 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a manga review of chapter 914, or Kobore, the town of leftovers. In this chapter is what we've been waiting for, the great fusion between Western and Eastern media, as we have an appearance from none other than Batman. Although I have to say that the Dark Knight has really let himself go, and it's quite an interesting choice to have wings essentially spawning from his arse, but hey, to each their own. I mean maybe his smile for it was ingested as a suppository, but in all seriousness the gifters in this chapter are quite interesting. I was worried when they were first introduced because I really didn't take to any of their designs, I mean they all just looked a bit like fodder with miscellaneous animal parts. It felt a bit like mass-produced laziness, but the gifters in this chapter are actually quite cool and unique. Gazelle Man is particularly interesting, he actually looks a hell of a lot like a superhero, very flash like actually, if well the flash war fishnet stockings. At the moment I'm mostly glad that these gifters are actually causing some trouble with their weird abilities rather than just being easily defeatable nobodies. It lends a lot of credibility to Kaido's forces, because you know how it is in most shounen, the big bad super power will come in with some sort of army and their masses of people will just be entirely useless and a waste of our time. A prime example of that would be the lower ranking forces of Big Mom. It was kind of like you had the Charlotte children and then the associates like Tamago and Pecoms, and then all you had below them were the miscellaneous candy soldiers. There was no specialized mass force that was the equivalent of what the gifters are. So yeah, the fact that someone as low in the pecking order as Gazelle Man actually has a really cool ability to travel up to 200 kilometers an hour is a very promising start for a great adventure on the land of Samurai. But we do also have some bigger characters mentioned, a couple of new headliners by the name of Holdem and Speed, both of which are card game references to add to the ever-growing theme of Kaido's crew. Hawkins is also mentioned, so I think we should take that as a sign that Holdem and Speed are on about that same level of strength, which is incredibly threatening. Especially Holdem, who we saw an odor-style dark and silhouette of. At the moment, he looks an awful lot like a lion, although he could be any other manner of big cat as well. I'm really hoping that he isn't a gifter because ever since Rob Luchi's devil fruit was revealed, I've been pretty damn keen to see a lion or a tiger type zoan fruit. Of course, that's not the only explanation though because Holdem could also be a mink, and I take time to point that out because we know that there is more than likely a mink working for Kaido, due to the fact that Jack was able to make his way to zoe despite it being a phantom island. So if he were to be a mink, Mr. Holdem here would be the obvious explanation for that, although I am kind of hoping that it's a mink we've already met who was responsible for that betrayal because one piece doesn't usually get into that deep sort of double crossing, at least not on the side of the protagonists. So I think that would be quite interesting. Back to Holdem though, if I had to put money on it, I would say that he is a zoan type user, and that is obviously going to be the running devil fruit thread of Kaido's crew. I say this because one, yeah they're called the beast pirates for a reason, and secondly because I was going back on Whole Cake Island recently for the arc review series, and I noticed something I'd never really picked up on before. Every new devil fruit user we were introduced to during that arc and there were like 13 or so of them, but they were all paramecia users. So if Whole Cake Island was the showcase of paramecias, then I think that Wano will do the same for zoan types, and of course poor old logeers will just have to continue to receive little to no love. But another highlight of this chapter is definitely Kiku, during my review for 913 I said that what I really wanted for her was to turn out to be a badass konoichi, but hey I'm even happier for her to turn out to be a samurai. Of course it's not quite that simple all due to the use of one little pronoun, Sessha. This is an archaic Japanese pronoun that was used by male samurai to refer to themselves in essentially the same way that we would say I in English. Now at first I didn't think a whole lot of it, in my mind I assumed that female samurai weren't really a thing, and if they were they'd be impersonating men, so it would make perfect sense for her to use a masculine pronoun. But hey, a tiny bit of research proved me wrong, because I am but an ignorant westerner who knows shit all. Turns out there were indeed female samurai, although they were referred to as honor bugesha. They were also given a female specific weapon known as an Arginata, which is sort of like a bisento, aka the weapon whitebeard used, but with a more compact and slender blade. And essentially all of this throws into question whether Kiku is actually a male posing as a woman. What I'm hoping is that it's just a weird speech quote, because we are this close to having an amazing female character in the series again, although there is another potential flag in this chapter