 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line. Review your source for everything one piece. Last week on The Arc of U we adventure to the greatest depths in the world to reach Fishman Island and this week we are emerging into the new world in order to set foot on the mysterious island of Hunk Hazard. Hunk Hazard is the 26th arc in the series consisting of 46 manga chapters and what really 46 anime episodes? That makes two arcs in a row where these numbers have lined up perfectly. I love it! The premise of this arc is simply that the straw hats receive a distress call almost immediately upon surfacing in the new world and Luffy, well being Luffy, takes this as a call to adventure. The setting of Hunk Hazard is incredibly compelling as the island essentially exists in a pokeball style formation with half the island being blazingly hot and mostly on fire while the other half is covered in snow and initially this is just another one of those bizarre one piece locations but we do eventually discover that this island served as the battleground for Al Kiji and Akainu's duel to decide who would go on to become the fleet admiral of the marines and I love that. Unfortunately that exterior appreciation of the island is about the extent of it. Hunk Hazard really suffers in my mind because it is essentially a deserted island and as a result offers very little depth as a location. Usually islands are filled with quirky inhabitant school animals and unique landscapes come together to form a strong identity. Hunk Hazard has very little to none of this. It has some volcanoes, some ice mountains and shit all else. I mean even Long Ring Long Land had some really cool long creatures. The most interesting thing Hunk Hazard has to offer is the lab which gets really visually flat very quickly. There are some points of interest like the sad production room and where they keep the kids but for the most part the lab is just slab after slab of miscellaneous metal wall. So the heavy lifting of Hunk Hazard falls onto the characters and we have some amazing familiar faces reintroduced to us during this arc. First and foremost Trafalgar lore. He had been one of my favorite members of the worst generation ever since their introduction so to have him being the first one to appear in the new world suited my desires just fine. And I think that Hunk Hazard is a huge career highlight for lore. His design was on point, his fights were amazing and he was presented as a real counterweight to Luffy. Someone very much on his level in terms of the world and even someone who could hold the title of protagonist in terms of the narrative. And then there's the eventual alliance that he forms with Luffy in order to take down Kaido. Speaking of and this feels a bit ridiculous in retrospect but back when this was coming out weekly Kaido was the most unexpected emperor to be chosen as a target from our perspective. I mean Big Mom made sense because Luffy had picked a fight with her on Fishman Island, Blackbeard was also a natural choice and there were even a lot of theories going around about how it could have been shanks. But Oda pulled one over us once more and gave us Kaido. The emperor we knew absolutely nothing about at that stage so I found that to be a very nice twist. But the other returning highlight of this arc is Smoker. It had been far too long since this man had had some proper involvement in an arc and just like lore the timeskip had done wonders for his design. Unfortunately unlike lore this arc was not Smoker's finest hour. The sheer amount of times this guy got wrecked during this arc makes me feel incredibly sorry for Smoker. Seriously he was beaten by lore, Caesar, Virgo and finally Dolph Lamingo. I thought this was a real shame because Smoker was a vice admiral now and I was really keen to see what kind of powerhouse he'd become. But yeah he was used as more of a podium for other characters to shine. But with Smoker came the always delightful Tashigi and it was great to see her back but I wish he had a bit more to do. The claim to fame during this arc is delivering the final blow against Monet which is pretty damn awesome but she's still very much suffered from the women in one piece syndrome and this is especially true when it comes to the whole body swap scenario. I will say that in general I thought this was pretty hilarious and I love seeing Smoker get extraordinarily frustrated into Tashigi's body but in the end I feel like it was more of an excuse to show off Tashigi's assets. And I feel quite similarly about the straw hat body swap as well when it comes to Sanji being put into Nami's body. Although I did really love when Sanji was forced to use Blue Walk in a body that he was unfamiliar with. The greatest body swap by father has to be Frankie being put into Chopper's body simply because of the fantastic fusion of facial expressions. I think that a lesser artist would have really struggled with this as a plot device because capturing the personality of one person while using the established tools aka the body of another is no easy task but Oda pulled it off phenomenally. I do have one particular criticism though when it comes to the anime because they made the decision to keep the straw hat voices even while they were in another body and I get why they did that because it may have gotten very confusing to keep up with over the course of a weekly serial and you know some stage viewers may have even forgot it was everything but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to have Nami's voice actor playing Sanji saying all of the perverted lines and taking on his mannerisms and I would have loved to see that for every body swap for a true unique experience with these characters who we've known for over 600 chapters at this point but transitioning right along the biggest letdown in terms of