 So do we all remember that one time where Oda gender-swapped all of the warlords? It resulted in a very elegant mihawk, a simply adorable jinbei, and a boa Hancock, who, huh, just kind of looks like Trafalgar lore with earrings. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have a rather big discussion, something I've been waiting to do for quite some time, because we need to talk about the future of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. For the anime-only watches of my channel, you've recently experienced one piece of around the big news which spawned from the reverie, and that is the abolishment of the Seven Warlords. So we're going to be discussing why and how that happened, as well as where these figures go from here, because without ties to the world government, these characters have a ton of potential going forward. Plus, there's also the discussion of how this will disrupt the balance of the planet at large, and after Wano, I guarantee you, the One Piece world will not look the same as we remember it prior to arriving at the Land of the Samurai. Most notably, I suspect the world government will institute a mandatory subscribe to the Grand Line review policy, which is nice of them, because it will result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. So if I were you, I'd get a head start on doing that before the Marines come a-knockin'. But to move on, in episode 957, we got to see the events of chapter 956 play out, a very, very well done episode by the way, which you should check out just on its own if you're not an anime watcher, but several announcements were made to the world, so the only one of which that we are currently completely aware of is the dissolution of the Seven Warlords. And this was actually quite heavily foreshadowed prior to this moment, all the way back in Dressrosa, actually, when Admiral Fujitora stated his desire to remove them from power. Right to Dolph Lamingo's smarmy face thing as well. And make no mistake, Fujitora is the man who is the most instrumental in this decision being made. He was the one who organized a meeting between Nefertari Kobra Vala Basta and Riku Dodo of Dressrosa. Two monarchs of the bulk government who were, how shall we say, adversely affected by the warlord system, which is of course putting it lightly. And those two then went on to propose the resolution to the actual reverie council. There is a problem with this though, one that we need to quite immediately address, and this might remain quite under-remembered, if that's a word, and I don't think it is. But a rather under-remembered aspect of One Piece is that the warlords are a supremely important institution, and alongside the marines and the empress of the sea, they make up the three great powers of the world. At times this can be a bit difficult to reconcile, primarily because the warlords consist of figures with a questionable value, be it in terms of raw strength, military might, or even their willingness to cooperate at all. And in many ways it can be difficult to see how characters like Bola Hancock, Sir Crocodile and Gekko Moria were somehow integral for maintaining global balance, but it's all due to what I will express as overly simplistic mathematics. The equation goes as follows, the seven warlords plus the marines equals the might of roughly one emperor of the sea, which we have seen in action during the paramount war. Hence why balance is possible, because all the world government needs is to equal the might of one emperor and it forces a global stalemate, because you know if two powers of that level clash then it leaves them vulnerable to be taken down by the remaining ones. However this balance has now been quite disrupted and it's not clear yet how this will impact the marines, after having said all of that you'd naturally think negatively, but Fujitora and I suppose the kings associated with the world government seem confident enough that a new invention from Dr. Vagapunk will easily replace the might that the warlords provided. However this decision has still come at well quite possibly the worst possible time, mainly due to the threat of an alliance between Big Mom and Kaido and just having the power equitable to a single emperor isn't quite going to cut it against that. And in fact one of the reasons why the marines are currently powerless to do anything I want to at the moment is because a lot of their forces are now dedicated to capturing the seven warlords that they severed ties with. I guess I should say the seven remaining warlords, so with open hostilities waged against them let's examine where each of these figures go from here and we are going to start with the buggy. Weirdly enough he is probably one of the most unpredictable of the warlords and one very likely scenario I see would be buggy commanding his full forces to engage with the marines whilst he escapes with his core crew or just on his own, somehow he's buggy he'll accomplish it. Which is effectively what buggy said he would do and that would be a bit of a shame because it would bring an end to this whole buggy enterprise. Although speaking realistically this is the warlord most likely to actually be captured. Although a lot of it really does depend on who's been sent after him because we do know that it looks like admirals may have been deployed in this capture effort and as they should be in some very extreme cases. With that said because this is buggy we're talking about I can also imagine the exact opposite happening. So picture this, the marines are successful in defeating and capturing every warlord of the sea with the sole exception of buggy. He is the lone survivor and after the inevitable fall of Big Mom and Kaido and Wano he takes advantage of the vacuum of power effectively installing himself as an emperor of the sea. I know it's a pretty wild dream but hey so was the idea of him becoming a warlord to begin with and the thing about buggy is that he is one of Oda's favorite characters so we really can't apply any sense of logic or reason to his actions or his future. Which is why I can very much see him surviving this and going on to become an even more outrageous presence in this world. Perhaps even forming an alliance with the red-haired pirates or even future pirate king in Monkey D. Luffy thus cementing the name of buggy in all of history. Next up though we have Bola Hancock and this is probably the warlord whose fate we know the most about and it's not from manga events either quite surprisingly it's from a statement that Oda made at Jump Festa 2020 which was actually in 2019 so they work. In any case as part of his message Oda wrote the following. Wano Country Ark is finally entering its last rush. I've drawn this arc precisely because I wanted to draw these scenes and then Sabo. Vivi. Hancock. Ah yes. Which admittedly having read it out loud does sound kind of orgasmic but while this is very much open to interpretation the fact that Bola Hancock's name has been placed in the same group as Sabo and Vivi well it doesn't exactly inspire confidence does it. Something very very bad has happened to either Sabo or Vivi or both and this could be Oda signalling that Hancock is in a very similar state of trouble right now and in this regard we do know that Kobi was sent to participate in the attack on Amazon Lily although it is unknown who commanded him and the rest of his forces but realistically look I don't think things are looking too good for Hancock and seeing her becoming captured is a very reasonable