 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Last week we reached the final stage in the first part of the series and this week we are picking up two years later with the Return to Sabotee. Return to Sabotee is the 24th arc in the series consisting of a mere five manga chapters and six anime episodes, making it the shortest arc in the entire series, right behind the very first arc, Romance Dawn, which consisted of a mighty seven manga chapters. With such a low chapter count you may be wondering if this is even worth covering on its own, but my god yes it is. Return to Sabotee is an event in the series that overshadowed even marine food in my opinion. There has never been more hype and anticipation for a new chapter over the last 20 years of publication and during these five short weeks. And let's be real, that's primarily because of the long-awaited straw hat fashion parade. But yeah these character designs were a breath of fresh air that I didn't even know I needed. Then again you know after 600 chapters of a story I think a redesign is certainly called for. And I loved every single one of these new world designs with the mild exception of Nami. I just wasn't quite a fan of the long hair at first but it has grown on me. See what I did there? Nice pun. Everybody else just completely blew my mind, especially Frankie who just became massive all of a sudden. And now I find it really hard to look back on pre-timeskip Frankie because I miss his awesome modern form. But the award for most improved design definitely belongs to none other than Uso. I like that Oda seriously buffed him up and finally changed up the horrible brown overalls that had plagued the series ever since his introduction. I would go so far as to say that post-timeskip Usopp is actually aesthetically pleasing and finally fits in very well with the rest of the crew. And on the topic of crews during this arc we are introduced to an entirely new yet eerily familiar crew, the imposter straw hats. To me these guys are one of the greatest parts of the entire arc because not only are they just plain hilarious but they also make a lot of sense. The straw hats just vanished off the face of the planet for two years. So why not steal their identities and use the buggy theory of power to amass a crew of individuals infinitely stronger than yourself? They also have a lot of really good valueless characters essentially parodying the straw hats and in the anime they decide to do something really cool by having them voiced by the actual straw hats but swapping their roles around. So Luffy was voiced by Sanji, Zora was voiced by Usopp and so on and so forth. But I have to say that the best thing that came from the imposter straw hats is the ongoing fan art that places them in iconic one piece moments. This artistic subculture is absolutely one of my favorite things the internet has ever produced. Speaking of amazingly produced things there's what no we're not talking about you silly, your caribou. But now that we're here I guess we should talk about caribou. Look for the sake of return to Sabotee we're going to give caribou the benefit of the doubt and say that he was a nice bit of flavor. I did enjoy that he represented the status of rookie pirate which the straw hats were when they initially visited the archipelago. So it was nice to have him there for that contrast I guess. I find his brother caribou infinitely more fascinating though because well the dude has a lizard for hair. That's reason enough to like anything really. Return to Sabotee is a unique arc in that it mirrors the events of the original Sabotee arc. The straw hats gather on the archipelago with the intention of heading to Fishman Island and then onwards into the new world. However instead of a resounding defeat in the face of opposition this time the straw hats redeem themselves by producing an overwhelming victory over Sentomaru and the pacifista forces. Kind of like an alternate ending or no actually it's more like running into a boss in a game who wipes you out so you spend some time grinding too much time grinding in fact then you return to find that boss is actually far too easy due to over leveling but that didn't make it any less satisfying and in an out of character move for Toei they actually delivered on the animation for these action sequences especially Luffy's defeat of the first pacifista. It was a big step in the series that made it very clear that straw hats were no longer rookies of the world which is a potentially worrying thought because a lot of the charm of one piece till this point had come from the constant underdog story. An unknown group of pirates surpassed everybody's expectations and do the seemingly impossible. In retrospect of course we had very little to fear as every antagonist in the new world has also severely underestimated them and while most of this arc is spent focusing exclusively on the straw hats which it should being their big reintroduction and all we do get a few hints and mysteries regarding what has happened in the world over two years. The most intriguing being the Bartholomew Kuma made a deal with Dr. Vagapunk to input a program to have Kuma protect the Thousand Sunny until a straw hat returned to it although rather than answering any questions this just compounded the enigma that is Bartholomew Kuma. It makes me think that the true backstory of Bartholomew Kuma is going to be quite a tragic one and one day I'll be looking back on this moment seeing his beaten up cyborg body and shedding a tear for whatever grand sacrifice he made. However currently the most touching moment of this arc is when Luffy renews his declaration to become the pirate king. It's a very similar moment to the end of chapter one and Luffy is even making the same pose with his arms up in the air and everything. I think that this was an important thing to do as a formality to the readers and viewers because Luffy had put his journey on hold for two years of story time as well as two years of real world time. From Amazon Lily onwards we'd been following Luffy's journey to save Ace rather than his journey to become pirate king so this was an essential moment to let us know that we're getting right back on track and after seeing the tears of Silver's Rayleigh I 100% believe that Luffy will become the pirate king but that pretty much does it for the Return to Sabotee. Next week we will be visiting a long overdue location during our underwater exploration of Fishman Island. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe and if you just so happen to be keen on supporting independent creators and also feel free to check out my Patreon Discord server or Twitter the links to which are in the handy description below. Finally please do comment with your thoughts about the Return to Sabotee. This has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.