 God Valley. In many ways, it's your standard One Piece Island, quite natural, outwardly humble, and highly unassuming in general. There's just one problem, which is that 38 years ago, this unassuming island completely vanished from existence. As for what happened and why, well, this is the story of God Valley. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review of Source for Everything One Piece, and today it is time to delve into one of the most intriguing and mysterious islands in the series that is not Laugh Tale, or Elba, or Load Star, or the Emerald City, or any of the others, which of course leaves us with God Valley. Now, as we know, the One Piece World is mostly covered in vast ocean, and a lot of it is, well, less than charted, and as a result, there's a lot of places to hide on this planet, even for an entire island. However, this is one location that cannot afford to be lost in the dirge of history, and that's because God Valley was the site of quite possibly one of the greatest battles that has ever occurred in the One Piece World, which saw the birth of the hero and the fall of one of the most powerful pirate crews to have ever formed. Also, Roger was there, so that's always fun. There's an awful lot of crazy things that happened at God Valley, and today we're going to go through everything we know about the island, its historical significance, and why it has been erased from existence as we know it. Before we do that, though, did you know that the world government does not want you pressing the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review? They think that this channel is full of dangerous pirate-related propaganda, but are you going to let them tell you what to do? No, you're not, because you're a strong, independent subscriber, and you don't need no government telling you what to do. So press the button, which will also result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feed, but more importantly, telling the world government to just staff off. All right, now let's talk about some things that they don't want you knowing. God Valley is an existence that has only become known to us extraordinarily recently in the grand scheme of things, especially for anime watchers. And quite frankly, it is disgusting that after almost a thousand episodes and a thousand chapters into the series, Oda can still drop world-shaking bombs like this that completely restructures how we view the series. But let's start with the name because it's probably more important than you may initially think. God Valley, an island that is just straight up delivered to us in English or as close to English as we can get. I believe the Japanese is Goldobare. And English named islands, well, they're not that uncommon in the series. I mean, half of Totoland's islands were just named after English foods and even Long Ring Long Land was solid to pure English. Well, it's a bit of a tongue twister in Japanese. Ronguringu rongurando. I mean, just say it with me three times. Ronguringu rongurando, ronguringu rongurando, ronguringu rongurando. Wow, I did a lot better at that than I thought I would actually. However, very few of these islands have such a grandiose introduction that we were treated to with God Valley. Having the name of the island flash up in bold English text in both the anime and the manga. Traditionally, this is not a way that Oda introduces, well, any island, even the more mysterious and silhouettey ones. Which speaking of in the manga, we were treated to this lovely mystery structure. It was very hard to interpret what it was as it could have been either stunning natural geography or even a potential rising city of sorts. However, the anime did remove a layer of that mystery and cleared things up by portraying God Valley as quite a natural existence. Seemingly untouched by humankind, that or an extremely old civilization that had been reclaimed by nature. As is often the case with One Piece, many things are possible, especially with a name like God Valley. Because fascinatingly, the One Piece world isn't particularly religious. Yes, there are examples of society that do worship a God or even God's plural. However, by and large, there really aren't that many groups that put much stock into such beliefs. Which is why I do find it difficult to picture God Valley as some sort of ancient sacred site. And a lot of this is also because of the fact that words like God and holy have been quite, you know, bastardized in One Piece by world nobles. Whenever God's or anything along those lines are mentioned in the series, it is usually applied to the world nobles. But as such, God Valley has a very potentially strong connection to them, especially because they would appear to have been present at the time of the incident, which is infinitely intriguing. And before we proceed down that line of thought, in terms of the incident, the most notable thing about God Valley is that it served as the battleground of three of the world's greatest powers at the time. The Marines were represented in combat by one a monkey-dee-garp, a very young monkey-dee-garp. And this is actually where he earned his epithet as the hero of the Marines. And this is because he did the unthinkable 38 years ago at God Valley where he brought down the rocks pirates. The most terrifying pirate crew to have ever spawned in the series led by the very hidden yet charismatic Rocks Deezerbeck. However, Garp did not perform this feat alone. And in fact, he had to team up with another very well-known name, the future pirate king, Goldie Roger. And when I say future, I mean very far into the future. For some comparison, Roger became the pirate king 25 years prior to the current timeline, and the God Valley incident took place 38 years ago. So there's this pretty huge 13-year gap between these events. However, it is important to note that the God Valley incident happened after the Roger pirates reached the final island in the New World and discovered that the Ponyglyphs existed. So by this point, Roger had conquered more of the ground line than any other pirate, but he also had a very fierce rival in Rocks Deezerbeck. In fact, of everyone who opposed Roger, including figures like Garp and Whitebeard, Zabeck was said to be Roger's first and greatest rival, a relationship which would culminate on God Valley. But why here though, and why then though? Well, it may very well have to do with the ultimate ambition of Zabeck, which was to become the very vaguely defined king of the world, which is fun because it's a direct antithesis of what Roger would go on to become. In Luffy's words, the pirate king is the person who has the most freedom in the world, whereas Zabeck wanted to become the individual with the most control over the world. Control, yes. That word brings us back to the world nobles, because if one was going to achieve such a dream, then you would surely need to wipe out or supplant the current rulers of the world, AKA them. As such, the back attacking God Valley to further that aim does make sense. However, what makes little sense to us at this stage is why the world nobles were on this island to begin with. One piece has gone to some very great lengths to portray the world nobles as creatures who are not comfortable living anywhere, but they're holy land of Marishwa. And God Valley as much as we know, absolutely nothing about where in the world it was situated, but the one thing we do know is that it was on the blue sea. A very strange place for the gods of the world to be, unless they're on a brief vacation to do things like buy slaves. In