 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we are going to be giving our ever charismatic captain some always deserved focus. And you know, usually when I'm praising Luffy on this channel, the one factor I will generally bring up without fail is his sheer unpredictability. Like the way he can just walk into any situation and boldly subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which results in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into Luffy's YouTube feed. And I would highly recommend that we all emulate Luffy on this particular matter, maybe not others. But Luffy is a character who, against all odds, has been able to sustain the interest of readers and watchers of the series for more than two decades now, and you don't really get to that stage by being a simple meat nommer. Luffy's intelligence may be, you know, questionable, but as a result, he has a special brand of thinking that no one else could ever hope to invoke. And with this unique brand of thinkery, Luffy perpetually shatters even my expectations and I've been reading the series for quite a long time now I'm old. But Luffy just keeps pulling off stuff that I'd never dreamed he'd be able to do. And I assume that's because I don't have access to that special Luffy brainwave. And yeah, not all of these decisions end up working out wildly well for our captain, but for the most part, they generate just enough chaos or are a straightforward enough approach that often it ends up being the exact right course of action at any given time. And so today we are here to highlight those moments, many of which encapsulate the sheer charm that is One Piece. So with that out of the way, let's begin. Welcome to the top five times that Luffy shattered your, or at least my expectations in One Piece. Number five, accepting Robin's invitation to join the crew. So we are going to kick off this list with some super classic One Piece. And you know what? This moment may actually be so ancient that people have long since forgotten that this interaction was shocking in any way. However, when you look back on the context of the alabaster arc, one does need to highlight the masterful way in which Oda masked Robin's eventual joining of the straw hats. And it was all thanks to a certain Nefertari Vivi because our eyes were focused on her. We just bent an entire saga fighting to save her kingdom. And if the established formula of One Piece was going to continue, then Vivi was most certainly going to be the next official crewmate. But then Oda pulled the old bait and switch, leaving our ever determined princess to rule her lands and leaving us with the consolation prize of a former antagonist to board our ship. But of course, the reason why this moment is on this list is obviously all about Luffy's reaction in which he did after briefly hearing Robin out, immediately accept her request to become a crew member because, and I quote, she's not a bad person. And in retrospect, we obviously all know that, but at the time, there were some pretty dark clouds surrounding Nika Robin. But none of that mattered to Luffy because his incredible mind saw Robin in her simplest incarnation. And so he just decided to say, sure, why not? But this was also quite remarkable because it was the first time that someone had joined the crew without Luffy having invited them. Which is why I will insist that this is a brilliant point in history where Luffy just up and shattered our expectations. And compared to everyone else who joined the straw hats, this was just so easy. Robin put forward a demand, Luffy accepted it and history was made. Number four, leaping straight into combat against Kaido. All right, now we are cutting straight from Alabasta to modern day events to the climax of Act One of Wano which sees a dramatic reveal of Kaido's dragon form as well as a terrifying demonstration of his supreme power, which immediately made clear if it wasn't already, exactly why Kaido was considered to be an emperor of the sea. But as per usual, none of that mattered to Luffy because he made an instantaneous decision to swoop on up and hit Kaido in the dragon noggin because he was being a bit of a prick. And this moment was shocking primarily because of how it was portrayed in the manga and there is a huge difference in the anime and manga which I suppose we will go over because that's what I do. Basically in the manga, Kaido performs his borrow breath then we see a brief reaction of Luffy looking from afar and the next time we see anything from Luffy he had appeared right above Kaido to smack him in the head. However, in the anime this action was shown in its entirety, we see Luffy's shocked face and he gets all angry which is kind of out of character for Luffy and we track him running towards Kaido which ruins the eventual surprise of seeing Luffy strike the emperor out of nowhere because it's not out of nowhere and we've known for like two minutes at this stage that this was exactly what he was going to do but I really cannot emphasize the effect this had in the manga enough. It's not that it doesn't make sense for Luffy to launch into conflict with an emperor because we did see that on Hawkeek Island but Oda had set it up narratively that that was the last thing that we as readers were anticipating in the chapter. You know, here we are, we've only just landed on Wano and already Luffy has caused unprecedented chaos by tackling the big bad of the entire arc. A classic Luffy maneuver right here, devoid of any real sense, logic or planning and hey, this is one that didn't work out too well for Mr. Captain although as with everything in one piece in the long run it certainly did. Number three, declaring war on the world government. Moving to the glory days of any lobby now and by the time that Luffy had reached Robin via invading the island and defeating a member of CP9 or on his own you would have thought that this was about the most shock that he was capable of generating. I mean, this was I think the first example of the straw hat straight up raiding an island and it was incredibly exciting but Luffy was going to take things a big step further as when facing the reality of not just CP9 but having the entire world declare war on him Luffy instead decided to take some initiative and declare war on the world first and while in the end it achieves the same outcome it does so with significantly more style and flair and not only that but it sent a powerful message to Robin that her crew was not afraid to make the entire world their enemy just so that they could have her back which was very powerful because Robin's life story was about the world being against her and this is also another one of those situations where this event might be so old that people have really forgotten its initial