 Allow me to introduce a living legend. His name is Jinbei, Knight of the Sea, former member of the Seven Warlords, current helmsman of the Straw Hat Pirates, and future subscriber of the Grand Line Review. As after pushing this funky red button, he will receive regular One Piece content, uploaded straight into his YouTube feed, which will surely only add to his legacy. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we have a review of chapter 976, Begging Your Pardon. And look, there's really nowhere else you could possibly start in this video, then acknowledging that the magnificent whale shark has reappeared into the story for the third time now, and hopefully it's for good. Oh, Jinbei, how I have missed you. And first of all, I'm pretty chuffed to see the shark, because with his appearance, that makes three out of seven one-hour predictions I made for Act Three that have come true. The other two being that this would be the part where we see the Odin flashback and that Dendro would be revealed, all of which probably seem like extremely lame predictions in retrospect, but at the time, nothing was really certain. In any case, I'm not usually a heavily speculative person outside of chapter reviews anyway. So putting that random video aside for now, I am pretty damn thrilled that Jinbei is back in action, although I will say that he did very casually re-emerge during this chapter. In fact, in the last chapter review, I think I said something along the lines of, this probably isn't the time to have Jinbei or Nekomomushi be brought back into the fold, because we had just had two heroic rescue moments, one being the worst generation captains and one being Dendro. But here we are for the third chapter in a row with a heroic rescue scene. And now that it's here, look, I can't bring myself to complain about it whatsoever, especially with that beautiful panel of Jinbei decimating that beast pirate's vessel. It's a great reminder of how absurd of an asset that Jinbei is because just as Luffy stated a couple of chapters ago, when you're at sea, you fight with pirates and up against a man whose ultimate weapon is the sea itself, well, most opponents are going to be pretty screwed. Now, something I should also probably address is that Jinbei looks exactly the same as he used to, which may come as a bit of a surprise, primarily due to a misinterpreted thought that once ran rampant throughout the online fan base and it's born from an interview that Oded in 2018 with Yomi Odi Shimbun, a newspaper, which is what Shimbun means, fun fact, where he was asked why he doesn't include Jinbei in color spreads with the rest of the straw hearts and he stated that he doesn't want to spoil one of the surprises about Jinbei's current situation since his last appearance. And many people, myself included, took that to mean that he can't be in spreads because he will have had some radical change in character design. Like maybe he's lost a limb or he's become super old because Big Man might have taken a ton of years of his life while even the Jinbei might become the eventual eye-patch donning pirate. But upon further reflection, Oda never said anything about changing Jinbei's design and that quote-unquote surprise may have simply been that Jinbei was alive and that Oda didn't want to have that taken for granted. However, with this chapter, look, I really don't see what would have been so detrimental about including Jinbei in color spreads for the last two and a half years or so, probably more because he was an official member, but whatever. Here he is in all of his glory and he even gets his one new introduction box that introduces him as the helmsman of the crew. So I think that if not next chapter, then very, very soon, we will finally have that much craved panel or spread of all of the straw hats together for the first time since I think Fishman Island, if we're including Jinbei. So I'm very much looking forward to the potential of that. One of my favorite parts about Jinbei's reemergence into the story, though, are the reactions from Kid and Lore. Especially Lore, actually, because he's been a mainstay of One Piece for so long that I'd actually forgotten that he really has no idea about Jinbei joining the straw hats. He obviously wasn't present on Fishman Island and he wouldn't have heard about the events on Whole Cake Island because he was busy on Wano. So this must come as a pretty big shock to Mr. Traffy. It surely must be a pleasant surprise though because after all of the chaos that Luffy's actions have caused, this is probably the first piece of actual good news that Lore has encountered since embarking on this whole Wano mission. This does bring up questions though, so many questions. Like where are the sun pirates, what happened to the germa and how did Jinbei get to Wano in the first place? Not the fun stuff, but we will no doubt require at least a short flashback to flush out because Oda left Whole Cake Island on a very purposeful, despairful note. So narratively, I am hoping that there were some consequences to that and it's not just a case of, and so we ran away really, really fast. Now we're here because here's something else. Why did it take Jinbei until this very moment to reach Wano? We've been on this island for an awfully long time in regards to in-world amount of time and publication time. So it surely was not just as easy as fleeing Totoland and making his way to the realm of the samurai. Although if he doesn't already know, I'm also very much looking forward to seeing Jinbei's reaction to Big Mom being present as well as the whole Emperor Alliance because that could hold some fantastic comic potential. Whatever the case, I am thrilled to see Jinbei back. But moving on from Sir Shark, leaping back into the very beginning of the chapter, we have a nice moment where Kinemon is being admonished by the rest of the vassals, the misinterpreting the message left by Asu. And I find this particularly hilarious because as many of you know, last week I had a moment of misinterpretation myself where I actually believed that Kinemon was some sort of brilliant strategist, much like Dendro does. And it's because when I read the text on that arse panel, I didn't read it as Kinemons inner thoughts. I thought it was either an extension of Kandro's thoughts which we were reading in the panel directly preceding it or that they were the words of the narrator which often appear at the end of a chapter. In any case, I do think it's pretty hilarious that I misinterpreted a misinterpretation and this panel in chapter 976 feels awfully familiar to me, just replaced Kinemon with myself and all of the vassals with you wonderful viewers who were very quick to point out my folly. But continuing along, if you take Shinbei out of the equation for this chapter, I actually think that 976 would really belong to Momonosuke because