 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, but today we are here with a review of Chapter 1013, which is one of these fun little times where we can say that things ended on quite a literal cliffhanger. Or I guess more accurately, some sort of cliff-dropper, because damn, that is a bold, bold way to end a chapter, especially with a break next week, so thanks for that, Oda. Thank you ever so much for that insane ending, which I will not be able to get out of my mind for two whole weeks. And if you're feeling similarly, then you should do the thing. The thing being subscribing to the Grand Line Review, which will result in consistent injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed, because One Piece might be absent for the next two weeks, but we will certainly not be. Alright, so this week we've obviously got to start with the final two pages, because I mean sure, a cloud clashed 2021, and it's certainly a sign to behold, but this ending was a big, big shock to the system. I have to make it seem like Luffy finally did San Jans, etc. And obviously I don't think the question is so much how did Luffy lose, but more how is he going to be inevitably safe? Because he's currently on quite a big mom downwards trajectory straight into the sea, except Luffy quite notably cannot conjure his own cloud friends, and even if he could, Luffy is very unconscious right about now. He's entered that white-eye state, which he's actually done on multiple occasions within this singular fight, and this, this has to be some sort of One Piece record, right? I mean just thinking about it, Kartakuri pushed Luffy to his absolute limits, but he never really managed to go beyond that and properly put our captain down. You know the same way that Kaido has managed to do well like three times in this singular, and it's kind of a hilarious turn of events as well, considering the last chapter where Zoro and Sanji had their like bro moment of confirming to each other that Luffy, yeah he was going to win for sure, no doubt. Oh and also a quick side note about Zoro and Sanji, I love the cover page of 2013 with Sanji eyeing up the end of the Zoro Shock, and I do think that this eventual Zoro Shock dish would pair very very nicely alongside a plate of Zoro Tiger to go with it. But we have a big problem because there are very few ways that Luffy can be saved from this situation. Preferably it would seem that we need someone who can fly to come and you know, scoop him up, so perhaps that's where Yamato comes in. We do know that Yamato rushed off in the general direction of this matchup, and that there is still a mystery devil for it to be revealed to us, so maybe Yamato is also a dragon because everyone's a dragon, Kaido's a dragon, Momonosuke's a dragon, Celestial Dragon's a dragon, Dragon is a bad father, and even Vagapunk makes his own dragons, so why not add Yamato to the pile as well. Now alternatively maybe Luffy does fall and just hear me out here, this could very well serve as our second round knockout, much akin to how things went down with Crocodile on Alabaster, which apparently in my script says dress Rosa, so yeah, I was tired when I read that. But Luffy's first match against Crocodile was a complete wiping Crocodile's favor, the second matchup it was a step forward because Luffy had discovered a way to hit Crocodile but it still wasn't enough, and then in the third round after a short delay we head to the final confrontation where Luffy finally did prevail. Those are the same sorts of vibes I immediately get from this Kaido situation, especially since it would be just such a classically Luffy thing to do, to get caught or stuck somewhere else during the main action like when he was stuck in Nola during Skype here. So I'm very interested to see how things play out because I don't know if an immediate return to Kaido is particularly beneficial, although the thing about these kind of knockouts I guess is that every time Luffy seems to incur one he has another epiphany regarding how to fight Kaido. With the initial knockout in Act 1 Luffy realized that Kaido was using a power that he did not have access to yet. During the second one more recently Luffy discovered the recipe set attack and whatever it is this time around Luffy is going to come back ready to take this step further and potentially even all the way. With that said I think what we're trying to state here is that yes it is still impossible to defeat Kaido in a one-on-one situation. This was heavily hinted at during 1012 when Yamato was worried by this very concept and it does give me a bit of narrative whiplash to be honest because it really did seem like Oda was going to some great extents to set Luffy up for a one-on-one scattering his various worst generation allies only to come back to the concept of needing to fight as a cohesive group. So at this stage I share a mind with Sanji. I have no idea where I am, what I'm doing or where I need to be. I have no idea where Oda is taking this but it's clear that we are still very much in the process of setting up this climax. I don't want to blast past Kaido's reaction here either because it seems like Sora and Sanji weren't the only ones who believed in Luffy. Kaido expresses a lot of regret here like regret within himself for the brief belief of challenge within this monkey man. And how weird is that? The idea that our main antagonist believed in Luffy and actively wanted him to succeed to a degree? I mean it's almost kardakuri-esque. That aside though alright, Nami versus Ulty. I do think it's a bit of a shame that this conflict was dealt with so swiftly but then again I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting. The last chapter very much built up what may have been some sort of epic 1v1 showdown however that's not really how late stage one piece tends to operate and with that said what was featured was indeed fantastic. Because it's just so rare to see Nami in action I'm generally quite transfixed by her attacks as if there's something completely fun and new and I love that Nami decided to hit Ulty with a tornado tempo because that hit me right in the nostalgia balls. In case you don't recall which is understandable because it was a long long time ago. Tornado tempo was first used against Miss Doublefinger on Alabaster. It was a pretty bizarre surprise attack and when I say surprise I mean that it mostly surprised Nami herself and as makeshift as it was this was Nami's first big finisher and as such this is a tangible cue for us to view exactly how far she's come since then. This attack looks and feels utterly devastating and even though it