impact because before now Luffy and the straw hats were still small time pirates. I mean, yeah, Luffy had beaten a wall out of the sea but it didn't earn him all that much recognition in the grand scheme of things. So here we have a band of rookies who have forced their way onto one of the world government's most secure facilities in theory anyway and Luffy metaphorically pulled down his pants and took a steaming fiery crap all over everything that they stand for. This was quite the boss move and without a shadow of a doubt one that shattered all expectations that I had of Luffy at the time. Number two, punching a world noble. All right, here we go. I feel like many of you are probably expecting this and for very good reason because it is one of the most incredibly satisfying events to have ever occurred in one piece and even knowing Luffy as well as I did by this stage I still did not expect him to go quite this far and it's actually very interesting because weirdly enough this one simple punch held far more power than even declaring war against the entirety of the world government as we have just seen on any subbie. I mean, striking a world noble was a serious enough offense for a marine admiral to be immediately summoned to take retribution upon the offending party and as we know, Luffy is always the offending party and I guess it's not that we didn't know this going into it but Luffy knew the risks of what he was doing and he did it anyway because Luffy and by this time you'd think that we could have predicted behavior like this but I guess just because of how high the stakes were this time around, there was a sense of no not even Luffy could go that far. It would put a target on his head that would probably destroy the entire crew which very well did as it was directly responsible for the decision to separate the crew for two whole years and I guess, yeah, that all worked out for the best in the end which means that yes, we do get to have our cake and eat it too. We just have to wait two years to do the whole eating part but you know, there Luffy goes again shattering all of my pathetic expectations like a butter knife gently colliding with sugar glass but in the end we all know it was worth everything just to see that smug look on St. Charles punched right off what I suppose passes for a face. So well done Luffy. However, this is not what I would call the most shocking action that our captain has ever performed but just before we get to that though I'd like to briefly go over some honorable mentions because really just about every action that Luffy performs in one piece is shocking to some degree, even if it may not necessarily be worthy of adding to his official CV and we have some very simple examples of this such as the very dawn of one piece where Luffy was talking to Kobe and then just blatantly stated that he doesn't like him. This was one of the moments where I knew that one piece was something different and not necessarily representative of the goofy aesthetic that the series presented but you also have a number of fantastically hyped moments of decision-making from the straw hat captain including when on punk hazard he very readily accepted an alliance with Trafalgar law despite being told that these things generally end in betrayal and this attitude would also be taken into the Hawkeek Island arc where he temporarily joined forces with the fire tank pirates and both of these situations are ones in which I feel the most boring logic driven captains would come to question how wise such courses of action would be but not however wonderful Luffy and then there's the examples of when Luffy is just incredibly bold like when he decided to invade impaled down alone in order to save Ace because that's right Luffy was prepared to take on the entire prison complex all on his lonesome because that's what he wanted to do at the time and you can really look to any saga any arc, any interaction really and find an example of Luffy invoking his bizarre left field thought process but I can't think of a better example than today's number one which is announcing that he will become the pirate king while standing right next to the strongest man in the world and promptly telling him to shut up. Oh Luffy your ignorance never ceases to amaze me but this interaction is solid gold and it starts out with Luffy defending white beard from an attack launched by one so crocodile which is already kind of shocking the idea that Luffy feels that he needed to protect this guy from someone like crocodile and look if it wasn't Luffy this could probably be taken as an insult and that's before we get to the literal insult that Luffy throws white beards way because yeah Luffy decides to be something of a smart ass as white beard politely notes that Luffy's straw hat looks an awful lot like the one that used to be worn by redhead shanks to which Luffy replies in his best teenage voice oh you know shanks yeah I'm holding this hat for him which once again if this was anyone else I feel like they would have received a guru guru infused smack down but this is not the crowning achievement of this interaction because white beard takes Luffy's insolence in his stride and then warns Luffy that he is out of his league on this battlefield to which Luffy replies and I quote, shut up that's not for you to say I know you're trying to become the pirate king but I'm going to be the pirate king not you and there you have it not only did Luffy just tell the strongest man in the world to shut up but he also claimed that he would surpass him to become the pirate king and I really don't know how much more Luffy you can get than this to stand right next to quite possibly the most undisputed individual source authority on this planet and proceed to talk smack is the paramount example of why I love this character there is no force on this planet capable of keeping Luffy in line not the Marines, not the government not the overlords of the world at large and not even the most physically powerful individual that one piece has to offer in my eyes Luffy is less of a man and should more technically be considered some kind of natural disaster because he is completely uncontrollable and it will often result in untold destruction that ladies and gentlemen is our captain and until the day this series ends I am convinced that he will only continue to shatter our expectations but what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts down in the comments below or even join my discord server and if you're keen for some more One Piece content then please do go and check out some of my other videos or even subscribe to the channel for regular One Piece glory to live it straight until YouTube feed but for now this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.