 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review or source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and it has gummed my attention that I have been featured on Rare Insults. He looks like if a retired WWE wrestler stole the head of a 13 year old boy. Like he's quite built, but then his face is so young. But today we are here to ramble on at great length about One Piece Chapter 2016 and the Out of Context summary is as follows. This chapter is a wild ride where a cloud fights against a dinosaur, an event that is only made possible due to the drive of a skilled gardener. Then the garden itself eats a squirrel, allowing a small girl to communicate with her animal slaves. And a dragon is also there. There are legitimately times when One Piece is more absurd than JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but with that said this chapter was satisfying on every level. I'm not even mad that there's a break next week after the potential revelation of Yamato may be having conqueror's hockey, a discussion that we'll get to in a bit. But first we have a channel announcement. You can now become a member of the Grand Line Review which will grant you this funky badge thing that involves and increases in value over time, as well as access to a bunch of emoji and some upcoming special member stuff in the community section. And to become a member all you need to do is hit that join button below the old video. And if you don't want to that's also fine. You'll still be getting consistent injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed, provided that you're subscribed of course. Nah, that's also important. Alright, chapter time. There is so much that I love about 2016 but we're going to begin with Bao Huang because she's very much the common thread of this week. And that's because a major theme of 2016 is the War of Information. It's an idea that we explored on a surface level in the previous chapters with the news about Luffy's defeat and then the subsequent counter-news of Luffy's, well his undefeat, his promise to bring down Kaido I guess. But that all gets taken to a whole new level in 2016 and there are two extraordinarily pivotal moments that end up assisting the allied forces. The first of which is that Bao Huang never got to announce Momonosuke had allegedly taken a little bit of a tumble off the island. We still don't know if that's actually true or not as readers but it does not matter. A War of Information is very rarely based on truth. The problem being that if Bao Huang did get to announce that it would not only crush the spirits of all of the samurai fighting for the Kozuki clan but it also would have negated the effect Momonosuke previously claiming that Luffy is still alive. Because dead people are not to be trusted with telling you about who is or is not alive. It would have been a massive psychological blow especially since Momo couldn't refute this because he could no longer talk to the masked frog, another glorious out of context sentence. So this was an extremely lucky break but it does get even luckier. Not only does Bao Huang not convey the news about Momonosuke but she accidentally announces the defeat of Ulty and page one. And you can tell that this is a rough blow to the psyche of the Beast Pirates especially this guy right here. She looks like he just shot himself. The reactions I love most though are when Oda chooses to have these close ups of the three remaining tubi ropa members. We haven't checked in with them properly in quite a while but all three of them are clearly struggling. I'd like to highlight Black Maria in particular. She looks both damaged and tired. We haven't seen any of the fight between her, Robin and Brooke but it's clearly not going as well as she anticipated. Who's who and Sasaki are in a similar position. They both look quite roughed up and the thing is even if they're fighting even matches or maybe even have the slight advantage this news is going to have a very negative effect on them because all of a sudden the idea that they could lose is very real as it's already happened to Ulty in page one and here is the best part because it was Bao Huang who made the announcement meaning they have no reason to doubt this information. If it was Momonosuke or Tama that would be a different matter but this is the head of beast related information publicly panicking and telling everyone that 33.3% of the tubi ropa have now fallen. It's a truly abysmal situation for the beast pirates and what's worse is that the allied forces now have control of their information network which I imagine will result in Tama giving orders to all of the smile users who ingested her dango which will further balance out our scales here. And just on that fun thing Bao Huang is a smile user I believe she is a flying squirrel type so there is a big big opportunity here for Tama to feed her a dango and then use Bao Huang to deliver all sorts of crazy and misleading information sort of like how Babanuki was used back in the Udon prison days. This chapter is insane because yes some of the tubi ropa have fallen but even worse with Bao Huang captured the beast pirates just outright lost the war of information that is huge. That whole thread is what I enjoyed most about 2016 though it's a very easy trap to fall into to you know just focus on the physical fights and having like the punching being the key to winning the day and I'm not going to claim that this is some sort of groundbreaking examination of wartime psychology by Oda but it is a nice added element especially when trying to construct a story about going up against such overwhelming power and of course overwhelming numbers except for the actual numbers though they've all been quite underwhelming. To pair with this idea Oda also chose 2016 as the chapter for a new CP0 update so the last time we had a battle score from these guys was in 1003 where the numbers stated were 27,000 in favor of the beast pirates against a mere 5,000 of the allied forces. That gap has now shrunk quite significantly and we are sitting at 20,000 versus 7,000 respectively. However big thing here this number seems to only take into account the waiters and pleasures that flip sides in response to Queen on the performance floor which theoretically means that we have not yet taken the smile users into account which Thomas seems poised to activate at any