 Hello and welcome to the Groundline Review, your source for everything One Piece and today it is my pleasure to present the review of a lifetime as we examine chapter 957, Ultimate. So I know that the internet has been set ablaze with this and it's for good reason. Look, I've only been in the YouTube game for a couple of years but I've been reading One Piece weekly since 2005. I was there when the existence of the Four Emperors was first revealed, I was there when the Straw Hats were defeated on Sabotee, I was there when Ace died and I was there for the insurmountable hype that was the very first post-timeskip chapter. And I have to say that this chapter kind of eclipses all of those moments. Actually, you know what? Let's put it this way. Just like last week, spoilers for this chapter were pretty unavoidable except when I saw them, I was 100% certain that they were fake. You know, I was like, oh, Big Mom and Coyote's bounties are revealed. Cool. Oh, and Shanks as well. Yeah, right. Oh, and Roger and Whitebeard. Sure, sure whatever. Look, I'll just wait until the real chapter comes out. But as it turns out, this chapter was every bit as insane as that and more. So the main focus of this chapter was the Rocks Pirates and I'm thrilled to finally know a lot more about them. Ever since the name Rocks was first dropped, the Vocal One Piece community have been losing their minds over this group with billions upon billions of theories and speculation. Most of which I haven't really been on board with because we had next to nothing to go on, but my God, this chapter. Apart from raw numbers, one of the biggest surprises that came out of this chapter for me is the fact that Whitebeard was a member of the Rocks, which seems like a very out of character move for someone so caring and compassionate when you compare rather than no members such as Big Mom and Coyote. I mean, actually, even in this very chapter, they state that the Rocks were absurdly violent and vicious. A group that disposed of allies and enemies alike. But I think it makes a lot of sense for Whitebeard to have been part of this crew. He was a rough and tough orphan boy who was looking for resources to support his home. And as a result, I imagine that joining this crew would have been a quick and easy deal towards that end. Plus, it's also mentioned that no one in the crew really got along with one another, so why not? Another legend to add to the book of Whitebeard. And while we're on him, he was one of the numerous bounty reveals this week, with a truly staggering 5 billion and 46 million berries. Really does make Luffy's 1.5 and even Blackbeard's bounty look like a teeny tiny achievement in comparison. Kind of like a participation award for running a race. I mean, I have no idea what I always pictured Whitebeard's bounty being, but I think I've always been mentally captured around the 3 billion mark or just over for the pinnacle of cash reward in one piece, so this chapter has very much shattered that perception. And I guess we should now segue into everyone else's bounties because we're here now. Every page of this chapter was pure hype, but moving from world figure to world figure was an incredible experience. So we start at low with Blackbeard. I mean, I say low comparatively compared to the craziness of this chapter. No new information there except for his current Hachinoso Island being the location of the origin of the Rocks Pirates. Which is very interesting actually because it would appear to make that island somewhat more important than I've previously suspected. And I do wonder whose control it was under prior to the Paramount War. I guess it's also worth flagging the name of the island once again because the official English translation for it is full of lead island. And that seems incredibly weird at first and I believe that most of the scans refer to it as Beehive Island which is taken literally from the Japanese word Hachinoso. However, in Japanese, Beehive can also apparently be used to reference bullet holes and that the official English translator has stated in the past when the island first appeared that its name translates more literally as has been shot up. So as a result, they've counted with an English phrase being full of lead or full of lead as it will now apparently be known. And just as when I read this during chapter 925 I think that this sounds a bit weird. The Beehive Island also doesn't work pragmatically at all. So I'm sticking with the Japanese Hachinoso for now. It's just simpler. Last thing on Blackbeard for now though, I like his wanted poster image. It's a solid angle with some nice facial depth and I love that he's spiking the camera as well. Like he's completely aware that his bounty photo is being taken and he wants to look as menacing as possible. It's so much better looking than any of the fan made wanted posters for him which actually goes for everyone else revealed here as well. Next up we had a huge leap with Shanks, a man who is apparently worth 4 billion, 48,900,000 berries. And my God, that escalated quickly, didn't it? What I love about his poster is that it's the antithesis of Blackbeard's photo. Shanks is acting calm and cool, probably entirely unaware of the camera pointed at him and if he is then he simply doesn't care. It's a simple but brilliant image which very much sums up Shanks' aesthetics in general. As for the number itself, like I said before I'd never really imagined a bounty in the 4 billion region. So this was very much an amazing shock to my system. It's somewhat nice to know that despite the fact that Blackbeard is officially recognized as one of the emperors he's still not