 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. Last week our adventure took a rather spooky turn on Thriller Bark, and this week it's time to explore the absolutely crazy events of Sabati Archipelago. Sabati Archipelago is the 19th arc in the series, consisting of 24 manga chapters and 21 anime episodes, making it another one of those short but brilliant pieces of story scattered throughout One Piece. Sabati is the ultimate roller coaster of emotions in the series, starting out in a very delightful place by reintroducing Hachi into the series along with his posse including Kami and Papug. This was a really cool moment for the series because it was one of those rare occasions where a character who was introduced during a cover story and actually made their way into the series. If you'd read Hatshahn's Seafloor Stroll, then you were already familiar with Kami and Papug as well as Hachi's dream of starting a Takoyaki which to this day kind of weeds me out. I mean it's like a human starting a restaurant that serves exclusively human meat. I just... I... ugh. But in any case I grew to like both Kami and Papug quite a bit during this arc, and they added a much-needed flavour to the events of Sabati considering the mammoth things to come. It was also really nice that Hachi finally got his shot at redemption because actually I quite often forget that he was introduced as an antagonist and when you think about it he was complacent and even instrumental in Arlong's abusive nami all through her childhood. And I think this meeting really goes towards showing just how much nami has grown as a character. A hell of a lot has happened since the Arlong arc and while nami certainly has not and may never forgive Hachi, she showed that she is willing to put all of that behind her and move forward with her own adventure. Speaking of adventures we get quite a fun outing on Sabati where Hachi shows everyone around and even takes them to a theme park. Sabati itself is a really cool and unique location. It's nice to see an archipelago rather than just another island for a change and it also happens to be composed primarily of a mangrove forest. Now if there's anything that year 8 geography hammered into me it's that mangroves are important for some reason and if real-life mangroves were this cool then I'd probably know exactly why they were so important. In any case the location of Sabati is just plain fun and this is one of the only times it comes to mind where the straw hats have been allowed to be tourists for a while. It's not something we get to see that often because they usually dock at an island with some sort of serious purpose or if not a huge threat pretty much immediately engulfs them. And of course that does come up pretty soon because there are some big things happening on Sabati. The first of which we have to speak about is the introduction of the supernovas who would like to be renamed the worst generation because I guess supernovas just sounded kind of weird. But the introduction of this collective was a massive moment in the series. At this stage we've been following Luffy's journey through the grand line for almost 500 chapters. So to learn that there were nine other people who had undergone a similar journey with their own conflicts and gathering their own impressive bounties really expanded the world like no other event before it. To think that we'd only explored one ninth or tenth of the grand line at most is mind boggling and this is just in the paradise section. We haven't even begun to comprehend the new world at this stage. Rather obviously the character who stood out most to me was Eustace Kidd because he had my favorite initial design plus he had a higher bounty than Luffy which I believe was a very important decision for Oda to make because it showed that even amongst his contemporaries there were people out there who were equal to if not seen as more of a threat than Luffy. Trafalgar Law was the other obvious standout. I loved pretty much everything about him. He had a cool sleek style. His devil fruit was on the more intriguing side of the spectrum and of course he had a polar bear as part of his crew. Also remembering that this was a time long before we knew of the existence of minks so walking talking bears were pretty damn amazing. Actually Beppo is still amazing. I also think I should note that there were supernovas I did not like during their introduction in this arc. These individuals include Capone and Oruj. Their designs and displays of power didn't really take me but you know what when you introduce nine new characters at once everybody is going to have their favorites and least favorites. What I will say is that in retrospect I think it was absolutely insane to doubt either Capone or Oruj and I could not love them more in the modern day series. And of course one of the craziest things in the world is that none of these characters were planned in the slightest. Oda has come out on record as saying that he very hastily invented these guys because he thought that the Sabati arc risked being not entertaining enough and having experienced the Sabati arc with the supernovas I would agree. So I often give Oda a butt load of credit for planning his story very extremely carefully but he really doesn't get enough credit for his ability to improvise. Somehow on a whim Oda created nine incredibly captivating characters whose popularity transcended anybody's expectations to the