 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a manga review of chapter 916, a great sumo match in the Wano country. And this week we have a chapter that when you look at the events on paper, not a whole lot happened, but it was actually pretty damn fun. The highlight is definitely Luffy's sumo match with Orochima, which kind of came out of nowhere. He just stepped in to save Kiku and accidentally we've begun a sumo match. It's a very classic thing for Luffy to do. As per usual, he's having the time of his life and that's pretty much the only reason why a chapter like this can work. Like I said before, if you just summarise the events of the chapter, it's pretty uneventful and pushes the greater plot forward at a snail's pace. But that's okay because watching Luffy be Luffy is one of the main appeals of the series, at least to me anyway. And the artwork supported this brilliantly with some well-choreographed action panels of which I have two particular favourites. Firstly, there is a fantastic one of Luffy leaping into the air preparing his final strike. There's nothing particularly detailed or creative about it. It's incredibly simple in the grand scheme of things. It's just a classical hero shot and builds a nice amount of anticipation for what is by far my favourite panel of the chapter, Orochima getting engulfed by the giant Tsupari. There is just so much to love about this panel, particularly that you can really feel the impact. This is one of the hardest hits I think I have ever seen put to page in the series. There's this wonderful shading technique Oto uses with hits like this where he adds a few layers of crosshatching just to really give the character some depth and pop a bit more on the page. Along with the little details like one of Orochima's teeth flying from his mouth, it makes a really cool frozen in time moment. It also really helps that ever since the last chapter I've been really keen to see Orochima get rekt. So this chapter was worth it to me for that panel alone. To his credit though, the sumo did actually display some pretty fierce power. I know that Luffy makes him look like fodder, but we should remember that Luffy is actually on a pretty absurd level of strength in the world. So I believe that Orochima is actually pretty powerful and we'll probably see that later down the line in the arc. I don't see him being introduced just for Luffy to have this moment. What I do like the idea of though is that decades down the line this is probably going to be a classic out of context story told about the pirate king throughout the world. You know the tale of how that one time on one Olufi defeated the top Yokozuna in a sumo match? So yeah, it's another story for people like Bartolomeo to spread to great effect. So in the midst of the action we have Law and Hawkins showing up and they actually have very similar looks of distress on their faces at the end of the chapter. And more than ever I now have this distinct feeling and my thoughts as to why this is is that I don't see any particular reason why Hawkins would be making this face if he was genuinely on Kaido's side. When he encountered Luffy and Zoro in the Wasteland he was perfectly calm even facing off against two of the worst generation. So here with an ally headliner like Holden you'd expect that Hawkins would be even more confident. Instead I'm becoming pretty salt on the idea that Hawkins is most definitely working against Kaido and he may have encountered Law or another member of the Ninja Pirate Mix Samurai Alliance already. Back in chapter 913 I made the argument that Hawkins could have been purposely using bad cards and masking it as a random ability to somewhat help Luffy and Zoro and here he may be doing a similar thing when we see him rushing towards Bacoratown on the Denden Mushi warning people not to lay a hand on Luffy because they are no match for him. Which is true, but it also rather conveniently reduces the opposition that Luffy has to face. But yeah in conclusion Hawkins and Law both had the exact same look on their faces at the end of this chapter and that look says to me, how the hell am I going to fix Luffy's mess? And before we move on just a little thing to touch on we may have another countdown placed on us in this chapter due to Beppo becoming poisoned from eating a fish in the river. So he's in a similar condition that Tama was earlier in the arc. This is a really seemingly random thing to insert into the chapter so I can only assume that it's seeding something. So let's say that Law is unable to deal with the poisoning it would almost guarantee that we need to take Beppo to Sura and even more so than that we need to do it pretty damn quickly. So that signals to me that the conflict here probably won't last long and you know some sort of combination of Law and Hawkins will allow Luffy's group to take Tama and retreat with Law so they can go back to Amigasa Village and regroup which would be the natural point for a nice big info dump from Law about what has been happening