considered on the level of the previous establishment. Nor should he be because he is a member of the worst generation and more of Luffy's contemporary than anything in my mind. What did kind of shock me is that Shanks' bounty was lower than that of Big Mom and Kaido but I think that's entirely because there was an article that came out in V Jump early this year which teased that Shanks' bounty may have been the highest of the current emperors. But I feel like this is one of those things that got a bit lost in translation and the fan base including myself by the way extrapolated far too much on. In reality though I'm quite happy with Shanks' numeric position here because he is not part of the same generation as Big Mom, Kaido, or Whitebeard so I feel like it does make some sense to have that gap here. The most interesting part of Shanks' segment though is that we now have a timeline on when he actually became one of the emperors which was six years ago meaning four years before Luffy set out on his journey. Now this has probably miffed a lot of people because in the One Piece Fivio Card data book there was a great big question mark placed on exactly what stage Shanks became an emperor and it was arbitrarily plonked before he met Luffy. Now in my video covering this information I went to great lengths to state that we really should not be reading into that too much and a lot of people bombarded me with very stern comments and messages stating that Shanks was clearly an emperor by the time he met Luffy based entirely on the vaguest possible information. And so I'd like to offer a quick I told you so and move on. Because next up we've confirmed Big Mom's bounty which sits at 4,388 million berries. Other than that there's not a whole lot of anything revealed about her. It's just restating what we already know but her wanted poster is the stuff of nightmares. I could not imagine being the photographer who was charged with taking that photo because it looks like immediately after it was snapped they were devoured by Charlotte Linlin. Terrifying stuff. And Kaido's photo was equally as fear inspiring with this look of pure rage that he has on. Once again good luck to the photographer in that situation because it looks like he's about to go on a rampage but I think this sums up Kaido quite well and his bounty of 4,610,100,000 berries is more or less expected at this point in the chapter. It's really not a massive reveal after having seen Shanks and Big Mom because we know that Kaido in terms of power is roughly equal to Linlin but that he is much more of a threat to the world because if his whole desire to plunge it into war so you know seems about right. I mean let me put it this way of all the bounties revealed in this chapter this is the only one that didn't make me absolutely flip out because once you've already revealed the rest of the four emperors I kind of knew what to expect. What I absolutely did not expect was for the bounty news to continue into the legacy era. I've already spoken about Whitebeard but just on his bounty image this is probably my least favorite of all of the posters revealed this week. He just looks super casual and I don't think it exudes his core character as much as everyone else. Like for example the final and most shocking bounty reveal in this chapter being a certain goal Dee Roger. His picture is pretty perfect. I know that we know very little about Roger but this photo sums up the unstoppable force that was the pirate king and the bounty of 5,564,800,000 berries is quite the mouthful and just well. That number really does a number on me just trying to imagine what he was capable of to be worth that because for a long time I've been operating on the idea that Roger was nowhere near the power of his contemporaries like Whitebeard, kind of a big mom but that he was instead more akin to Luffy. Powerful but modestly so and that his world shaking talents like primarily in other areas such as being able to make easy allies and having fate on his side. After seeing this as well as the other information dropped in the chapter I think I may need to seriously reevaluate that thought though. But before we get to that other very important information I just want to talk about the sheer madness of having a mass reveal of bounties like this and to be perfectly honest as Gloria says it made the chapter I do question whether or not it was the correct course of action from a narrative standpoint because here's the thing it does not take this many reveals to be considered a world shaking chapter like the one we had in the previous interlude which just gave us Blackbeard's number. That was enough to set the world on fire. So I could see a variation of this chapter in which only Big Mom and Kaido's bounties are revealed which would probably still be considered the best chapter of 2019, no contest. But my wariness here comes from two factors. One is that I'm very aware that it is possible to have too much of a good thing and a sort of temporary bounty fatigue may set in. Like this information is stunning but there are so many different bounties to process that the individual impact of revealing them is somewhat lost especially when you then immediately move to a bounty that eclipses the former one examined. I mean, for example, very few people are going to be discussing Big Mom's bounty at great length because it's just absolutely nothing compared to oh my God, Roger and oh my God, Whitebeard. And the other thing that makes me pause for thought is that this chapter has finally put a ceiling on the one piece world. We now know exactly what kind of number it takes to be considered a top tier pirate