 Did you know that Tama is voiced by Megumi Han in the anime, also Kiku is voiced by Maria Issei? And these two are better known as Gon and Killua. So in a weird way, the Wano arc of One Piece is probably the closest we will ever get to a new series of Hunter x Hunter. But that aside, hello and welcome to the Grand Line reviewer source for everything One Piece, and today we have a review of Chapter 1004, which provides us with what I think is our first truly tangible piece of hope within this whole Wano Mega Saga. Because yes, we've gotten in a few great hits on good ol' Kaido, but the bigger issue has always been that our allied forces are completely outmatched on every level, but this chapter provides a fantastic solution to that particular crippling problem. Just as subscribing to the Grand Line review will provide you with a solution to not having a consistent injection of One Piece culture straight into your YouTube feed. Pressing that beautiful red button is actually strikingly similar to eating one of Tama's dongle, because you will immediately become a member of the Grand Fleet, and if you're lucky it will involve scantily clad centaur ladies. So please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member. Welcome. I actually don't want to start with the Tama section though, because unfortunately while this chapter was incredibly solid all around, Oda did what Oda does like to Oda do, and left us with a bit of a cliffhanger right on the final page. Ten people, that's pretty intriguing. Primarily because ten is a larger number than nine. So we have a new player in the Onigashima raid, or at least we might, it's hard to tell. And I have to say that the Oda silhouette work in this panel is quite brilliant, because I'm genuinely a bit stumped as to who it is. It doesn't give too much away, all I have are really super vague assumptions, and I like that because I think it's quite a difficult thing to pull off. Provided we've already met this character that is, otherwise, well, it's supremely easy to pull off. There's really only two clues to work with though. The first is the general facial structure, which I want to say leans on the side of Oda's more feminine designs, and in addition to that we have a long strand of something falling from their head, which could be anything from hair to some sort of decoration, and even in the one piece world, earlobes. Oh, it's clearly an owl. Just look at those giveaway earlobes. And L is finally back from the moon, and as his first act of God of this world, he has decided to mourn over Kinamon's broken and defeated body. Hmm, seems legit. Earlobe jokes aside, though I feel like the first contender most people would jump to is obviously Hiori. Her design features these trademark strands of hair on the side that would very easily fit with the silhouette, and she is currently one of the only unaccountable primary characters of Wanner, and we haven't seen her for an awfully long time, not since she refused to meet up with Mama and the Vassals for, well honestly really strange and less than believable reasons. So I can imagine a situation where Hiori is enacting her own plan to help out, finds Kinamon and everyone else, sees them for the first time in literal decades, and yes, hence all the, the crying and everything, or at least I think she's crying. And I'd be very much on board with this because I'm keen for Hiori to do, well, then to do something, just anything. She's very much the weirdest factor of Wanner thus far, and I would like to believe that she's on her own mission, and that's happening in the background, and you know, we're just unaware of it. I also think it would be slightly strange if Hiori was not present for the big climax of the entire Megaraak, considering how integral she's been sort of. I mean, Hiori thus far has had this quite Viola-esque role in the story, but even then Viola was pretty deeply involved in the finale of Dressrosa, so we've surely got to get Hiori in there somehow, even if she's not this particular figure. But Hiori is certainly not the only candidate, and I would like to throw Suru's name into the ring as well. Well, you know who it could be actually, when, when was the last time we saw Suru? Because she had a big nose, and this person also has a big nose, so that's kind of perfect. I mean, no, Suru's current design doesn't fit as nicely into the silhouette as Hiori's would, but she is also currently unaccounted for as well, and I believe we last saw her when Okabora Town was burned down, so it's not like she has anywhere to go, you know, a home or something. Plus, it would add a lot of weight to the idea that this figure is focusing on Kinamon, because they still have yet to reunite with each other. So after 20 years, the first time she sees her husband is this broken, defeated mess, and that sounds even more powerful than the Hiori idea actually, but if you wanted a truly wild card crackpot idea, then we can also go with Toki. I don't care if it's been stated that she's dead. Unfortunately, this is one piece, and if we haven't seen a body, then I'm not believing anything, especially when the character in question can quite literally travel through time at will. I don't want to get too deeply into the Toki thoughts though, but it is strange to have this time-travelling element involved, and then not really make use of it beyond sending Kinamon and company into the future. Anyway, that's just something that's going to continue to bug me personally, probably until the end of Wano. Enough of that though, let's talk about the emerging MVP of Wano, which is clearly Tama. What this chapter did really well is kick me straight in the nostalgia balls by bringing me back to very early Wano. Characters like Tama, Speed, Gazelle Man, all of these people who haven't really been relevant since 2018, because yeah, I'm looking it up right now, and that's when Speed was first introduced, chapter 917, which was published in September 2018. It's 2021 now. So we have this really weird situation on our hands, because due to how long Wano has gone on for, I'm actually capable of feeling nostalgia for the current arc. This is a new feeling for me with one piece, but I must say that I'm glad that these Act 1 pieces are finally coming back into play. With that said though, I'm still waiting for some sort of payoff from Urashima because he was someone that we really needed to take all those chapters to showcase, but otherwise, this is fantastic. And I'm particularly enjoying seeing Speed again, as well as being reminded that Speed is actually a headliner. I'd very much sort of forgotten about that. She just seemed so, how shall I put this, completely irrelevant compared to every other headliner, like you know, Basil Hawkins. But then again, I'm pretty sure that Jin Rummy was also a headliner, so the standards for that position must not be quite that high. In regards to Tama though, what I'm very much enjoying is seeing a child character in one piece, and in fact, manga in general, but not being completely useless and just needing to be saved. I love that Tama has this drive of her own and she is doing everything she can to affect the outcome of this raid. And just on that, Tama isn't even the only impressive child in the arc because Momonosuke has also had his