moment now so there's probably another huge change in score incoming. Also I'd like to note that head CP0 dude he doesn't have a name yet but he doesn't actually believe that Luffy is still alive which means that he clearly disregarded Momo's message as a lie for the sake of morale which is why having Bao Huang deliver the news of Altium Page 1's defeat is everything. There's just no reason not to believe her because she is on the side of the beast pirates so why would she lie? In any case I'm quite curious about CP0 as always because they aren't going to come to a point where they need to make a decision. Eventually the momentum is going to be in favor of the allied forces at which stage they're going to need to decide whether they act in favor of Kaido in favor of the allies or I guess do what it is they do best which is primarily nothing. Whatever they choose I'm anxiously awaiting that decision because it tells us about the general motives of the world government. Would they rather preserve the balance of the emperor system or would they take this opportunity to ensure its destruction? At this stage I'm not entirely sure. The only narrative clue we really have is that Sword is technically on the side of Luffy here so it could make fun storytelling sense for Shield to be on the opposing side. Let's get to the really fun stuff now though. Zeus has made his glorious return equipped with hat and everything. Everything being that hat that is because he doesn't really have anything else. I am so glad that Zeus has his hat back. Seeing him without it is sort of like seeing Luffy without the straw hat. Yeah he has a head under the hat but it just looks kind of wrong. The explanation for his survival is pretty much exactly as I think we all thought and he is now a permanent addition to the climb attack unable to separate himself unless Big Mom herself were to do it and I for one hope that that never ever happens because this combination is phenomenal. Like I expected Nami and Zeus to work well together but I did not anticipate Zeus being able to manipulate the shape of the climb attack at least not to these extremes because in addition to all of the increased lightning-y wonder Zeus is now the world's greatest multi-tool because he can seemingly become anything that a situation calls for. In the chapter he morphs himself into a mace which was really cool to see but the potential here is now limited only by Otis creativity. I should say that I'm pretty terrified for the prospect of future One Piece Dojin no doubt featuring Zeus in all sorts of uh um how do I say this without getting demonetized? Personal pleasure equipment. I'm afraid that Zeus will assume the form of all sorts of personal pleasure equipment. Personally I'm hoping for an eventual situation where we see battle axe Nami come to fruition which in case you don't know was one of her original design options. She was supposed to be an axe wielder and also partially cyborg at one point so all we need is for Zeus to transform into a giant weather axe and look we're there but to further prove that he is capable of almost anything Zeus even appears to make his version of the NL face during 1016 which is always great to see. It looks like a terrified sausage facing the prospect that it's about to be eaten and this of course transitions nicely into Ulty one of the reasons why I love chapter 1016 so so much is because it gave me what I've wanted since the beginning of this conflict which is Ulty's defeat by the hand of Nami and Uso and Zeus I suppose but this team who have suffered and been beaten on several occasions now have finally done it and Ulty is down for good this time which you can tell because of Baohuang's announcement it's a very typical odor thing to do when characters properly fall he just he makes a big deal out of it either by stating their defeat in an odor box or by having other characters yell at it like the top of their lungs which also means that the countdown has officially begun if past one piece is anything to go by then likely from here on out how bad guys are going to fall like dominoes in order of prominence so I guess that means bringing down the rest of the toby ropoh in whatever order I'm not sure if there's a preference then jack queen king and somewhere amongst all of that we also need to deal with what Paris Barrow are achieved for Kurokuju but those three are more like optional side quests thus leaving us with Kaido and maybe Big Mom to deal with in some sort of final climactic battle so I've got to say it's really not looking good for anyone who still believes that the raid is going to fail yes we still have a long way to go but success is most certainly incoming back to ulti though I want to flag usopp he's a very subtle and underrated aspect of the chapter but he performs his role perfectly in fact it even reminds me a bit of one piece stampede where usopp is more or less responsible for luffy's victory and usopp says something along the lines of the role of the sniper is to support and that's exactly what he does here he supports nami by removing tama from danger and leaving ulti open to complete obliteration so good on him so good on him in fact that usopp is going to receive a mighty two raid points from this chapter alone one from the assist of beating ulti and another for capturing bao huang meanwhile nami will also bring in two points one for defeating ulti and the other for acquiring the power of Zeus and as for tama oh we will get to tama I have a feeling she's about to do something pretty big with her announcement though so I'd like to see what that ends up being first but this girl is set to receive a lot of points not to be neglected this chapter is quite a lovely opening as well focusing on the festival and the flower capital to some people this sort of thing might seem like a waste of pages because it doesn't do too much story wise but I think moments like this are very important because they serve as a reminder of what we're fighting for and here that's mostly embodied in toko the profoundly powerless tragedy stricken yet somehow incredibly hopeful child toko is the most precious thing that one who has to offer and she must be protected from floating skull islands at all costs this scene is also a nice tonal break from all of the high intensity chaos happening on onigashima and one of the big issues with giant stretches