he had a pretty fantastic moment of bravery and character growth where he exclaims that he'll figure out his terrible situation and that everyone should just be focusing on bringing down Kaido and Orachi. And this really is the kind of Momonosuke that I like. And we've had a few glimpses of him before but really he is a child with the weight of an entire nation on his shoulders and this journey of him learning to become a proper leader is actually starting to bear some fruit and it almost almost makes you forget about all of the times that Momo was just used as a bit of a pervert and to construct some sort of edgy comedy scene. Although even with that, now that we have the context of Oden, it makes a lot more sense because Oden wasn't always this heroic being and a lot of the time he was actually kind of a prick. So Momo is very much reflecting his father, a perverted yet noble leader. The best part though is that Luffy immediately recognizes this brave facade that Momo was putting up and he essentially says good stuff, whiny kid, though I'ma come save you eventually which then results in Momo making this face which seems very evocative of almost every princess we've ever seen in One Piece when Luffy proudly declares that he will either save them or their kingdom. So I know that Hiyori is here as well but there is a good argument to be made that Momo fulfills the princess role of Wano. And speaking of Hiyori, she was mentioned during the chapter by our resident traitor, Dick Juro who appears to be threatening her life but it made me wonder what her purpose is going to be going forward because now that all the Dendro business is all out of the way, there is no need for her to continue to avoid Kinamon's group. No need that we're aware of anyway. Knowing Dendro though, I imagine that he has given her some kind of special purpose in the events to unfold and there may come a moment where Hiyori is some sort of fated key to everything. Exactly when and what that is, who knows but I very much doubt that she is going to stay quiet and hidden for the entirety of the war to come or at the very least, I supremely hope that she won't. Back to Kanjiro though, he is becoming far more of an interesting character than I ever could have imagined when he was an ally specifically in regards to his devil fruit ability which seems to be far more versatile than we were led to believe and Mr. Kanjiro proved this by using his hair to craft an inky storm cloud as well as shower down some ink arrows from said cloud and this makes quite a lot of sense. Kanjiro is not restricted to just using his brush. The fruit appears to be activated by any source of drawing or inky drawing anyway. So why not use your own hair? I mean, that's what all brushes were made out of anyway. So hair is a pretty perfect vehicle provided one can manipulate it, which I guess he can. And unless this is an added benefit of the devil fruit itself, then I suppose we have no choice but to assume that Kanjiro can use a form of Seimei Kikan. Also knows the life return technique which was performed by both Rob Luchi and Kumadori formerly of Servable Nine which very notably doesn't just give its user hair control but also supreme command of any bodily function. And of course, Kanjiro's use of this resembles more of Kumadori's use. And I actually think that it would be really interesting if Kanjiro had varying degrees of drawings that he could create. Like there are the crappy ones we're used to seeing where he uses his left hand. Maybe there are some middling ones where he uses his right hand. But then when he invokes his hair, well, that is when the true masterpieces emerge. But then again, there is no guarantee that this is life return because I really don't think it's out of the question for it to be a bonus function of the devil fruit. But I am hoping that it will, isn't that? Because that would imply that Kanjiro might be able to invoke some other uses of life return and thus become a far more powerful and troublesome opponent than I feel any of us could have imagined after his traitorous revelation. I kind of love it though and Kanjiro has become someone who really aesthetically intrigues me and I am very much looking forward to seeing more of him in a proper battle context because I think that it's going to make for a very creative and memorable experience from Oda. Now as for something kind of miscellaneous I'd like to highlight, I just have to say what the hell is this panel? The art for this chapter and most chapters is fairly flawless except for this really incredibly weird shot of Luffy. And I think it feels a bit off because his eyes are like too close together. I mean, if his right eye would just a little further apart then it would probably all be fine. It's an incredibly minor issue though but one that did make me stop for a second and just go, what the hell is this? But in the end, yeah, you can get away with it because it's Luffy and he pretty much lives to look goofy, so whatever. And lastly, this week we were also lucky enough to receive another classical to color spread. This time featuring the straw hats getting involved in the art of shoe craftery which I wasn't a huge fan of when I first laid eyes upon it because the overly pastel colors on it don't quite do it for me but upon closer inspection I love it because there are so many little fun details to absorb. My favorite of which would be the shoes that Luffy is holding up one of which is based on the Thousand Sunny and one of which is based on the Going Mary which is very nice because these days we really do not get a lot of love for Mary so it was pretty adorable to see the little lamb make an appearance here. Something else I really enjoy is that Nami is just casually lifting up the Tontara chief. I think his name is Gancho but he looks like the ultimate prone old man and I'm sure that she's lifting him so that he can actually see what's going on so that's just kind of adorable. In addition though, one piece was also on the cover of Weekly Shonen Jump with a pretty glorious showing featuring Luffy, Roger and Odin doing what typical pirates do best which is drinking. Thinking about it though it looks an awful lot like Luffy has kind of crashed this moment because you see Odin and Roger staring longingly into each other's eyes and then there's this third doofus in the middle who neither are paying attention to and almost photobombing the cover. It's really cool though it's just a nice rare image of three individuals bound by a bit of the old fate and it's a great showing of how Luffy has currently inherited both Roger and Odin's will as Wano truly kicks into gear and that pretty much does it for chapter 976 but what do you guys think? Please 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 YouTube feeds but for now this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.