characters for the arc is the primary antagonist Caesar Clown. I like this guy quite a bit these days but back in punk hazard he just annoyed me. I found his design quite off-putting and never once did I feel like he was a proper threat to the straw hats. Even when he knocked out half the crew by removing oxygen within a certain radius I still thought oh well I guess we'll just kick his ass later rather than oh no how is Luffy going to beat this guy. In fact the entire fight between Luffy and Caesar is a bit meh although I will admit that it is very satisfying to watch him being punched and thankfully that happens a lot. Also rather thankfully Caesar is well supported by the secondary villains Virgo and Monet. Virgo in particular lends a lot of credibility to the threatening events of punk hazard through an immediate display of raw power and one of the finest choreographed fight sequences I can recall in the manga where he takes on both lore and smoker in the sad production room. Sadly I don't think the sequence was particularly well realized in the anime but the way it flows in the manga is pure perfection. Virgo also happens to have one of my all-time favorite character quirks in the series whereby he consistently just keeps getting things stuck to his face you know like a spoon or an entire steak. Furthermore I think it's phenomenal that this ridiculous quote doesn't lessen his threatening vibe at all as a villain. For her part Monet also plays a great antagonist but they captivating design and a mysterious personality. You're never quite sure what she's thinking but it certainly is ominous. I also quite enjoyed how she handled herself in combat using her abilities brilliantly having understood that she would not have been able to win in a head-on fight against either Luffy or Zoro. Of course the greatest shame in regards to both of these villains is that by the end of the arc they die while characters like Caesar live on. Although I will applaud the decision to kill them off because it does well to display the danger of engaging in the new world whereas while we were in paradise nobody died like ever. Virgo and Monet also serve to set up the major antagonist of the next arc Dolph Lamingo although the resounding defeat of Buffalo and Baby Five towards the end of the arc did lessen this build up somewhat. But right there is one of my major problems with reading through this arc in retrospect. It is almost entirely a feature length setup arc. It sets up the conflict on Dressrosa but it also serves to further some plot for Whole Cake Island primarily through Caesar as well as activating the future events of Buono through the Samurai and the whole alliance against Kaido. So I do appreciate everything that Punk Hazard did for future events but taking it for what it is alone I... let's put it this way if I ever remake my top five worst arcs list which I feel I probably should after this arc review series is complete Punk Hazard would most definitely be there at the moment. And a lot of that comes down to factors I haven't discussed yet as well like the whole plotline with the children being experimented on. I might just be a terrible terrible person but I never cared for these kids one bit and it was always a horrible drag when they came into focus. I mean the addiction angle was kind of interesting and horrifying but in general I just don't care. Another thing that felt completely flat for me were the Yeti Cool Brothers. Fair of characters I am convinced never needed to exist. They were entirely irrelevant to the greater plot and served pretty much just to create some canon filler events. I honestly don't know why Oda wasted time and energy putting them into the story. I mean even Brownbeard had a greater purpose and I don't like him either but I do appreciate his presence and actions during the Punk Hazard arc. Now here and then there's Smiley. He serves as sort of the big world-ending disaster on the island akin to the bomb in Alabaster or the Noah on Fishman Island and once again I found this aspect of the arc pretty underwhelming. Despite how deadly chemical weapons can be in reality I just don't find them as threatening as say your run of the mill bomb that goes boom. But on a positive note the last thing I want to touch on is the appearance of both Dolph Lamingo and Cousin at the tail end of the arc. One of the most memorable panels of this entire arc for me is Dolph Lamingo traveling through the air and very ominously saying I'm on my way. That was a huge oh shit moment because it meant that this villain I'd been wanting to see in action for years was finally being tapped and that left me pretty hyped. As did Cousin's post-time skip appearance and the whole intrigue around the fact that he had left the marines and was now a rogue agent. Plus the dude was now traveling by penguin so you know that's pretty awesome. But all in all Punk Hazard was fine for what it was. I just really wish it didn't take a whole 46 chapters to tell its story and I know that's a really laughable complaint considering the immediate next arc to come but Punk Hazard just felt really drawn out. I think that quite a bit could have been cut out and it still would have accomplished its goals in a more condensed manner. That pretty much does it for Punk Hazard. Next week we will be embarking on the longest arc in one piece history as the Alliance of Straw Hat, Luffy and Trafalgar Law target Don Quixote Dolph Lamingo on the island of Dressrosa. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe and if you are in any way keen on supporting independent creators and also feel free to check out my Patreon, Discord server or Twitter. Links to it are in the handy description below. Finally, please do comment with your thoughts on the Punk Hazard arc. This has been the Grand Lone Review and I'll see you next time.