 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have a review of chapter 998, and you know what, this week was much less of a One Piece chapter than it was Oda just kind of showing off, because essentially what 998 boils down to is treating us to a casual stroll through the realm of ancient Zoans. As Oda revealed the forms of each and every Tobi Ropa member one by one, even the ones we already knew. It was like he just sat down to plan this chapter and just went, you know what effort I'm drawing dinosaurs this week. And as a result, the chapter felt a lot shorter to me, which does make sense because there's about six two page spreads happening here. It was almost like a Marineford showcase chapter, you know these beautiful panels of just exquisite detail, but you can blast through them so unfortunately quickly. But what 998 may lack in terms of story, it absolutely makes up for with a barrage of fantastic detailed and just captivating art, as well as one incredibly intriguing revelation right at the end, which may signal some pretty massive stuff for next week. But something pretty massive this week is your sudden desire to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which will result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. That's right, if you press that button I will literally, well not literally, but I will feed you One Piece content to satisfy your perpetually starving One Piece stomach. So do not deny yourself this much needed nourishment. Alright, to begin though, I think I knew something special was up in the opening section. When Drake attacked Apu, we had this very uncharacteristic Oda box accompanying him detailing his name, his fruit and all the stuff that we already knew about Drake. So that did strike me as a bit odd, but Oda does do that sometimes for recap related reasons. However, shortly after when I saw him do the same for Sasaki, my mind just kind of melted down, because I realized, oh man, he's just going to introduce the fruits of every tubby-ropper member right here right now. And that's when things became very, very exciting. So let's go through them starting with the aforementioned Sasaki. And to try Saratops is exactly what I was hoping for with him. You know, he has this quite chunky design with thin horn, so it's perfect, but holy crap is he huge. Or at least he looks huge. In fact, the perspective on this manga panel is quite ridiculous and it's kind of difficult to comprehend actually, because generally for perspective tricks to work, you'd want your perceived larger object in the foreground. But instead, we have General Frankie in the foreground, thus putting Tri-Saratops Sasaki in the background. And yet he is still towering over General Frankie, who is meant to be like 13 meters tall. But it gets a bit weirder because if you look in between General Frankie, you can see some miscellaneous beast pirates there as well. And really, they just shouldn't be this big compared to General Frankie. And I imagine that Oda has messed with the proportions of Frankie simply for dramatic purposes. Sasaki just wouldn't look anywhere near as intimidating if General Frankie was on his knees and still, you know, bigger. With that said, General Frankie is actually a lot smaller than many people believe, which I think is due to things like the wake-up opening, where they show him fighting John Giant, who should be like 20 meters tall, because that is the average height of a giant. But even so, Oda has played some very sneaky perspective games here, all for the sake of a well-balanced dramatic panel, which I love so good on him. And on the very next page, we have Black Maria, who is not my favorite revealed form of the chapter, but is by far the most intriguing. Firstly, I'm absolutely loving that she is not, you know, a classical dinosaur. And despite her is a very welcome addition to this crew, where most top members start with the exact same name, you know, the Riru Nami classification of the Dragon Dragon fruit, including Sasaki actually. But when it comes to Black Maria, we have a, and pair with me here, we have a Rosamagal Gralvogel, if I'm not even gonna try. Here it is, this is what we have. Something I'd absolutely never heard of before now, and so have butchered the name pretty horrendously. But despite it looking utterly terrifying, apparently it is a pretty underwhelming spider, having lived during the early Triassic period, but only reaching about a centimeter in size. However, under the command of Black Maria, a rather sizable lady, it is pretty overwhelmingly fear inducing. Even Irfodor has tried to make the spider itself a bit more palatable by giving it a cute face and tongue. It's almost like one of Big Mom's homies really, which brings up our next very important thing. This is a very rare Zoin. A Zoin that appears to grant the user a separate independent consciousness, which immediately invokes lots of smile fruits because they're often characterized by an independent animalistic growth. This is definitely not a smile though, which is very curious because I can't think of another fully fledged Zoin that has the same effect. I mean, actually, that's not true. There is Orochi because he gets like so many different heads that all seem to do their own thing. But that's a mythical Zoin. So they have licensed to break all the rules, but this ancient Zoin does not. So it's making me wonder if the spider face thing is actually Black Maria's true form, and her beautiful lady form is just a trap that the spider is capable of generating in an act that I can only describe as somehow. It would be very in keeping with her theme in a pretty nice twist as well. I can imagine the revelation right now actually. You know, someone attacks Black Maria, her upper body gets hit or destroyed before it becomes clear that this was just a facade all along. So it's cool. I like it quite a bit, very much down with her fruit abilities. But one of the more interesting things for me to think about was this chapter shows us exactly why Sanji had to well be Sanji, and get caught in a trap during a very important moment. It did seem slightly out of place, but it was very necessary to set up this chapter because we needed someone present to showcase Black Maria. But our final new toby rope of form comes from who's who, and this is by far my favorite. The saber tooth tiger is just so damn cool. And once again it's a dinosaur without needing to rely on the whole dragon family of fruits, so that is always nice. And I do want to make this very, very clear though. In real life, I am a dog person. They are the superior earthly creature in every way. Dog, dog, dog. But cats are pretty alright as well, especially saber tooth tiger kitties, and I really do love the pose of who's who who is just casually chilling in perfect cat style. Like he's waiting to be fed and judging you more harshly with the passing of every