on Wano while the events of Whole Cake Island were occurring. But speaking of dumping information we got a teeny tiny bit more from Mr. Holden this week not really a dump at all actually more of an information drip a very slow drip. But basically Holden states that 20 years ago the Kozuki Clan were planning on destroying the country and he looks pretty earnest in saying this. So even if it's a lie that's been fed to him Holden seems to believe it so we could have a bit of a dress-roser situation happening here. And what I mean by that is when Dolphomingo artificially crafted opposition to the Riku family but I hope it's not that same old plot point again. I think it would be really interesting if what Holden was saying was actually true and Wano was facing a real crisis but that's pretty unlikely to happen because Momonosuke is being painted as the true heir to Wano and all of that. Actually you know what it might have to do with Kozuki Odin's last words which were to open the borders of Wano. So it might not be a case of the Kozuki family literally wanting to destroy the country through classical physical destruction but more perhaps that they were planning to open the borders of Wano and become part of globalized society. I guess that would quote unquote destroy the current way of life on Wano and have severe impacts on their culture which are genuine concerns that we see in the real world in an increasingly interconnected international society. I'd also find that option far more interesting than just framing a group of otherwise wonderful Monarchs for evil deed they never committed once again. But back to Holden he's not particularly growing on me as a character but his lion sure is. Every time his full body is shown in a panel my eyes immediately dart to the lion to see what his thoughts are on the current situation. And he has a pretty fantastic look on his face at the end of the chapter holding Tama in his mouth. The very I don't know why I'm doing this but I am here stare into the distance. I do think that the obvious course of action here may be for Tama to use her strange delicious cheek powers to tame Holden's lion. I mean she's already in his mouth so she won't have to worry about aiming or throwing and all that. Then that would create some pretty cool conflict with Holden or perhaps, oh my God actually. Holden and the lion share the same body, yeah? So if Tama tames the lion does that mean she also tames Holden? That would be pretty cool. I mean that's all pure speculation knowing absolutely nothing about her powers but if Tama's power works on her zone or even just smile users that would make her one of the most dangerous people on Wano for the Beast Pirates. So that's another potential way to solve this current scenario I guess. Tame Holden and use him to escape. Just before we move away from Holden completely he does do a bit of a name drop this week and mentions a character called Shutenmaru. Quite specifically he asked if Luffy and Co are the subordinates of that thief, Shutenmaru. And there's two likely options for this character. They're either going to be a completely new resident of Wano, which would be good I think. There needs to be a pretty solid rebellion taking place in this country if we're going to have any chance of dealing with Kaido. And that's not going to happen with Kikusuru and Tama alone. But alternatively Shutenmaru could be a member of the Ninja Pirate Mink Samurai Alliance that we already know. I can't really think of who it may be right now because all the names so far have essentially been their own names with and over the top Japanese suffix. But you know, it could be someone like Lore who takes life rather seriously. You know, I could see him spending some time to actually make a decent alias. But anything regarding this character is pure speculation at the moment. And I'm sure there's plenty of videos in production as we speak with every theory under the sun on Shutenmaru. So let's just move on to the color spread. So Nami fans prepare to hate me but there is nothing particularly special about this spread. The straw hats are having summertime fun. Okay, the artwork is still beautiful. The color and texture are on point. But I find this to be one of the least visually interesting color spreads in recent history. The best part about it is probably Luffy leaping back to whack the watermelon because it's a great action shot or even the Zoro portion actually. It's all right, I guess. I just find it a bit tame compared to the craziness that Odie usually pumps out which I suppose is the curse of doing such consistently amazing work. When you do occasionally pop out something that is simply good, it just doesn't seem quite good enough. But hey, if you're really into Nami and Robin then this is probably an instant favorite for you. And that pretty much does it for chapter 916. Sadly, we do have a break next week which is never very fun. But hey, I'm sure we'll all cope as always. 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