of action is that it can become quite draining and fatiguing after a while which I think is very much epitomized in the late stages of dress rosa and whole cake island so you do need quieter or happier or just tonally different moments to break that up every now and then stuff like this or another example would be the few quiet moments of momonosuke hiding with shinobu and yamato whatever it is just something to provide a quick breather for the readers and watchers before heading straight back into action so I definitely appreciated these pages and I also love the juxtaposition of toko and tengiyama looking up into the sky thinking of a wonderful yasu looking down upon them and then we cut to what's actually happening with this looming island of death looking down upon them approaching them from the sky very much the opposite of what they were hoping although onigashima isn't there yet it did reach the mainland but we're still not close enough to the flower capital for the citizens to actually see it crap I forgot to put the toast in toast goes in and bam so yamato and kaito pretty hype way to win the chapter with a stunning amount of things to note for being only two pages long the first of which is that kaito immediately assumed his hybrid form he is not messing around with yamato and that is very exciting because it must mean that yamato to kaito is worthy of this form worthy in a way that the vassals were not and that the worst generation had to prove there we go better late than never and since a shocking amount of people were asking in the last video the bread I'm currently using is Helga's traditional whole meal no they do not sponsor the ground line review but I'm open to it because your bread is both thick and delicious with that said of all people yamato is very much aware of how impossible it is to defeat kaito one-on-one so all of this is just buying time for luffy's return which does lead to our second thing in which yamato states a clear intention to set sail with luffy now this isn't new information but it is heavy reinforcement yamato has an almost luffy-like level of persistence and characters like this generally get what they want also interestingly I went back on the first time that yamato said this and luffy didn't actually give an answer instead he focused more on the odin thing and he says well you can't be odin because everyone loves odin which uh wow that was a massive burn but I do think that yamato's crew joining chances have almost been set in stone here at the very least yamato was almost certainly leaving wano alongside luffy and friends of luffy at this point it either has to be yamato or momonosuke because they both know the secrets of the special odin journal funnily enough they're also both poised to become the shogun of wano as well that's momonosuke's dream and in yamato's case that is kaito's dream for yamato but putting aside the possibility of some kind of heartfelt sacrifice it makes all the sense in the world for momo to stay here and be the shogun like he wants and for yamato to go with luffy to fulfill this whole odin business so I've got to say this is really not looking good for carrot she's almost entirely out of the conversation for joining the crew now the silly rabbit couldn't even defeat one times candy man now the big cat has to go and do it instead if anything the big cat is the one who should join the crew but yamato's confirmed desire also leads into our next thing because there are so many things here and this is actually really big but yamato more or less confirms that luffy is indeed a joyboy or has the will of joyboy or however it works we don't know yet and with yamato having read odin's journal we have no reason to doubt this claim of course that's what many of us did assume but there has also been a branch theory out there that momonosuke may be joyboy instead of luffy but those roles now appear to be split luffy is joyboy and will do joyboy things but it is still momonosuke's destiny to bring about the dawn of the world whatever that is so basically there are at least two prophesized figures that are serving two different purposes which is another reason why momonosuke may need to stay on wano especially if it's so important for unknown reasons more unknown reasons all of the reasons are unknown and that's actually our next thing apparently there is something very noteworthy about the island of wano itself which is why kaito has chosen it as his base of operations that as with everything is quite intriguing because aside from the alleged presence of a road ponyglyph i'm not sure if we've ever flagged the importance of wano itself yes odin's mission was to open its borders for the eventual joyboy but i've never really thought too deeply about why that's essential beyond easy access to a road ponyglyph so there is something much deeper here an added layer of wano-esque mystery and not to be forgotten the chapter also ends with a clash between yamato and kaito very potentially implying that yamato has conquerous haki because we do see the funky black lightning effect although i suppose it could just be emanating from kaito alone however the way i see it is that if you are both the son of kaito and claiming to be a literal kozuki odin and having access to conquerous haki seems like a bare minimum requirement but yeah that was an insane amount of stuff for a two-page interaction and i think that shows how well oda has managed to condense his storytelling over the past quarter of a century it's just two pages of two people talking smack to each other and yet we come away from it with so much to digest which is pretty standard for one piece but here is something very crazy this chapter is only 15 pages long and that includes the spread of zoo striking ulti so it's 14 pages really even then i still feel like i've taken in 18 plus pages of content which i really appreciate because there are some series out there where you can read 18 plus pages and it feels like nine or ten everything about this chapter was fantastic and yes it's sad that we have a break next week as it always is but whatever but to combat your one piece withdrawals over the next two weeks i'd suggest watching more videos more of my videos to be precise beginning with this one examining some unpopular one piece opinions such as smoker being a waste of a character so i look forward to seeing you there