in the series and I for one have really enjoyed experiencing the past 950 plus chapters without knowing what the pinnacle of the series is. Thinking about it now there is really only one bounty that I'm excited to see in the future and that is Dragons who is known as the most wanted man in the world and had that title whilst Whitebeard was alive. So from that we can gather that it was over 5 billion. But thinking about people like Warlords of the Sea whose bounties were mentioned to be updated in this chapter I almost don't care at all because whatever they are they're going to seem underwhelming compared to the landslide of information we were given here. I mean, even Mihawk isn't going to be that exciting. Let's say that his bounty is updated to like 3 billion berries or something. That is a massive amount and under any other circumstances prior to this chapter it would have been worthy of the utmost hype. But after seeing all of this I think the bounty reveals going forward are always going to be kind of underwhelming. And one I question most is why show us Whitebeard and Rogers bounties? You want to show the other four emperors? Sure. They're relevant. So that's fine. But why provide such legendary information at this point in the series? I mean, yes, it was great to find out but arguably highly unnecessary and may even do a bit of damage to one piece going forward. So I do think this information could have been portioned out better in the same way that this information has been beautifully and efficiently portioned out over the last 22 years. But that's enough of that. I'm sick of talking about bounties for now. So let's get back into some major, major hype and take a look at the absolute boss that is Monkey D. Garp. My favorite panel in this chapter by far was the brief flashback of having him overcoming the rocks. There's something really magical about seeing a young Garp having gone all out because it just sparks the imagination like crazy. And I love this image of him holding out his bloodied fists still wearing his Rackard Marine outfit with a loose tie and everything. This is the stuff of legends. Like at the moment, what I want more than anything in this world is a commissioned Renaissance painting of Garp standing like this victoriously on God Valley. It's just such a strong image and well worthy of being entitled The Hero of the Marines. I also really love the timing of this information because I recently did a top five strongest Marines list and spoilers Garp ended up being number one. And there were more than a few commenters saying that Sakazuki should have been number one. But after looking at this, I don't know how anyone could believe that. Yes, it was 38 years ago, but Garp is still on a whole different level to any of the admirals or even the current fleet admiral. What I can't ignore any longer though is the even more exciting idea that Garp had to team up with Roger to dispose of the rocks pirates. This goes beyond the stuff of legends and almost into the realm of high fanfic. The amount of cash monies that I would pay to see Garp and Roger as allies against these figures is embarrassingly high, but at the same time, I'm quite satisfied with the knowledge that we have here. I'm a big proponent of not showing too much because I believe that by and large, our imaginations are much more powerful than anything Oda could show us in terms of action, which is one of the reasons why I love that we've never seen the Sakazuki vs. Kuzan fight because I don't think that it will ever rival the legendary thoughts that we've all had about it. But what's really bizarre about this conflict is the reasoning behind it in the first place with Garp and Roger allegedly joining forces to protect the celestial dragons as well as their slaves. And I find it very interesting that Sengoku felt the need to add the part about the slaves, but whatever the case, there has to be some deeper reasoning for Roger's actions here. Like, maybe he was worried about destabilizing the world before the next generation had a chance to act, but then again, there's also a pretty fair motive in that the captain of the Rocks Pirates has now been said to be Roger's first and most formidable rival. So, you know, step aside, Garp and Whitebeard, because this world has a new profound legendary figure to fall over and to top it all off, his full name is Rocks D. Zebek. And at this point, we have an information overload happening. To be perfectly honest, when I first read this chapter, I completely forgot that Rocks was a D with everything else that we were bombarded with until I reread the chapter and went, oh, wait, holy crap, that was a thing. But you know what? I love this development because it looks like we have our second morally ambiguous D in the series. And here's how this whole thing is going to play out in YouTube theories for the next few years. Marshall D. Teach inherited the will of Rocks while Smunky D. Luffy inherited the will of Roger, thus making them destined to engage in climactic battle to once and for all settle this will of D situation and possibly select the next pirate king. And the thing that adds more evidence to that is that, well, the name Zebek is much more important than it may seem initially to anyone who doesn't keep up with the One Piece Viviocards, which I imagine is most people. But Blackbeard's entry is very intriguing because it mentions that his ship is called the Saber of Zebek, which at the time seemed random as hell, but you know, here we are. And when I should say thanks to the Library of Ohara for translating that Viviocard and allowing us to now make that connection. But I'll leave