 Fun fact, in Japanese the word Yamato can also be read as peace. So it really should not have been a surprise that this character would become an ally. However, I would be negligent to mention that when read in a different way, Yamato can also mean subscribe to the Grand Line Review in order to receive regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed, which I have to say was very full with thinking of ancient Japan to come up with. But hey, I do greatly appreciate it. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we have review of quite the chapter here being 984, my Bible. And all right, a lot of stuff happened here this week, but there is absolutely nowhere else for me to begin this review, but with the big reveal, being of course Yamato. So once again, mask theory has turned out to prove itself correct. Although I have to say that not only was I not expecting this reveal, I also wasn't expecting it to happen anywhere near this soon. With that said, I am certainly not complaining. I just feel like mysteries like this are often left lingering for a while by Oda, kind of like the whole toy soldier curious thing on Dressrosa, but this is fantastic because I love the back-to-back pacing of one chapter, introducing us to the vague figure of Yamato, and then smacking us in the face with the actual character during the very next. It's punchy, I like it. But of course, the big reveal is that our son of Kaido is in fact the daughter of Kaido, which quite frankly, I could have spent all the time in the world after the last chapter, brainstorming weird ideas regarding who or even what Yamato is. And I quite honestly highly doubt that I ever would have landed on this outcome. Why is that though? It's such a simple thing and kind of mundane in theory. There's no real shocking reveal behind the individual themselves. Well, it's because we should be honest here and say that Oda doesn't exactly have the greatest of track records with female characters, specifically in the New World Era. During this time, he has introduced potentially incredible bad-ass female characters like say Rebecca, a Colosseum Gladiator, only to push them to the side by contriving a whole bunch of reasons to not have them actually embody one of the core features of a battle manga, which is, you know, battling. And I don't wanna get too deeply into this discussion because it will heavily derail the chapter talk, but I could not be more thrilled with this. Once again, it's a super basic thing, but one piece has a severe lack of female fighters, especially brawlers. And these last few chapters have delivered pretty amazingly on that aspect with both Yamato and Ulti. And it is also very, very important to note Yamato's connection to Odin, which is more or less what I predicted the standard scenario to be, which is that Yamato did bear witness to the hour of legends and was captivated by the figure of Odin as were most spectators in the general vicinity. But not only that, Yamato also managed to find Odin's journal thing, which we saw him writing during the flashback. And I think that's quite a clever little addition from Odin there, because when we were going through the flashback, I just assumed that this journal was a vehicle to convey Odin's raw thoughts to the readers, but this double purpose is great. And in fact, I suppose it's highly probable that Yamato is the living being on this planet who knows Odin best, because not even the vassals or his children would have been privy to this kind of information. Also Kaido and Orochi have no idea it exists either, which I think is very interesting, because this journal quite possibly holds even more valuable information concerning any number of topics, such as road, ponder glyphs, pirate kings, joy boys, ancient kingdoms, and the will of the various dees. I mean, Odin experienced a hell of a lot in his time with Roger, as well as assumedly hearing a fair bit from Lady Toki as well. So I think that this journal here is actually a fairly grisly important point brought up in this chapter that will almost certainly come back into prominence later on. And you know what, come to think of it, if it does contain will of dees information, then that absolutely explains why Yamato was waiting for Luffy, because she would have been well aware of Odin's belief that Joy Boy was going to return to Wano in a very specific amount of time as well. But with that said, this could also be to do with Ace, of course. Yamato quite blatantly name drops Ace, but even if Ace told her about Luffy, I highly doubt that he would have said, yeah, and my brother will be here one day to help you overthrow the Kaido. Well, maybe he did, or maybe Yamato just put both pieces of information together. Who knows, not me, very rarely me anyway. My favorite aspect of the Yamato reveal thus far though, is the classic one piece inherited will. I really love that Yamato embodies Odin to the point of becoming him, but it just works so, so well, because here standing side by side, we now have the inherited will of Odin with Yamato, as well as the inherited will of Roger with Luffy. So it's a wonderful gathering of the next generation and look, I was not on board with this at all during the last chapter, but I am now willing to entertain potential ideas of Yamato for Nakama, if only for the fact that it would allow Luffy to continue mirroring Roger by sailing briefly with his own incarnation of Odin. The only trouble here is that Yamato doesn't quite fit because Odin was a necessity for Roger, because nobody else could read the ancient language. Meanwhile, Luffy already has Robin as part of the Straw Hat Pirate, so yeah, I don't quite know what Yamato's role would be. And also one day when this whole conflict is over, Wano will likely require another strong leader. And I don't know how this would go down with the people, but given that Momonosuke is too young, Yamato might be a really good interim shogun, as well as general protector of the land. In any case, look, I'm not ruling out Yamato becoming a Straw Hat as a ridiculous idea anymore. You know what is ridiculous though? The fact that we are 75 chapters into this arc and we have only just now been introduced to a figure who is undoubtedly going to be one of the most important players going forward. I mean, Whole Cake Island was quite literally three chapters away from ending at this stage. It was only 78 chapters long. And I suppose I say only in comparison to the beast that is Wano, which at this point is going to topple Whole Cake Island but also Dressrosa in terms of its length. And it feels like we're going to be going deep into 2021 at least. That's probably enough about Yamato now though, because this chapter has an awful lot more in store for us. And I firstly want to briefly check in with Ulti and Page One, who as suspected are not in fact down for the count and they will continue to cause chaos in this arc, which I am very pleased about. Ulti in particular earns more and more favor with me in each subsequent appearance, as does the whole dynamic between her and Page One. They have this really great vibe about them where they get played for goofy comedy together, but