did fail to bring Ulty down the idea that Nami is now in a position where she can casually wield this sort of power will never not be amazing. Nami is legitimately one step away from being able to control weather to produce big mom scale attacks and hey that might become very relevant very soon. So speaking of one of the standout panels during this chapter was the combo attack forged by Napoleon, Prometheus and Hera which was very much like seeing something out of a high fantasy series there's a certain air of magic about it like you could see this sort of elemental fusion happening in a series like fairy tale or black clover and it does look really cool with Zeus and Hera forming two sides of this like death sphere with Napoleon acting as the force behind the attack which holy crap. I call Nami's tornado tempo devastating but seeing big mom's attack makes me want to rethink my use of that word in this particular case because Ulty definitely took a big big owie and I really would not be surprised if this was the end of the involvement of Ulty in page one at least prominently during this raid because that's the thing right we've got to start the countdown at some point and what I mean by that is the stage during these sorts of arcs where it becomes abundantly clear that we're just going to see enemy after enemy fall like a vat of big dinosaur dominoes. That does have to start happening at some point and this may very well be the initiation of that on the other hand this whole raid phase of one it was very muddled affair and we're having a lot of trouble settling into matchups and scenarios right now it's just been an awful lot of uh well running around by everyone and every time it looks like someone might go down they get saved they recover and then they jump straight back into action so I don't know if this is the first sign of some sort of finality starting to play out in this arc and I guess the argument against it would be that it might be a waste of having two of the flying six defeated by big mom instead of a straw hat or some sort of other what's the word uh relevant character who needs some time to do a cool thing but you know this this works well enough for me actually the whole point of having a character like big mom here is to cause chaos and even though she's kind of an antagonist the idea is that she very much balances out the scales which she achieves through childish emotion and sheer incompetence now I did also mention Hera earlier when her luscious cloud lips were first showcased to us many people in my comment section put forward a bit of a fun idea that Hera may not be a cloud like Zeus but rather an incarnation of pure lightning although I have to say I'm really glad that didn't happen because I love this new fluffy cloud how insane is it that one piece now has two count them two anthropomorphic clouds and not only that but the entire dramatic crux of this chapter was about how these two clouds are interacting with one another and one biting the butt of the other no other series could get away with this kind of crap and that's why I love love love one piece although I have to say that as anticipated my heart was very much broken because seeing Zeus do the ugly cry is just so unbelievably sad and I think it's because I see Zeus in very much the same way as I would see a pet he's just a misguided little cloud creature who happens to be pretty thick but that's okay but I look at Zeus being betrayed and it's like seeing a sad dog and in the end Zeus isn't even really a bad guy like he doesn't possess the sadistic nature of Prometheus and in the end he's even ready to sacrifice his own life to allow Nami to escape but you know what the saddest thing is he gets eaten anyway like I was expecting Nami's weather balls to result in some sort of glorious super Zeus and to be fair I mean still might but looking at this chapter in isolation it's kind of depressing I refuse to believe that this is the end of cloud in a hat I have faith that Zeus is going to gobble up Nami's delicious balls and then we're going to have some sort of cloud off Zeus versus Hera except with Nami's assistant surely Zeus would have the upper hand and maybe you know despite his mental handicap and his literal headcap but all of this does eventually culminate in another standout scene with Eustace Kidd entering the fray and just slamming Big Mom's head into the ground and I really just cannot express how satisfying this was to see because I personally don't think that we've been given a lot of evidential reasoning to believe in the abilities of Eustace Kidd however this one panel has changed my mind if only for the fun value although I'm definitely hoping that he doesn't stick to his ideas of taking on Big Mom alone because I suspect that that would end up in much the same way that Luffy versus Kaido is currently panning out but within this section Tama also plays a fairly big role with Big Mom offering to protect her and then very swiftly revoking this and even threatening Tama but then again as we all know Big Mom she has abandonment issues which I suppose anyone would if their parents had dumped them on a strange island when they were five years old the key thing here is that this is more of Big Mom's mental immaturity coming into focus she doesn't get her way so she throws a very deadly tantrum which is interesting because in a previous chapter review I did praise Big Mom for having some sort of moral compass no matter how small and poorly pointing with the whole Okubora town incident and all of that was just very much washed away by this act it's very classic Big Mom but I have to say that not even I expected her to turn on Tama so violently still this is what happens when you give a child godlike powers is very little in the way of logical reasoning and morals can be quite fluid because I suppose one's views on everything in this world will just become dependent on a simple factor which is am I getting what I want if so then you are morally culpable if you're trying to stop it and if not then you're morally culpable for not giving it to me that is the lovely Charlotte Linlin here on full display except for the moment where she was not on full display because her head was in the ground but regardless she's a really sickeningly selfish character who I enjoy to no end but if you'd like to examine who everyone else enjoys then do check out this video which details the stunning results of the world top 100 character poll find out what happens when everyone in the world votes for their favorite one-piece peeps it is definitely quite a ride and I look forward to seeing you there