 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review or source for everything one piece. And today we have review of chapter 995, a Kunoichi's Oath. And this week is what we would call a 100% action chapter. Or maybe we wouldn't call it that, but I would. And I guess I did, so there. But it was a pretty quick paced journey this week which more often than not can lead to a fairly dissatisfying experience because generally it feels like you can just race through a chapter like this, but Oda managed to work a fairly incredible amount of substance into chapter 995, including what I think is now easily my favorite post timeskip and army moment. It was really quite something. But before we get into it, it's time for a quick round of Pei Pei or Pei Nei, a very simple mini game. The rules of which are as follows. Here we see three doors. Behind one of them is going to be hiding a very sneaky page one. And behind the other two is sweet FA. And it will be your job to guess which door Pei Pei is hiding behind. However, if you do not guess correctly, then that is a Pei Nei. The punishment of which will be subscribing to the Grand Line review, which will provide regular one piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. And as for the winners, you'll receive a headbutt from Ulty, which is great. So choose your door now, either A, B or C, and we will reveal page one's location in three, two, one. Hooray! If you chose door A, then you have yourself a Pei Pei. However, if you chose doors B or C, then that is a Pei Nei. Welcome to the Grand Fleet, and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new recruit. But getting into some serious one piece chapter related business now, 995 was a pretty amazing experience, and I have to begin right at the end with what I alluded to in the intro. The defining aspect of chapter 995 for me was Nami having her pirate king moment. These are always so, so damn good, but if you're a more casual reader of one piece, every now and then a straw hat or an ally will be put in a situation like this, where they have to bravely affirm that Luffy will become the pirate king, often at the risk of losing their lives. A great classic example of which would be Alabasta, where Usopp, after being hit by Mr. Four's bat, got up and claimed that Luffy would become the pirate king. And usually this is done in a fairly explosive and confident way. However, Nami in this chapter was very, very different. Confronted by the overwhelming ulty, Nami tearfully and somberly declared that Luffy would become the king of the pirates, which is wonderful, because Oda has drawn her in a way that makes it clear that she expects to be killed right here and now, simply for this statement. It's actually quite a heavy panel that takes me all the way back to East Blue and the kind of tears that Nami wore when she iconically asked Luffy to help her. And it really does bring this Nami-Luffy relationship full circle. He saved her during the Arlong arc and freed her from a lifetime of effective slavery. So here she would rather die than even betray the idea, the very idea of Luffy's dream. She wouldn't even go so far as to lie about it to an enemy, no matter what the cost. And in that way, it's also extremely evocative of Belmere as well. Belmere chose to die when she could have easily just lied about the fact that she had children. But very similarly, Belmere refused to betray even the idea that she was a mother. And Nami's case here is made very clear by Usopp, whose inner monologue is just urging her to lie, but she doesn't, and I love that. This is raw Nami incarnate, the kind of feeling I've been missing from her in the post-timeskip era. So I love that this section of the chapter was able to revive those early East Blue kind of feelings. Everything else in the chapter was secondary to this moment to me. But then again, there is a lot of good secondary stuff as well. To stay on Nami for a bit, I was also quite surprised to see her all beaten up. Like those first few shots we saw of her on the floor are pretty brutal. And whilst Dota didn't show her incurring that damage on page, I do still want to praise him for, you know, making Nami a character again. For all of the post-timeskip stuff, Nami has seemed quite invincible to me. Almost like Oda is afraid to put her in a situation where she could get hurt. So there's very rarely any kind of gripping drama with her involved. This chapter finally changed, though, and as a result, I feel really proud of Nami despite the fact that she did get her ass kicked. And someone else I'm really proud of is Usopp. For someone whose crowning characteristic is cowardice, he stood up to both Ulty and Page One with a pretty phenomenal amount of bravery. If I had to guess, though, I'd say the reason why he did so has everything to do with Nami. She was wounded on the floor, and in that situation, Usopp is never going to run away no matter how terrified he is. So it is quite understated due to being juxtaposed directly against Nami's focus, but Usopp put in a great showing in 995 as well. And I would like to highlight this one panel of Usopp being struck by Ulty's ultimate doom-infused headbutt thing. And it's something I think you can only truly appreciate after having seen her altercation with Luffy. Putting these two panels side by side is a pretty fun picture. In terms of size, they take up roughly the same amount of page space, but Oda has decided to flip the direction in which Ulty is coming from. So I really love that this particular attack is defined so stylistically within the very core fabric of the manga itself. But also something to note is that Usopp is actually suffering a far, far more powerful version of the attack because Ulty is in her hybrid form. Whereas when she attacks Luffy, it was just her human form. So Usopp, you are one incredibly unlucky man. And having brought up Alabaster earlier, I do of course need to mention that we got a callback to the X-ray shot of Usopp's skull, which was pretty funny to be honest. And also kind of great because that might have set up expectations for Usopp to get up dramatically afterwards just like he did on Alabaster. But then Oda threw that drama to Nami, so it was quite cool all around. Now I will say that this whole Nami and Usopp versus Ulty in page one situation is definitely not going how I would have hoped. As it turns out, the two smartest members of the crew may not quite be able to overcome the sheer power of these Tobi Ropa members. And not only that, but they've incurred some pretty damn serious injuries as well, which I don't know how well that bodes for their future in this raid. I really hope it doesn't take them out of the action, but even if it does, they've both had some great time dedicated to them. And while we're here, we should also talk about the wildly