 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Last week we took a brief stop on the Paradise Island of Amazon Lily, and this week we're heading into the complete opposite direction by delving deep into the many hells of Impel Down. Impel Down is the 21st arc in the series, consisting of 25 manga chapters and 27 anime episodes. A surprisingly close adaptation read actually, Impel Down marks a huge turning point in the series, where Luffy decides to put his journey on hold in order to save his brother Ace. And to do this, he has to break into a highly secure underwater prison. Sounds like a pretty dark premise, and it is, but Impel Down more than makes up for this gloomy atmosphere by featuring an incredible cast of colorful characters. Quite notably, Impel Down heralds the return of fan-favorite villains such as Buggy the Clown, Bon Clay, and Mr. Three. Wait, was Mr. Three ever a fan-favorite villain? Probably not, but hey, he's also there. So after Amazon Lily, I think it became quite apparent that Luffy really needs a crew to be complete, and this makeshift band of ex-villains did just fine for that purpose. I particularly want to praise the combination that is Buggy and Mr. Three. This is a team I never knew I needed until this arc. These kindred spirits provided some exceptionally necessary comedy to alleviate the audience from the incredibly serious and dark events actually taking place during the arc. And you know the weird thing is that I really did not like either of these characters until Impel Down. Maybe during Orange Town and Log Town just kind of annoyed me and the same with Mr. Three in Little Garden in Alabasta, but during Impel Down the stars just aligned somehow and now I love both of them. Also I just want to note that Mr. Three spends a lot of Impel Down creating wax keys. I wonder if that will be at all important during the next arc. And you know what, I really could spend this entire review just talking about returning characters because at times Impel Down acts as very much of a greatest hits album of the one piece world. And credit really needs to be given to just how well written it is. Because this arc could have very easily turned into the plot of some very bad fan fiction. But we also need to emphasise the brilliant new characters that Impel Down thrust into the world. First and foremost there is Jinbei, a character who nobody could have predicted being as important as he currently is. Although I do remember being quite disappointed by Jinbei initially because his design looked pretty goofy to me. But my views changed entirely as soon as he began to fight and now he's my number one fish man. Very curious character is Emporio Ivankov who was a really brilliant injection of life into this desolate hell of a prison. Especially after having lost Buggy and Mr. Three at a certain point. I love Ivankov's pure energy and his very existence would go on to completely reshape the one piece fan community as we know it. I mean as a result of Ivankov's devil fruit every crack theory under the sun is now a possibility. For example, Ivankov is Luffy's mum, Crocodile is Luffy's mum, Dragon is Luffy's mum. Hell, even Steli is now Luffy's mum. So thank you very much for your contribution to the series, Ivankov. Although I have to say my personal favourite character introduced during Impel Down is the unsung hero Inazuma. His design is incredibly cool and I love the way that he uses his devil fruit. In fact, whenever I think about Impel Down one of the key scenes that always pops into my mind is when Inazuma briefly faced off against Magellan on his own and he was just slicing stuff right up all over the place. But speaking of Magellan, this is the character who acts as the primary antagonist of the arc and he does so in a very non-traditional way because Impel Down isn't structured like your typical one-piece arc. Magellan doesn't have any evil purpose or plans. He simply wants to maintain order and continue to work for what he believes is justice. Furthermore, he also is not an opponent that Luffy was set up to beat, which I appreciate because the lesson we've recently learned in the series is that Luffy is nowhere near strong enough to compete with the top figures of this world. So having Magellan loom in this arc as an unbeatable presence really added a great sense of fear and dread because if this guy caught you, there was no going back. Well, except for that one time where Luffy got caught and went back. But moving swiftly on from that, remember when Magellan single-handedly destroyed the entirety of the Blackbeard Pirates? I do, and I don't think Magellan gets the credit he deserves for this feat because you know what, if it weren't for Shilyu, the Blackbeard Pirates would simply be dead and gone right now. Although I do have to say, I will never understand why Magellan released Shilyu in the first place. Apparently, Magellan was unable to contain the prison