 The darkest moment of One Piece is probably that one time where Luffy had his eyes closed. I mean, just look at this, I can't see anything. Thankfully, he did open his eyes, however. What he discovered was something even more terrifying. Dark AF. Hello, and welcome to the Groundline review source for everything One Piece, and today it is time to once again delve into the more unpleasant aspects of the series because for what is perceived as a light, fluffy, action-packed, and goofily illustrated property, One Piece quite frequently leads its audience into territory that they weren't necessarily expecting, stuff that makes you go, holy crap, that's pretty dark, isn't it? Which is one of the great advantages of the series. It really does present that full spectrum of human emotion and only after seeing the darkness can we truly appreciate the light. And we're gonna be appreciating a lot of light after this video. But with that in mind, it's time for a quick round of Dark versus Light, a very simple minigame, the rules of which are as follows. We are currently sitting in a very dark room and we need to turn on the lights. When I turn on the light, either the dark-feigned blackbeard or high as a light kizaru will be revealed in this very room. Your job is simply to guess which one of them it will be. And if you guess incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which also does have the side effect of granting regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. And if you do guess correctly, then the door will promptly close behind you and you will get to spend some quality time with whoever is in this room. Good luck. So make your choice now. When the light comes on, will it be blackbeard or will it be kizaru? We shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and it's kizaru. As for why he spends all of his time in a dark room, nobody knows. But if you guessed incorrectly, then you know the thing it is you need to do. And please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet, welcome. But now that we've engaged in some debauchery of subscribe games, let's slip into a slightly more serious demeanor because our first dark secret of One Piece to be featured in this video is going to be serial killer Rob Luchi. So Luchi is often remembered as one of the greater and more popular antagonists of the series and his fight against Luffy during any slobby is one of the great highlights of well, I suppose, my life. But what often gets discarded in all of the combative glory is the incredibly sickening nature of this man. To call him sadistic would be putting it lightly. In fact, the only times in the series when Mr. Rob Luchi has been shown smiling or even enjoying himself to a minor degree is when he is inflicting pain or thinking about inflicting pain or toying with another person in some way, shape or form. For example, during the reverie arc, he was ordered to kill King Neptune and Luchi immediately broke into a smile just considering the prospect of delicious murder. Although I think an often underrated example if his sadism was when Califar and Kaku were offered devil fruits. In this scenario, Luchi just sat there egging them on to consume the devil fruit and potentially end up cursing the entirety of their remaining existence. That is something that Luchi wanted to see. He was excited, potentially even aroused. And as for a more well-known example, well, the entire reason why he joined Cypherpole was simply so that he could legally kill people. It doesn't matter who those people are or why they need to die or if they need to die. Luchi just wants to take life and cause pain. And as such, he has found his perfect employer within the world nobles because weirdly enough, their value systems kind of match up perfectly. So yeah, whilst Luchi may be remembered as a crowning antagonist of the series, he is indeed one sick, sick mofo. And if you linger on him for too long, well, we're going on a very dark journey. As for Luchi's opponent on any slobby, Luffy has been subjected to some pretty incredibly dark stuff as well. I often see people complaining that Luffy's backstory isn't dark or it's not tragic compared to the other Straw Hunts, which you know always takes me back to the time when a seven-year-old Luffy was tortured right in front of our eyes by Porchemi, a member of the Blue Jam Pirates. And this session began with Porchemi attempting to crush Luffy's body with a giant hammer, but after realizing that Luffy was indeed a double-footed user, Porchemi got a bit more creative. Switching to spiked gloves that did indeed damage our rubber lad damaged him quite a bit in a series of panels and scenes that are very difficult for me to watch. And the point of it is to show that Luffy would rather die than give up the secrets of Ace and Sabo and it definitely worked because Porchemi continued to torture Luffy until the sun went down. And according to another of the Blue Jam Pirates who begged him to stop, I quote, he doesn't even have the strength left to scream. And also just another fun side note. Apparently Porchemi was quite famous for scalping his victims alive, kind of like a signature maneuver of his according to Sabo. So Luffy's past has a whole host of this dark crap for us to deal with. For now though, let's skip ahead in time to the thriller Bark Ark, which is always fun to say. What's less fun is to think about the really insane and kind of sickening relationship between Victoria Sindri and Dr. Hogback. Or more accurately, I suppose, the corpse of Victoria Sindri. As the story goes, Sindri was an incredibly famous actress within a certain unnamed nation. And Dr. Hogback, after treating her one day became just a little bit obsessed with Sindri, even going so far as to propose to her. Although he was rejected allegedly because Sindri had already become engaged to someone else, more than likely also because it's Hogback. After which point Sindri had a fatal accident, which would usually end this kind of tragic story. However, death was simply another opportunity for Dr. Hogback. And he agreed to join the crew of Gekko Moria on the condition that Moria would insert a shadow into the lingering vessel of Sindri and fulfill Hogback's desire to have a very obedient Sindri forever by his side. Or at least theoretically obedient and didn't quite work out that way. But he frequently ordered his new Sindri to do all sorts of degrading things, such as lick the floor and endure all kinds of physical abuse. And to add on to all of this, another victim was needed simply to complete this abomination who was a girl named Margarita. Her shadow was stolen by Moria to insert into Sindri's body. So this whole thing is just one big weird, dark and disturbing combination of factors coming together to fulfill the twisted desires of a pointy-nosed doctor. And Hogback isn't even the only dark secret of Gekko Moria's crew because we haven't even