when the time calls for it, they can unleash some serious power. And at this stage, it's very easy to see them potentially being the subjects of a future cover story or something. You know, once the Beast Pirates are toppled and or disbanded, we spend some time following the comical adventures of Ulti and Page One. Dinosaurs in the wider world. And it also feels like Oda is going to some pretty great lengths to not really portray either of them as simple antagonists either. He's making them both extraordinarily likable, which doesn't always happen with groups of villains. Like I can't think of many of the Charlotte children, for example, who got this kind of endearing treatment, maybe Brulee through her constant comedy with Luffy and heartfelt interactions with Carter Curry, but I'm not sure if there were too many others. It kind of reminds me of the Don Quixote family more because many, if not all of them, had a healthy dose of comedy attached to them, and a select few even got a heavy injection of drama, which I think made them highly enjoyable to follow as a group. And in this case, Ulti and Page One, I think, provide a much needed contrast to the top tier class of the Beast Pirates because, you know, Queen aside, they are very overly serious beings. And speaking of this is where we travel to my favorite panel of the chapter, which was the simply stunning shot of the aforementioned top tier class. This was the panel I did not know I needed, but I'm so glad it happened because I think it does a really fantastic job of showing us exactly what it is we need to overcome on Wano, and it is not going to be easy. Plus, it's also really fascinating to see a fairly flat-sized comparison, especially in regards to Jack, because in my own personal head canon, he was never quite as tall as Kaido or anywhere near it, but you know, here we have it, and I have to say, I don't mind. Also, Orochi though, despite being dwarfed by most of the other characters here, this really emphasizes just how massive of a humanoid creature he is, which is so strange because it's not just me, right? There's no way that Orochi was this big in Odin's flashback, not in his beginning phases anyway. He seemed like such a small, not small, but average-sized guy, and then once he became Shogun, it's like he grew exponentially, mostly in terms of width, maybe as a result of consuming his devil fruit. But like I said, this panel shows us what we need to defeat in order to come out of Wano successfully. The main big bards roll here, Kaido, King Queen Jack, Orochi, and very, very sneakily down in the right there is Fukuro Kujo, which I thought was a nice touch actually. I have a tendency to forget this guy exists because he and the Oniwabanshu haven't had a huge role in the proceedings of Wano thus far, but this panel here, despite me not actually seeing him at first, makes me pay a lot more attention to his existence because here he is side by side with the other major Wano antagonists, so he is a legitimate obstacle indeed. Now, as for why everyone is gathered, it was for the execution of a small child, but in this chapter, Kaido has done something that I hate, which is that he has announced an announcement, and this is something that all sorts of companies tend to make a public statement saying to stay tuned for an actual announcement at some point in the future. So in this chapter, Oda does just that. He teases Kaido's announcement, which I'm really keen for actually. It's very easy to forget what's going on with Kaido with all of the other madness in play, but this dude is probably about to implement something pretty damn huge. Oh well, that'll be a reveal for a future chapter, I suppose. Meanwhile, in the main hall would be my second favorite panel of the chapter, featuring Robin, Jinbei, and their superb acting talent. And I really could not think of two characters more suited to this kind of fun panel, because Zoro aside, these would be the two straw hats who tend to be the most, I guess, aesthetically flat. You know, fairly stoic and generally introverted with their actual emotions. So as a result, we just don't get to see, say, Robin posing in a flashy kind of way all that often, and I really like it. They have been few and far between, but one of his really give Robin in particular some really aesthetically diverse moments to play with. But the other major segment of this chapter would be Lore dropping off the vassals, which in my great foolishness actually kind of confused me at first, because I assumed that Lore had just shambled the vassals onto the island and remained with the submarine. Then he appeared on the next page in the snow, and I was just like, well, but that was just the case of me, you know, not using my eyeballs to look at the panel where he was clearly absent from the heart pirates vessel. But of course, the greatest point of interest here is the revelation of a post-timeskip Iso. And man, he looks amazing. Like all great post-timeskip designs, Iso appears to have acquired a scar, quite possibly as a result of the payback war, but it gives him this like badass veteran vibe, and Kiku's reaction here is everything. In retrospect, though, I'm still finding it a bit weird that Iso didn't like go back to Wano after the white beard pirates were disbanded. I mean, I don't know, after a huge event like that, where your family just dissipates. To me, it would just seem natural to at least go and visit your other comrades and literal family. And I don't know, all in all, I just find it so weird to think that neither Iso nor Marco knew about the fact that Kaido had taken over Wano. I know it's an isolated country, but when you are one of the four emperors, surely your home territory becomes well known over the course of, I don't know, let's say two decades. It's just strange. One of those things that I'm not sure has a decent explanation or any explanation in coming, because in the end, I suppose it is a very minor issue. But with this, we are getting ever closer to the moment where we will finally have a full spread of vassals on display. All they have to do is somehow reunite with Kinamon, Dendro, and maybe Shinobu. And then we have a panel that I am surprisingly excited for, featuring a full selection of vassals here to potentially fulfill Toki's prophecy. And finally, I'll briefly do the cover story thing. You all know my thoughts on Pound Surviving, so I won't waste your time harping on about that again. But with that in mind, I do like this image quite a lot. Having Shiphon and Lola both making the NL face cracked me up quite a bit. And not only that, but this is our first full proper family shot. Father, daughters, and even a son-in-law and a grandson. I can't deny that it is nice and heartwarming with that comical twist, but was this page worth undercutting the drama created by Pound on Hawkeye Island? That is the question. And I personally don't think so, but this is a consolation prize that I will accept. But that pretty much does it for chapter 984. So 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, 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 ground line review and I'll see you next time.