fact, canonically, I think that's the only time we've ever seen world nobles travel to the surface, a slave auction at Saabadi and collecting fishermen slaves at Fishman Island. In any case, whilst they may well be horrid, horrid creatures, the defense of the world nobles was a key aspect of God Valley. In fact, Sengoku makes a special point of mentioning that a core reason why Roger and Garb joined forces was in fact to protect the world nobles. Another very strange idea to grapple with because it's also been stated that Garb really has no sense of such a duty. In fact, the reason why he's remained a vice-admiral this entire time is because becoming an admiral means that he would be under the direct control of the filthy, filthy world nobles. Meanwhile, Roger is obviously a D and all who carry this middle initial are said to be the direct enemies of the gods, okay, the world nobles, including Garb actually being Monkey D Garb. So we actually have a very interesting situation happening here where two Ds are teaming up against a third D in Rocks Dsabek, a true battle of the Ds, the likes of which we have never seen in the modern timeline and probably won't until the eventual day where Luffy takes on Blackbeard. But whatever the case, it could only be a very desperate and dire situation to bring these figures into allegiance and conflict and in the end Garb and Roger were victorious. The Rocks Pirates were dissolved and everyone lived happily ever after in a booming slave economy run by the world nobles. At which point you really do come to question who the bad guys in this situation really are. But that also brings us to another question. If Garb and Roger were both successful when the world nobles were saved, then why was there a need to erase this entire island from history? And when explaining this phenomenon, Sengoku's words are very interesting as he says the following. That's because you won't find any map featuring an island called God Valley. As a matter of fact, God Valley itself vanished without a trace. The island, the world government wanted to hide disappeared entirely. Do you still want to hear more about it? With that last statement there acting as something of a warning, you know the whole, maybe you don't want to be in a position where you know too much about this secret. But this statement heavily implies that the whole government are responsible for misplacing this island. Which I do bring up because there are some very common thoughts out there that Onigashima, Kaido's island on Wano may very well be God Valley. Which given certain manga only at this stage, information certainly is not the most impossible idea in the world. However, I do think that this is one of those situations where the fan base has seen two smallish islands and just gone, holy crap, they're the same thing. With that said, I'll never rule it out entirely. One piece is certainly done much strange things. However, it's just a very clunky theory. Especially with how heavily it's implied that the world government was involved in this incident and they are perfectly capable of destroying islands all on their own. Which we've seen at play with things like the Busticle. I've also seen ancient weapons suggested which I suppose would point to Uranus because Pluto has remained quite hidden since the void century and Poseidon wouldn't actually have existed at the time because Shirahoshi had yet to be born and inherit the ability. Natural phenomena also can't be entirely ruled out like say a more extreme version of the knockup stream that sent God Valley right up to the sky. But I really would suspect it's more of a sinister disappearance than that. And whatever the case, I still keep coming back to the idea that this location is, for whatever reason, monumentally important to the world nobles. Perhaps some sort of land of origin. Although even that's a bit strange because the origin of the world nobles was the 20 kingdoms uniting together. So to the best of our knowledge, there really isn't one universal spot to indicate their birth. Unless God Valley was the designated meeting point of these kingdoms and built a legacy that way. Sort of like how Hachinoso Island is infamous for being where the rocks pirates initially formed. But even then we're still left with two sort of options. Either God Valley was destroyed or it was moved. Maybe a third, maybe, maybe it was just hidden somewhere somehow, and it was just erased from historical record. But my personal inclination is to believe that it was not destroyed, which is based entirely on Sengoku's choice of language. God Valley vanished. It wasn't eradicated or destroyed like Sayohara, which means that this could very much be a future destination. Perhaps even a final battleground for Luffy versus Blackbeard, which would really mirror that whole Roger versus Bec inherited will aspect. Now as for what the Grand Fleet thinks of God Valley, we'll start with a mean guy who says it's got to be Emerald City. And if you don't remember what the Emerald City is, I don't blame you. It's a very, very obscure location that has only been mentioned once in the entire series by Bellamy Onjaya. He used it as an example of a fantasy location alongside the city of gold, a latter of which did turn out to be real. But ever since then speculation on what or where the Emerald City is has always been quite rife. Although I do think that the whole God Valley is the Emerald City thought was popularized by the Return to the Reverie project. A fan made series of six chapters which proposed some very ambitious fan theories, one of which is the Emerald City God Valley connection. I have to say though, I personally don't really buy into it and it very much feels like a situation where fans are trying to make a profound connection, where there is really no necessity to do so. Laugh Tale is the island to become King of the Pirates. God Valley is the island to become King of the World, which is quite interesting and very possible. Like perhaps some sort of integral location in maintaining control of the world and very much keeping him on top of the empty throne. But also incomes Kopikashi were the thought that we do need to address being God Valley is the same island as Laugh Tale and it is definitely not. And we know this because Roger didn't land on Laugh Tale until 13 years after the God Valley incident. And it was said that he and his crew were the first to set foot on Laugh Tale in about 800 years. So they are very different islands. It's also unlikely to be a Lodestar Island because that still very much exists where God Valley very much does not. Released to the best of our knowledge it doesn't. Meanwhile, we have Paxton Moody with a very simple God Valley equals any slobby. I suppose implying that that gaping hole into nothingness is perhaps once where God Valley was and any slobby was built around it afterwards, which I don't know maybe. One thing this idea does have going for it is that any slobby is close enough to the red line to make it a convenient location for the world nobles to descend on occasion. But I have to say the most reasonable comment of God Valley I had would be Naru Hotel with they have the best tacos. And what can I say? You're probably right. But if you'd like to dive into this topic a bit more then please do feel free to check out my video on everything we know about the Rocks Pirates, a very, very fascinating group. And what do you guys think? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join the discussion on my Discord server. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.