point where the worst generation are now integral aspects of almost every arc in the new world. But the revelation of big characters does not stop here because during this arc we also meet the living legend that is Silver's Ray Lee. So the straw hats have met characters who sailed with the pirate king before like Crocus and Buggy but Dark King Ray Lee was the first mate of the Roger Pirates and a character who contained the answers to probably every mystery in the entire series. He knows where and what the one piece is. He knows the true history of the world and presumably he knows all about the ancient weapons as well. The temptation to end the suspense upon meeting him is overwhelming. But Luffy quickly put all of those desires right in their place and he explained that knowing all of the answers would ruin the entire journey. I guess. But to balance all of these amazing characters out we also have our first introduction to the Celestial Dragons. Oda did a great job with these guys by avoiding the traps of falling into a stock standard villain and creating individuals who are truly worthy of the word hatred. I do like their concepts though as well as their general style. They really separate themselves from the world and the people they hate so much by dressing like astronauts. Effectively evoking the feeling that they come from above and obviously do not belong here. Plus the idea that they refuse to breathe the same oxygen as commoners do is disgustingly brilliant. A particular shout out needs to go to my boy Saint Charles who has become an infamous figure of hatred in the one piece fan base and it's kind of weird to think about this but the primary source of that hate is because he shot Hachi and the last time we saw Hachi in the series we were pretty overjoyed to see him hurt and defeated with his well-written journey of redemption this octopus has been placed in a position where if any harm is to come to him then there will be hell to pay. And Luffy being Luffy gave us that euphoric release we'd been craving as soon as Saint Charles appeared on screen and delivered one of the greatest punches in storytelling history. I probably say this a lot but this is a defining moment in the series. There is not a single one piece fan who would not vividly remember this punch and many of them would have literally cheered Luffy on. I know I shoulded and as an added benefit to this action the audience was then introduced to Marine Admiral Kizaru and here is where things started to get out of hand. At this point I'm sure we all remember just how absolutely wrecked the straw hats got by the hand of Al Kiji so when Kizaru arrived on Sabati with every intention to capture them this was a big oh shit moment. Now Kizaru is an example of one of those characters whose design I didn't immediately like but I'm like that with all of the Marine admirals. The extreme likeness to Japanese actors still doesn't quite fit nicely into the one piece world for me but each of them very quickly proved themselves to be amazing characters regardless and Kizaru proved to do just that via his rampage through the worst generation which was another grim reminder that our protagonist was still nowhere near the power necessary required to reach the pinnacle of this world even after acquiring power-ups like Gears 2nd and soon enough Gekko Moria's words at the end of Thriller Bark were coming true. This arc is unlike any other in the series and that evolves the complete decimation of the straw hats. They lose and they lose hard. At one point they even become surrounded by Kizaru Bartholomew Kuma and Sentomaru. At which point as an audience member you knew there was just no way out of this situation. Just briefly on Sentomaru though he's a bit of a weird character to me still don't really like him but that's because to this day he hasn't really had any sort of development whatsoever so at the moment he's just a fat strong Sasuke but the ending of Sabati was incredibly tragic especially for Robin but the events of any slobby still pretty fresh it broke my heart to see her torn away from the crew who declared war on the world government just to save her and then on the other end of the spectrum there was Brooke who had literally just joined the crew and I felt kind of gypped because we really hadn't seen anything of him yet and now everybody's separated so we won't be seeing anything of him for quite some time. All in all this ending was a low point in one piece but that doesn't mean bad. It means that Sabati managed to take us to a new emotional place that we hadn't previously explored in the series and I think it was very important to show the straw hats being entirely defeated to really instill a renewed sense of fear in this world. The straw hats can't just stroll in anywhere and do what they want because they're still rookies and they will get wrecked. This is the wake-up call that they and we as readers needed to demand more character growth and yes it was an incredibly depressing ending but the events that occurred on Sabati would pay off phenomenally in the future and rather sadly that pretty much does it for Sabati Archipelago. Next week we'll be beginning a lonely journey into the calm belt as Luffy is sent to the women-only island of Amazon Lily. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe. Please do comment with your thoughts on Sabati Archipelago. This has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.