second. Something really fun though which I think is more noticeable in a prior panel featuring Jinbei and Luffy, is that we should just take a second to examine the environment because we realize that the entire cat zone is filled with all sorts of scratching posts and platforms for who's who and his crew to perch on. It's almost like a zoo enclosure really, which is probably the most fun and unique space that we've seen on Onigashima thus far. When it comes to this section though we should also probably address Jinbei while we're here, and don't think that the irony of a fish facing off against a cat is lost on me either. The laws of nature would state that Jinbei is in a very disadvantageous spot up against his natural predator, but I love that he insists on being called the helmsman of the straw hats rather than being referred to as a former warlord of the sea. It's a very simple thing but it makes me appreciate Jinbei all the more. As does this apparent connection between him and who's who, well actually I don't know the word connection is pretty generous, but it is implied by who's who that the two have come across each other in the past, which does bring up the question of the identity of who's who. Which has always been a bit of a question because basic mask theory would state that a character will only conceal their face when there is something to be hidden from the audience. An important character anyway, and who's who seems pretty important. With that said I still highly doubt it's someone we know and I can already hear the continuing echoes of who's who is Geen coming back to haunt me, but I really don't think it's anyone that we as readers have encountered before, although I would be more than happy to be proven wrong on that if Oda can pull it off. But despite the fact that who's who was our last new form revealed I think it's important to point out the brilliance of how Oda staged this whole chapter. The string of Toby Roper focus was very intentional, starting out with a fruit that we knew in Dear's Drake, then moving on to a fruit that we kind of expected in Sasaki and only then delving into the really crazy kind of unexpected stuff with Black Maria and who's who, before capping things off with more already known fruits with Ulti and Page 1 just to wind things down. And the reason why that wind down is important is because the dramatic moment of Ulti and Page 1's spread actually belongs to Yamato, so with that in mind it can't be juxtaposed against Black Maria or who's who or even Sasaki because that would be a clash of focus. Blast in terms of panel structure the spreads featuring Drake, Ulti and Page 1 are basically just mirror images of each other which gives this whole section a nice book-end style of feeling, starting small ramping up to bigger revelations with larger panel sizes and then winding back down. And yeah I don't know if I explained that properly or indeed well in any way but it was a very good technical choice for the flow of the latter half of the chapter. And having brought up the latter half of the chapter the ending of 998 was pretty berserk and is it just me or does it look an awful lot like we're about to enter a flashback. This final chapter of Yamato reminiscing about Ace has the trademark encroaching black speckled effect which in one piece usually signifies that the past is about to take over. Which I have to say if so I am 100% down with that. Give me the Ace on One of Flashback especially with the revelation that Ace apparently came to Wano in order to defeat Kaido because that is pure insanity and I need to see how he got away with that. And in general the Ace on One of Stuff has always seemed a bit out of place because here is this generally upstanding good guy coming across an entire nation of people in desperate need of help. So I really want to know what makes him forget about all of that or just abandon that to continue his pirate journey elsewhere. And also many many other things. Like once Ace joins the Whitebeard Pirates what stops him from sharing his journey on Wano with other people like say Iso, Marco or Whitebeard himself. And then why is it that they choose to ignore what's happening there especially Iso. The only thing I can really think of is that Yamato with the knowledge of Odin's Journal told Ace about the 20 year timeline thing even then though it's kind of a dick move for each and every one of them to allow the people of Wano to just continue suffering and dying. So I hope that this flashback does do some work towards explaining that because right now the whole Ace on Wano thing feels so disconnected from everything else. But we do have a couple of options going forward here either this is going to be another standard one piece flashback just with Yamato at the center which I think would be quite exciting or it's going to be a shorter one to two page maybe even half a chapter at most style of event and I'm not sure what I'm hoping for most at the moment. I would actually be very on board with the idea of a full six chapter flashback because there's so much more we need to know about Yamato, Kaido, Ace and the situation on Wano in general. But on the other hand I'm also very keen to stay with the action on Onigashima especially with chapter 1000 rapidly approaching. In fact there's only one chapter between now and 1000 so I really don't know which option Odin will elect to choose but I'm pretty happy either way. Now something we haven't touched on as of yet was the very beginning of the chapter which prominently features one Marco D Phoenix and he has a fun collaboration with Chopper using the blue flames to contain this ice only business and along with the mink medical specialist this is a cool selection of doctors really. It really didn't dawn on me but Marco is also a doctor and so he and Chopper are natural allies you know they're capable of speaking the same language. All that's really missing here is Trafalgar Law and we have a full complement of medical based mayhem. Marco does also offer not only to fly Zora up to the roof but also Robin and Brooke which is a bit of a surprise. I can't imagine that either one of them would be heavily involved in a fight against either Kaido or Big Mom but hey if they are then sure bring it on. I'm always down for more Brooke action and I'm quite keen for any Robin action any at all because it doesn't tend to happen ever and I don't usually do this for non-cover stories but the cover page of 998 is just too good to ignore mainly because it features our god and El and I really can't remember the last time Odin drew him at this point so even if it is just a shot of him casually lazing about with his trademark apples it was still the very pleasant thing to see and that cat looks incredibly comfy I would like to lie on it. But that pretty much does it for chapter 998 but 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.