all by himself. But exactly what did he think that Shilyu was going to do? Let's put ourselves in Shilyu's shoes, shall we, and examine our options. Option one. You helped the man who originally imprisoned you to regain order in his prison and then return to your cell to rot away for the rest of your life. Or option two. You assist the chaos already in progress, which the head warden has admitted that he can't deal with alone and pave the way for your escape and subsequent freedom. And oh my god, he picked option two, how very unexpected. But other than that, Magellan was pretty amazing, especially at the end of the arc where he ordered his battleship to pursue the escapees. Man, I cannot wait for the final showdown between Luffy and Magellan at Marine. Hannibal is another heavily underrated character in the series, in my opinion. He was comedy goal during Impel Down, and his running joke of very publicly stating that he will usurp the chief warden's position was fantastic. But as ridiculous as he was, Hannibal also had a lot of heart when he fought valiantly against Luffy simply for the cause of justice. So yeah, this guy definitely surprised me as a character. In more ways than one actually. When I was reading the manga, I always pictured him with a very deep, devilish voice. And then all of a sudden the anime comes around and he's this high-pitched little brat. Classic Toei choice. Apart from Magellan and Hannibal though, I would say that Impel Down felt a little underpopulated. Considering the sheer amount of prisoners stored here, I think it's a bit of an ask to entrust the entire space to one competent individual, a semi-competent vice warden and imp and a dominatrix. I mean, there are a lot of miscellaneous guards, but when have miscellaneous guards ever been worth their salary in any form of media? So yeah, I'm not entirely sure how Impel Down has been immune to an incident like this up until now. But hey, one of the best aspects of Impel Down was the setting itself. I said this before with the Sea Train Arc review, but confined spaces work really well for Oda because they force him to be much more creative than he may otherwise need to be with an open island setting. With Impel Down, Oda had to very carefully plan the different levels as well as which characters are where at any given point in a much more precise fashion than most arcs. In fact, my favorite moment of critical chaos during this arc occurs when Hannibal is going through what's happening on all of the different levels and you see Luffy's group on level four bugging Mr. Three starting riots above them and the Blackbeard Pirates storming the entrance. And because Impel Down has so few directions one can travel in, this also signals to the viewer that these groups are going to intersect at some point, which is a great moment for the audience. Usually when you see those little recaps and maps of where people are, you can't really tell what's going to happen from that because the options are generally infinite. So I definitely appreciate the more linear structure of the Impel Down compound as a unique exploration in the series. Having said that, I'm not so keen on the design of the interior of the prison. With the exception of level five, everything started to look very flat and bricky for most of the arc. The anime helped this somewhat by using a variety of different colors for each level, but in the manga the backgrounds got quite repetitive. The other design issue I have, and this probably isn't something that could have been solved, is the fact that all of the prisoners are just dressed in the same stripy outfits. So in addition to the repetitive backgrounds, we also got a lot of repetitive outfits, at least at first. As soon as the newcomer land guys got introduced, the outfits became much more varied, which was incredibly needed to break up the boring at that point. But in terms of the story, Impel Down is a highly competent arc that kept me intrigued at every turn and provided much more than I ever expected of it. It's also the first arc in the series that solidly proves that one piece can survive without the straw hats, because the characters and the world that Oda has crafted adjusted that damn good. And as a result, Impel Down stands out as a completely unique arc in the series, offering the audience a very different take on one piece, and managing to keep the series fresh after more than 10 years of publication at this point, while simultaneously setting up an absurdly massive arc to take place immediately after it. And that pretty much does it for Impel Down. Next week we are going to be tackling the biggest event to happen in one piece since the execution of Goal D. Roger, as we head to the Paramount War at Marine Food. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite, or subscribe, and please do comment with your thoughts on Impel Down. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.