moments, although he does definitely fall cleanly into the needing to be saved category, unfortunately. What I'd like to know most of all is whose bright idea it was not to bring Tama or at least farm her ability in advance. So many key people knew about it, but I guess it doesn't matter, she's here now. And in doing so, Tama actually completes the Go metaphor that was used to describe the current situation in the last chapter by CP0. And it's because the basic mechanics of Go involve capturing your opponent's stones in order to earn those delicious points. But one thing to remember is that Tama's abilities will only work on the gifters, I mean, assumedly. We still have yet to see her try using the ability on a legit Zouin user. However, the pleasures, waiters, Oniwabonshu, etc. Like all the figures who make up the bulk of the beast pirates will still be immune from such thing. However, the gifters are generally the strongest among C's lower ranked riffraff. So converting the majority of them is still a huge win, especially managing to convert Brascola. How can we lose with a gorilla fist? The answer is we cannot. What's going to happen is he's going to show us all the proper way to grow a gorilla, which is from the fist and Kaida was going to forfeit. It's not really that simple. But something else Tama really has going for her is One Piece doing what One Piece really does best and focusing on generational storytelling. It's quite easy to get lost in Luffy's generation because, well, that's our main focus, but now that they're old enough for making their own way in the world, we have another upcoming generation below them with figures like Tama, Momonosuke, Markino's baby and all of the other childlings of the world, which I really like because it gives the series a very organic feel, like time is genuinely moving. And speaking of time moving, just a shameless plug, but if you'd like to see 5,000 years of One Piece history summed up in roughly 20 minutes and please do check out this video, it will give you all of the wonderful generational insights. Also, Usopp and Tama, well, they just happen to be the best thing ever. This is very much what I was hoping for when they came across to each other and the Sniper extraordinaire did not disappoint, nor did our navigator actually, who managed to get in a pretty fine strike on Ulti. A Thunder Lance Tempo as well, the famed attack that was used to defeat Kalifar back on any slobby. And I love callbacks like this because it does remind us that, hey, Nami is actually pretty damn capable in combat. Granted, sure, she is still out of her league against a Toby Roper member, but at the same time, that's what people were saying all the way back in any slobby as well. Nami versus a superhuman assassin Rokushiki master, nah, there's no way she stands a chance. So I'm hoping that the matchup of Nami and Usopp versus Ulti in page one continues and they get to redeem themselves from their initial head-on failure. Although I feel like for Nami to actually beat Ulti, we're definitely going to need some help from Zeus. Moving to a truly great part of the chapter now, we have Frankie versus Sasaki. And at this point, I've long since forgotten how much I love seeing Frankie in combat. He's such an unfortunate straw hat in many, many ways because he excels at battle, but almost never gets the opportunity to show that off. But to me, he never disappoints in a one-on-one fight. Really, how many one-on-one fights has Frankie even had? I can think of three off the top of my head. You've got Nero for gross and your pink. And then I feel like every other situation is just the straw hats are fighting and Frankie also happens to be there. I'm absolutely loving this fight against Sasaki though. General Frankie had some great choreography throwing around at triceratops and whipping out his sword in the end. Thus reminding us that Frankie, yes, is technically a swordsman in addition to everything else because that's what I love most about Frankie. Nothing is off limits to him. His whole mantra is, Give me all of the weapons. And so he doesn't stick to any particular style of combat. It makes him extremely versatile in a way because opponents can never quite predict what he's going to come out with. They just need to be prepared for anything and everything. I mean, you've got swords, guns, lasers, even nipple lights. And there is just, there's no way to shield against all four. Although I do hope that by the end of this, Frankie does get an opportunity to fight Sasaki with his more a more standard body, I suppose we'll call it because General Frankie is cool and all but I think that Frankie's regular body would make for some much cooler art. Moving to another Tobiropa clash or well sort of we have an update on Sanji and he is still entrapped. Although this did come with the nice fact that he had completely decimated every male member in the room but was predictably powerless against any of the female combatants and as much as many online fans are going to give Sanji a lot of crap about this stating he's ruining the rage and everything. All I can really say is good on him for sticking to his mantra. To me, it's always admirable to see someone sticking to their beliefs especially in tough situations but Sanji does also have one very particularly intriguing panel where if I'm not mistaken, he is seeding some pure hype for a certain Niko Robin and in general there's very interesting renewed focus on Robin in these later stages of Wano actually and I want to believe that it is building to some sort of climax and here we are very potentially laying some more groundwork for a maybe eventual Robin versus Black Maria style scenario. Yes. Oh man, the Robin hype is very very real but the question is do I dare to hope because I've just been hurt so so many times before but really this chapter is exactly what I was looking for at this point in time. After the three back to back chapters on the roof I was really craving a look back on the situation as a whole so I'm glad we had zero focus on Kaido in the worst generation. Although with that said that does still leave us with that lingering tease of Kaido's hybrid form once again portrayed primarily through Oda Silhuet. While I'm on this topic though I did notice that quite a few people commented on last week's review stating that this is Kaido's awakened form rather than his hybrid form which I guess it might be possible. It's still far from the simplest explanation though and I am a big fan of Occam's Razor where the simplest explanation is almost always the correct one especially when you have a character like Trafalgar Law quite blatantly staying could this be Kaido's hybrid form? Question mark? Because remember that one piece is a fictional story and Law's dialogue does not exist in isolation it also exists to inform the readers of what's happening. With that said I won't outright state that this isn't Kaido's awakening but at the same time there is a far far more straightforward explanation and it's query that I suppose we'll get an answer to at some stage but not now. However something we can do now is examine the question of whether or not Razor has conqueror's Haki in this video right here. This was a very fun discussion to make and I look forward to seeing you over there.