that Kiku may be male, which is when she's tending to Zora's wounds and he says she's a huge woman referring to her height. And just find that to be a really odd piece of dialogue for Oda to throw in there, and yeah look it's definitely in character for Zora to blatantly state such a thing, but one piece only has so many chapters, pages, panels, and words to tell its story at this point, and there is no room for any unessential information. Everything that happens, or is said, needs to further the story or a character, which is actually done very effectively with Tama during this chapter. Her whole exchange with Suru might seem fairly pointless to us in the grand scheme of things, but the development of her character gives us a great insight into how the people of Wano have been forced to live. The plight of an entire civilization is conveyed through this one goofy little girl. Anyway my point is that these things are all done for a reason, so I hope that this purposeful gender questioning pays off. So the second half of this chapter flings us into action yet again, which I love because the last few chapters have felt quite slow due to the breaks, so it's nice to see the pacing going strong. And as a result, we get a couple of beautifully drawn panels, my favorite of which is definitely Zora blocking the arrow fired by overweight Batman. I love any time that Oda draws swords at that particular angle almost facing the reader because you generally get a fantastic view of the blade, but you also get to see a large majority of the crossguard. Also in this particular case, I really enjoy the shadow being cast by Zora's sword onto Suru's face. It's a ridiculously simple group of lines that create quite the wonderful effect. The other pieces of action I really enjoy here are Anytime Koma Inu is running. This fantastic creature is becoming dangerously close to usurping the south bird as my favorite creature in the entire One Piece world. But something we can no longer ignore is the appearance of one Trafalgar lore on the closing panel, and my god to see it look worried. Laura is usually the sort of character who keeps his emotional state under wraps, but he looks quite acutely aware of exactly why it's not a good idea for Luffy to be causing this kind of trouble, which fills me with a delightful sense of dread. One of the aspects I really loved about Whole Cake Island was the fact that Luffy and Ko couldn't just stroll in and wreck face like they had done previously in arcs like any slobby alabaster or dressrozer. They had to step very, very carefully because one wrong move essentially meant the end of them. So I like that we're developing a similar, if not more serious feeling here on Warner. Of course the inclusion of lore is very welcome because it makes the potential upcoming conflict a nice 3v3. Hold him speed and Hawkins versus Luffy, Zora and Lore. Or at least I guess that's how you'd anticipate any typical shounen playing out anyway. I actually think that lore's presence gives us one hell of a get out of jail free card as he could simply retrieve Tama with his room abilities and further use them to allow everyone to escape. But then again there's always the possibility that the straight thinking lore could get caught up in the enthusiasm of Luffy and Zora and be forced into a really cool if unorthodox situation. Either way it continues to be nice to see him and the heart pirates on Warner. So the last thing I like to touch on is rather unusually the cover story. I generally ignore them because they haven't been particularly relevant to anything lately especially the olombus portion which went on for far too long but this week something very unexpected happened and we have a bonus story of sorts in the ongoing tales of the self-proclaimed straw hat grand fleet featuring somebody who looks suspiciously like Bellamy. And if that is indeed the case then I am thrilled. I enjoy Bellamy as a character far more than any of the grand fleet members so sign me up for five or so cover pages following him. The cover also presents us with a very stunning location in terms of the sheer scale of all the flags and other assorted goods. And a great general rule for this sort of visual bombardment is to look very carefully because more often than not there is a little easter egg in there and that holds true here because if you look above the furthest right windmill in the foreground you can actually see part of the Jolly Roger of the red-haired pirates which is pretty damn cool. It's probably completely irrelevant but a nice little bonus regardless. As for why Bellamy may be here well given that this is a tale from the grand fleet he may be here to commission some sort of custom Jolly Roger for the grand fleet because when you think about it they definitely need some sort of common symbol and they can't use the straw hat Jolly Roger like the extended forces of most emperors. So hey the next time we see this force in full swing they may have some schmick new Jolly Rogers to show off or courtesy of Bellamy. If that pretty much does it for chapter 914 if you enjoyed this video then feel free to like favorite or subscribe and if you are in any way keen on supporting this independent channel then please do check out my Patreon, Discord server or Twitter the links to which are in the handy description below. This has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.