spoken about Absalom yet. In the series, he is a well-established pervert and even his zombie minions refer to him as Aeroslam or Purvislam in the English translation because apparently he likes to peep on ladies, which, you know, not okay, but it's also not quite a darker aspect of the series yet. You see, Absalom isn't like your typical peeping Shonen situation. You know the standard moment of every series where there's like a hot springs episode and the guys formulate this infallible plan to look over the wall into the women's section but usually end up getting seriously injured in the process. I mean, we've even done that in one piece actually during Alabasta. Good times. This is not one of those times. In this case, Nami was taking a bath and Absalom entered in invisible mode and forced her up against a wall, examined her and were it not for Usopp and Chopper interrupting, who knows where things would have gone from there. And this is one of those moments where I'm just kind of shocked that Oda would actually do this to one of his characters, not to mention the time where he just full-on grabbed Robin and licked her, which is pretty blatant sexual assault and I'm always really weirded out by that panel as well. But yeah, Absalom, Aeroslam, Purvisalam or sexual assault salam is easily one of the darker aspects of the series wrapped in a somewhat comedic package. Let's move away from there now and into the life and times of one, Don Quixote de Flamingo. This man has no shortage of dark secrets. In fact, he's usually the cause of said secrets. On this occasion though, I want to talk about what happened to him as a child. Something that was absolutely not his fault, which was when his father, Homing, abandoned their status as world nobles to go and live with greater humanity. Unfortunately, the abandoning of that status meant very, very little to those on the surface and at one stage, young Dol Flamingo, as well as his father, Homing and brother, Rosinante, were hung from window shot with arrows and a fire set under them, whilst various people stated the atrocities that the world nobles had caused them. And according to Rosinante, Dol Flamingo was born with an innately evil nature. Although I have to say that after witnessing this, I kind of identify with him for a bit and understand his words because whilst being tortured by the masses, a child-sized Dol Flamingo yelled that he would hunt down and kill every last one of them. And whilst I'm not really sure how they escaped from this situation, they did, which would eventually lead to Dol Flamingo electing to murder his own father for the suffering that he had inadvertently caused. It really is one of the more grim flashbacks in One Piece, which tends to happen with the villains, actually. Their events are a whole degree more twisted than the protagonist, which definitely goes on to inform their actions in the modern day. But that said, this has been our second instance of child torture on this list here today, so let's spice things up a bit with some adults. Moving to Zo now and quite possibly one of the most brutal events to have ever been showcased in the series. Things got pretty wild in that Jack flashback and certainly not in a good way because just to linger on Jack for a moment, everything I said about Rob Luchi very much applies to this man as well. He is one of the most ruthless and sadistic beings that One Piece has to offer, even more so than his Captain Kaido, I would argue. And two unfortunate victims of this nature would be the ever-lovable Inorashi and Nekomomushi. After putting up an incredible five-day fight, Jack and his forces did overcome the Ming tribe. And after refusing to answer Jack's questions and the way he desired, the billion-barry man responded by taking a limb from both Nekomomushi and Inorashi. And not only that, but Oda also chose to showcase the damage when the Twirling Hat pirates arrived. And it was pretty damn heavy to see the two of them hanging from their cross-like restraints, slowly bleeding to death. It was just brutality on a scale that One Piece doesn't often cover. Even Dolph Lamingo's flashback wasn't quite this visceral and hard-hitting. And it just shows that Oda is not afraid to push the limits of the Shona genre. When darkness is required, he will implement it without question. Especially when it comes to our antagonists and in this sort of mindset, one event that always comes back to me as Marineford where Sakazuki just up and murdered one of his soldiers. Now Sakazuki also made our first dark secret video due to his actions during the genocide of Ohara, which was on quite a grand scale. However, this man's darkness also operates on a micro-scale as well. Because when several Marines ran away from the terrifying Paramount War, including Kobe, one very, very unfortunate soldier crossed paths with Sakazuki, who gave him one chance to get back onto the battlefield before deciding to execute the poor Marine right then and there. A very, very rare instance of death occurring outside of a flashback in One Piece. And no, we don't actually see the execution itself, but Sakazuki did pretty blatantly state, if you care about your family, then die an honorable death. Before we cut to the screams of said Marine, dying a quote unquote honorable death and Kobe's horrified reaction. It's such a brief moment as well. Like it's not even a page and a half long, but it's an action that had more impact on me than many of the Marineford matchups. Just because it's such an unexpectedly dark place for One Piece to go. Even if he was just a random Marine, so it does not make the decision to kill characters lightly. And I do think that this particular scene is a giant part of why Sakazuki is such a feared character because he will break out expectations of One Piece. When he is present, there is a very, very serious danger to contend with, all in the name of dark absolute justice. And you know what? After experiencing all of these dark secrets of the series, our next one makes a lot more sense, which involves another Marine Admiral being Fujitora. Who you know is a pretty cool guy overall, quite kind and all that. However, he has been well and truly exposed to the underbelly of One Piece. Because after witnessing just how corrupt and messed up this planet is, Fujitora made the decision to physically blind himself so that he could avoid ever seeing it again. And while we don't know exactly what Fujitora saw, this drastic action tells you that it was probably far, far more twisted than anything we've actually experienced in this video here today. And we may never know exactly what drove Fujitora to this point and maybe that's for the best. Because the deeper we delve into One Piece, the surprisingly darker it manages to become. So what do you guys think? Please do 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 Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.