that one out there for the thirsty, thirsty theorists. But for now, I'm really enjoying what we've seen of Rox's design. He's quite notably much more normal size than the gigantic humanoid beings on his crew and he has a wonderfully intimidating smile. I absolutely cannot wait for the Rox to be expanded upon more and I'm certain that it will be done during the Wanoark because I believe that this is where the Rox will meet their final demise following the defeat of Big Mom and Kaido. But before that, there are some amazing names dropped incidentally that were also part of the Rox Pirate. Golden Lion Sheiky would be the most notable one and it's always nice to see him referenced in the canon material of One Piece because despite his film not being canon, he was a fairly important figure in this world so any background on him is always appreciated. The other name that stuck out to me was of course Captain John though. Now this man has been mentioned a fair few times in the series in relation to Buggy who has spent a long while searching for his treasure and not only that, but John also made an appearance as one of the corpses reanimated by Gekko Moria. Apparently John met with a classically pirate fate as well having been killed through multiple star bones for hoarding all the treasure for himself. So it's super interesting to see him linked to the Rox like this. But there's also two figures who we know sweet, sweet nothing about being the Silver Axe and Ochoku. So just as when the Rox name was first dropped I have no real comment on these two. It's just names one of which is confirmed to be based on a historical figure being Ochoku who allegedly draws inspiration from the Chinese pirate Wangzi. But other than that, it's nothing but names. However, it is entirely possible that one of them may refer to Miss Bucking who is 99% confirmed to have been a Rox member at this point because Marco did state that she and Whitebeard were once on the same pirate crew. So unless that was another unrelated crew Bucking was almost certainly a Rox pirate. And now Marines, Fujitora of the Marines. He was a great way to open the chapter and I'm fascinated because he appears to be quite injured presumably due to the skirmish between he, Ryokugu and Sabo and the Revolutionary Army commanders. However, I'm much more interested in where he is at the moment because despite conversing with Sakazuki there's a lot of commotion happening with cannons going off and Marines running everywhere with guns and stuff. So I think it would be pretty reasonable to assume that he's currently part of one of the four simultaneous missions to capture the former warlords. The one who I'm fairly certain it isn't his weevil because he looks to be fighting on land. However, the other three are very much up for grabs. The presence of the Seeking looking creature might lend evidence to the idea that Fujitora is in the calm belt and therefore Amazon Lily to deal with Boa Hancock. But then again, Marine vessels are supposed to be lined with sea stone so is not to encounter Seeking. So it could also be buggy or mehawk though. However, I'm not convinced that the Marines would have sent an admiral after buggy. All right, this video is it's going on forever, isn't it? But there is more to talk about. I mentioned it before, but a location named God Valley was brought up and shown this week in a beautiful panel by the way with the word God Valley and some stunning block font in the background behind it. But there's a hint of developing story here with the mystery of how after the incident with the rocks it disappeared without a trace and that the world government went out of its way to erase it from all knowledge of the world. So an easy technical explanation for this would be the Busticle, but I love this. It's one of the things that had my mind going the most insane during the chapter because I just need to know what was so important about that island that it had to be eliminated from existence. And I'm sure that it was not just the fact that it was battleground because the celestial dragons were there and everything it is almost certainly of the utmost importance to the true history of the world. Once again, theorists can tackle that one. And finally, because this chapter was not insane enough apparently, the very last note we're left on begins to connect us back to Wano with some discussion of Kozuki Oden and his affiliation to the grand figures of the world. And there's a very specific reference made to Wano perhaps being a bit too coincidental to be the central location for so many profound individuals. It was very cool to hear that Oden used to be a division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates though because I'd actually forgotten a little tidbit that he did sail on their ship and it makes sense for him to be powerful enough to have risen to that position. But in general, for a man who exists purely as a silhouette at the moment, Oden seems to be an incredibly key figure in the events of One Piece as a whole which makes me incredibly excited to see his eventual story. And I'm hoping that making the last page of the chapter more Wano-centric is the beginning of our transition back into Act 3 because we have got a lot of business to tackle and I'm keen to get straight into it. But that pretty much does it for chapter 957. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general then please do consider donating to the Grand Line review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime manga series then please do check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. 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