unexpected ending where of all people, Tama comes to Nami's rescue. I don't know why she's here, but I could not be more excited because Tama brings some very key potential. In regards to facing off against the Beast Pirates, Tama is undisputedly the most OP character on Wana right now with her ability to tame seemingly any animal. And I'm wondering if this might lead to a bit of a dream situation where we see Ulty or perhaps even page one turning into allies after falling victim to Tama's abilities. I love these two so much that I would really want to see something like that. And it would be yet another fun factor to help turn the tides of this raid. But I think we definitely need to keep our eyes on Tama. She was given this strangely specifically useful ability for a reason. And whilst I don't think it will be the Kaido killer that some people theorize, it is an undeniable threat to each and every member of the Beast Pirates. Well, the Zoan uses anyway, which is most of them. So please do bring on ally Ulty. I will give you anything to see that. But there is so much more to 995 than that. In fact, we actually start pretty damn balls of the wall would just straight up Marco versus Big Mom. In another really beautifully drawn panel as well, that highlights a lot of subtlety here because here's the thing. If you're ever drawing a fight between two fire users, it will run the risk of getting messy and quite incomprehensible due to all of the flames mixing up and just going there. So what I like most about this is that Oda went to some great lengths to differentiate between Marco's flames and the flames of Prometheus. Marco's are brighter, more pure and designed to show us the impact of what's going on. Whilst Prometheus's flames given a more classic gradient of fire that serves mostly as a secondary layer on the page. And it's just impressive because you look at this panel and you know exactly what's going on rather than seeing some sort of garbled mess of fiery things, which it could very easily have been. And it looks like for now, Marco will be fixated on delaying Big Mom, which is an intriguing role for him to have. Although I'm still looking for a potential Marco versus King battle of the birds scenario if possible. And yeah, it could still happen. We still have yet to really lock any matchups in place because things are still that insanely chaotic. Although one matchup that might be feeling kind of firm right now is Carrot and Wanda versus Paris Barrow. And just before that, may I say that it is an absolute pleasure to see Soulon Carrot again. This form is just so sleek and powerful. And if there's any, any, any reason for Carrot to be joining the Straw Hats permanently, it is pretty much just to see more of this. But we also have Wanda Soulon form by the looks of it, which makes the Soulon divide amongst the mink tribe very clear. Female minks transform into schmick surgical beasts. Whilst male minks become big furry monsters or I guess big furry monsters. I do very much like the idea of this team up though. I really wasn't feeling the idea of Carrot taking on Paris Barrow alone. In fact, a good general theme of Wano is that I'm really not feeling any specific one-on-one fights. Individual members of the Beast Pirates, or in this case, Paris Barrow, just seem like such an overwhelming force. And as such, we're seeing teams pop up everywhere. Including in this chapter again, when we move on to Zoro and Drake teaming up against Scratch Manapoo. Although ultimately it would be nice to perhaps see all three of them turn their attention to Queen. And actually, Queen's quite an interesting guy in 995 because he specifically dwells on Zoro and Sanji. And in regards to Sanji, he also mentions Judge, which was unexpected, but I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise really. Queen is a mad inventor after all, so he probably has his pulse pretty firmly placed on the developments and figures of the global scientific community. But it's fantastic that he brings up both Zoro and Sanji and speaking of team ups, maybe this is some sort of subtle foreshadowing into the potential of a Zoro Sanji team up against Queen or perhaps even King. Currently they're not at all positioned to do something like that right now, but that could easily change with all of the insane chaos happening. It's not something that I ever even did think about before though. I've always had it in mind that Zoro and Sanji need separate encounters and they could team up with other characters, but never each other. But at the same time, I can't deny that it would be pretty damn awesome to watch the two of them demolish one of the calamities. In addition to this though, we have another Zoro versus Kaido flag in this section. Zoro pretty directly states his intention to head up to help Kinemon and the other vassals. And as much as I love the idea of Zoro versus Kaido along with everyone else, I do keep asking myself, why? At this point, I don't quite understand what is driving Zoro directly to want to take on the big antagonist. Usually it's something that he would just shrug off and go, leave that to Luffy. I mean, is it just his inherited will kicking in via Enma or something? Because Zoro never shows this kind of initiative towards anyone who is not a swordsman. And every time he says something like this, it is like something a protagonist would say. Like these are the sort of lines that you would expect to hear coming out of the mouth of Luffy. So I do very much continue to be quite intrigued in regards to how Oda is choosing to set up Zoro here. Other than that, in terms of major developments, well, Chopper is now infected, which is great. And I know that sounds really morbid, but this is exactly what I was saying last chapter when we saw Yakuza cat face man get infected. I said that if we really wanted to feel some drama or stakes, then it probably needed to be a straw hat and bam, Oda has answered my call. Because all of a sudden I do now have a feeling of, damn, we really do need to cure this thing pretty quickly because Chopper, and I like Chopper. So I'm very much liking this development as well. Just as I like the chapter as a whole. Like I said in the intro, 100% action chapters do run the risk of feeling like quite a fleeting experience. They move fast, build up a ton of anticipation, and then very unfortunately leave you with nothing to move on to when you're reading them weekly. But this one was pretty special. There was a lot to digest and a lot that made me want to slow down and take my time reading. So we had another beautiful installment and I look forward to continually our journey onto chapter 1000. But that pretty much does it for chapter 995. And what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious One Piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.