to so much as skirmish with Kaido in a one on one setting. And Oda has laid down various hints that this may not be the way the fight is going to play out as well. I mean firstly, in Kaido's introduction, the narrator made the statement that in a one on one match, always bet on Kaido. Or at least that's what people say. Plus there's also the famous statement from one piece great newspaper volume two, that Oda himself does not yet know how Kaido is going to be beaten, and he added that he doesn't know if Luffy can defeat such a strong character yet. And then very adorably that he and Luffy would have to find a solution. And we'll also say that this statement was made three years ago now, and Oda almost certainly has a plan in place to implement by this stage. And contrary to popular internet belief, this doesn't simply imply that Luffy will never be able to defeat Kaido one on one, it more or less just says that he couldn't ride then and there. Which was a very reasonable statement then, but I would argue is still very much the case now. I mean I just don't know what else Luffy could do on his own. Kaido isn't the kind of character who is going to be put down by some sort of clever attack strategy. His raw physicality is just too much. And to compete at all with that, Luffy could only invoke an upgrade. A very particular upgrade mind you, because I don't even think that awakening his Delphrute would give him enough strength, speed or tactical advantage to make this option work. So with that in mind, let's move on to the next most popular option which took a whopping 20% of the vote. And that option is very grimly that Luffy will not defeat Kaido. And I think it's just absolutely fascinating that almost twice as many of the people surveyed think that this is far more likely of an outcome than Luffy defeating Kaido one on one. And I have to say that if I do like magically forget that one piece is shown in series, I can see where this train of thought is coming from. Kaido is a very unique enemy and honestly I can't see Luffy ever really living up to that kind of power, not even by the end of the series. That doesn't mean that Kaido won't be defeated though, and just because that might be a given outcome doesn't necessarily mean that Luffy has to be the one to do it. And there's quite a few options available out there to explore here, the first of which might be very unconventional, which is that Kaido might defeat himself, mostly because he is an emotional wreck and his hobby is suicide. He has no fear of death, in fact he seems to actively seek out and embrace it. And due to that failure, he seems to want to plunge the entire planet into war so that they can feel the same level of pained existence as he does. But for Kaido to just give up would require something of a mental beatdown. Very much akin to the Luffy versus Karakuri fight, where despite being physically outmatched, Luffy prevailed in the mental arena and completely changed Karakuri's entire guiding philosophy on life. That could happen with Kaido, and we might find ourselves in a situation where he decides to give up on everything and finally just end his own life, somehow. Or if he does have to be defeated straight up, then we also shouldn't forget that pretty much the only character in this world who can equal Kaido in terms of power is also present on Wano being Big Mom. Even with current events their relationship is volatile at best, and it's not hard to imagine a conflict breaking up between the two, and having these emperors more or less defeat each other. And you know, Luffy would just so happen to be there to take credit for it by being the instigator of all of the anarchy. Then there are also very left field ideas like Blackbeard pulling a Marineford, and showing up to dispatch Kaido, having seen an opportunity to rid the world of yet another Emperor. So there are definitely options for a Luffy-less defeat of Kaido, but what I will say against the idea is that it would be very, very difficult to pull off in a satisfying way, to say the least. The entire New World era of One Piece has been building up to this particular battle. And to not have the main character take victory with his own hand somehow, it is a very tricky proposition. Not impossible at all, but also not really in keeping with One Piece. And with that I would like to move on to the most popular idea presented in the poll, which received an overwhelming victory, with 57%, which is that Luffy would defeat Kaido by teaming up with the rest of the worst generation members. Those present on Wano anyway, which is almost everyone, being Trafalgar Law used as Kid, Killer, Diaz Drake, Basil Hawk and Scratchmanapoo, and technically yes, you should also throw Zora into the mix, which you know, makes a lot of sense given some good developments. And this is definitely the option that I subscribe to the most, because it just makes the most sense to me on every level. Individually the worst generation members are incredible powerhouses. Like forget the vassals entirely, these guys are on a completely different level. And not only that, but each and every one of them shares a wavelength of the new generation of pirates. They're wildly ambitious, and if they sense a chance to change the world, then they are going to take it. It would be the first showing of these figures in full force, to make a grand statement of their claim on this world. Plus most of them do have direct rages against Kaido, or agendas that involve having him out of the picture. So it just has everything going for it. Narrative reasoning, character reasoning, and with all of them combined, yes I do think you could make a satisfying argument for power reasoning. And you know what, there are currently eight members of the worst generation present on Wano, and that is just one away from matching Toki's prophecy of Nine Shadows. And so I know that Bonnie and Capone are out doing their own thing, but if Oda could maybe find a way to work a rouge or black bead into the mix, then these could be our prophesied figures. Very, very, very, very unlikely, but something worth pondering in my opinion. But now, as promised, I will also explore the other category, and some unique ideas that my viewers brought up. I also want to note that this other category got 6% of the vote, which is double the idea that Luffy will team up with the vassals, so seems like we really do not like that one. But one idea that did catch my eye was someone proposing that Kaido will be effectively defeated by Tama, just by feeding him some of her self-generated kibidango, and effectively taming him because I guess he is a creature, which is a really, really cute idea, but I imagine that the fanbase would absolutely explode if ten years of storytelling culminated in that particular outcome. Many viewers also lumped all of these ideas together, and suggested that it would literally be Kaido versus everyone. So Luffy, the Straw Hearts, the worst generation, the vassals, and whoever else of note shows up, which, yeah, could see being possible, one gigantic piece of teamwork, and there was even some murmuring of Gekko Moria coming to Wano in assisting Luffy, since Moria was the one-time rival of Kaido. Once again though, I'm just not sure this story has been told for so long now, to have it end in Moria being the pivotal element. And most of the other ideas were very meme-y, like having Buggy arrive to one-shot Kaido, or ideas that are just generally out of the wrong possibility, like having the Revolutionary Army show up, or even Sakazuki himself. Very, like, wishful and fan-thick thinking. But yeah, it's been quite an interesting exploration here, and I'm happy to know exactly where the fanbase seems to stand on this question. Or at the very least, my view, as I can't speak for everyone. But as a result, I am hoping to do more polls in the future, so if you have an idea for a question to be asked on mass, that ideally can only have five responses, then please do leave it in the comments. But for now, what do you guys think of Luffy versus Kaido? Please do feel free to leave more of 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 into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.