idea. On the other hand if she and or the rest of the Kucha tribe escape then the obvious solution is to join forces with either the Straw Hats directly or even the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. So at the very least Hancock has two very clear parts forward one significantly darker than the other though. Now let's talk about someone no one seems to care about no not you treble although you do fit that description but I'm talking about Edward Weevil from what we've seen the attempt to capture him is what I can only describe as futile and heavily misguided as someone whose strength has been compared to that of a young white beard he and his mother are some of the more likely candidates to evade capture. Not that I think this situation changes things with him all that much Weevil is still very much on a mission of his own but I do think the potential of an alliance with Luffy's group is on the cards in the future because let's be real here it's mostly because Miss Bucking has like a raging lady boner for destroying the remnants of the white beard pirates so we really fear Weevil at all but in reality Weevil himself is actually far more emotionally driven to take revenge on Blackbeard for obvious father murdering reasons and in the event that Miss Bucking's influence were to diminish then Weevil is probably going to be a strong force in our favor going forward but if he were to be captured then you'd best be sending an admiral or two because this boy is not going down easily and you could say very similar things about our next warlord the world's greatest swordsman, Rikul Mihawk the world government are absolutely out of their mind if they think they can subdue him at least from everything we've seen once again throw a handful of admirals at him and we might have some trouble otherwise there's just no chance however with Mihawk's casual freedom now revoked he has choices to make either he can continue to float around and be chased which he may actually find appealing he does seem to quite relish that idea actually or he can choose to associate himself with another group and this time the obvious candidate for that would be Shanks they may have been former rivals but Shanks and Mihawk are pretty buddy buddy and of all the people in the world that Mihawk could respect in you know a captain style position Shanks is probably the only candidate but either way with Mihawk here's the thing he certainly isn't going to be fighting against Shanks or any other emperor for that matter so the world government have effectively just like poked the dog here just inviting Mihawk to wreck havoc on them in addition to some unfortunate lone pirates and that's one of the very confusing things at this stage right now it looks as if the world government really just shot themselves in the foot and made unnecessary enemies even with vagabunks new weapon you don't necessarily need to discard the warlords and making an enemy of Mihawk in particular seems very very unwise at the same time though quite probably the best demonstration of why this may have been a good decision would be to catch up with the world post-wano and hear of Mihawk's defeat or capture specifically thanks to vagabunks weapon that would probably be the ultimate justification because apart from maybe weevil Mihawk is very much the ultimate warlord and weirdly enough at this point we've only explored four characters buggy Hancock weevil and Mihawk but when you think about it those were the only active warlords a mere four out of the intended seven which does bring into question whether or not they were actually serving their purpose of balance to begin with especially when we consider that our final technical warlord at this stage was Bartholomew Kuma or at least what remained of Bartholomew Kuma because he's currently being used as a rental vehicle by the world noble so the only balance he's maintaining is that of keeping the world noble steady and off the ground so when you think about it the warlords were basically operating at half of their intended power anyway it was a complete shamble of a system especially with the quick fire betrayal of Trafalgar law followed by the defeat of Dolflamingo the very next day in addition to that warlord betrayals were nothing really new to this system due to the actions of Blackbeard during the paramount war although having said that what remained of them was still enough to effectively combat the whitebeard pirate so but of course this discussion would not be complete without contemplating the futures of our former warlords so Blackbeard he's very clear he's an emperor now. Dolflamingo is also quite clear having been incarcerated in level six of Impel down this doesn't take any future involvement from him off the table though because there is still a plan or mechanism in place for another mass breakout of the prison and this is because Bonkley the very alive and well Bonkley currently serves as the queen of level 5.5 very much continuing on with Ivankov's revolutionary plans and as part of that as every chance a Dolflamingo could breakout alongside them and return to cause chaos in the world as for which side that's always impossible to tell Trafalgar law does need a mention but he's also pretty much set in stone at this stage he is tied to Luffy like Zorro to a post Gekko Moria though he is an interesting one as he may very well have taken Blackbeard up on his offer and joined the emperor's crew and to be honest I really don't see why Moria would say no at this point. Posey could have said no and then got killed that's always possible but then there is our super original OG warlord Sir Crocodile whose actions in the last two years have still not been made known to us. He's very sneaky reptile though and he is very much keeping up with the new surrounding Luffy and he's also kind of a natural ally sort of. Crocodile did help save Luffy's life at Marineford so we do have another unlikely natural ally in the Crocoboy. It's also worth mentioning that any discussion of balance is going to be completely thrown out the window though. Wano of course is not yet concluded at the time of this recording but it will almost certainly see the defeat of at least one if not two emperors of the sea which compounded with the abolishment of the warlords is going to thrust one piece into an entirely new era. I really do mean it when I say that after coming out of Wano the world is going to be unrecognizable the emperor system collapsing the warlords realigning the revolutionary army finally acting and the world government adding a new factor to the table and in addition to all of that we're also going to be seeing the rise of the worst generation. So look in terms of logistics and politics this warlord abolishing stuff yes it is intriguing but in terms of narrative it is 100% necessary because the seven warlords are a symbol of this era and not the next one so for us to move on to this new age adorn of a new world fulfilling some sort of inherited will of joyous boys whatever you want to call it the warlords need to go it's just another monumental sign pointing us in the right direction towards the end of one piece but what do you guys think please leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my discord server and if you'd like to see more videos like this and please to go and check out some of the content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight until youtube feeds but for now this has been the grand line review and I'll see you next time