 I'm afraid that you have just been assailed by Taiga Zoro. Now Taiga Zoro has a very simple demand to secure your safety, which is that you subscribe to the Grand Line Review for regular One Piece content uploaded straight to your YouTube feed. Then, and only then, will Taiga Zoro spare your life. Choose wisely. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today I'd just like to have a bit of a discussion on Wano thus far, and I want to do this because 2020 I think is going to be an absolutely massive year for One Piece. And it already has been, with but a single chapter, but I think that 2020 is also going to benefit largely, thanks to everything that 2019 and the late stages of 2018 have set up for it. And isn't that just insane to think about? The manga has been publishing the Wano arc since July 2018, and it only just now feels like we're getting to the serious end. Wano is an arc unlike any other in the series, and I don't think it's going to be easily comparable to any other segment of story in One Piece. It's been a very unique kind of adventure, with a lot of incredible highs and some definite low points, let's not kid ourselves there. And I think it's very important to identify both to really give us a good idea of what Wano has been so far. This might also be a very good time to mention that this discussion is going to be very centred around the events of the manga rather than the anime, because the anime has really only just begun to scratch that surface of Wano, so there will most definitely be manga spoilers for you anime only watchers. My apologies, but I can say at the very least that you have a very interesting ride ahead. But to begin, I think it's important to note that Wano has adopted an individual method of storytelling, whereby the arc has been divided into acts. And this isn't something that's particularly new, I mean every arc in the series can be broken down into an act structure or a Johaku methodology, but Wano has made particular use of distinguishing these points to the audience, which I personally feel has been a brilliant move for a long form arc. Breaking Wano down into acts has made this great adventure feel much more manageable, and I think it's really helped to relieve that potential arc fatigue. And for comparison's sake, when we look at, say, Dress Rose or a whole cake island, this act structure was obviously embedded into the core narrative, but it is not immediately apparent to the reader. And as a result, it just feels like one big long slog of story, especially in the case of Dress Rosa. So I think that Oda has really learnt from those experiences, and he's crafted an arc that gives us little points of celebration, like yay, we made it through to the end of act two. And not only that, but he's also included intermission chapters that give us some very serious hype information about the outside world. So it very effectively breaks up the monotony of just seeing the Wano landscape and characters for a year and a half straight at this point. So in regards to the overall structure, I honestly believe that Wano has been the most successful mega arc attempted by Oda thus far. I think he really has learned from the experiences of Dress Rosa and whole cake island, and he's continuing to revolutionize long form manga storytelling. With that said, Wano is far from perfect. And I do have minor storytelling issues. And you know what? It's probably best to go through these by an act by act basis. So starting with act one, I think that this was very solid for the most part. It began with a very classic adventure kickoff with Luffy alone and discovering the landscape of this very stunning location. One of the most visually intriguing islands Oda has ever put to page actually, even when we're seeing shots of wastelands and factories, I still can't help but be captivated by the visuals of Wano. And I think that that has very much helped to sustain my long term interest in the arc in the same way that whole cake island's crazy Disney vibe contributed to that. And as opposed to Dress Rosa, which you know looked a bit plain in comparison, and that very much became a detriment for an arc with over a hundred chapters. But act one immediately bombarded us with some amazing stuff like Luffy reuniting with Zorro, Basil Hawkins was brought into the mix in a key role, and the other half of the straw hats had some time to be featured. And it ended pretty spectacularly with Luffy versus Kaido, which is a conflict I don't think that many of us were expecting to happen so early on. I mean a very much harks back to classic one piece where Luffy would face a villain early and lose only to make a comeback later. And here I'm thinking about stuff like Crocodile on Alabaster or Rob Luchey on water seven. In the modern era, Luffy doesn't tend to do this. So what they enough caught me off guard and it provided such a dramatic beat drop when Kaido one shot him, and that completely changed the tone of the arc, and so was a very nice full stop to the end of act one. I do think that act one had its lull period as well though, which is everything in between the fight with Hawkins and arriving at Odin Castle. So all the sumo stuff and the brief period in which Holden was a relevant character, these chapters were not great. And I think at the time I put that down to the fact that every new arc has these slow moving chapters with seemingly irrelevant characters for the sake of building a new island, and of course, playing the groundwork for the future. But I look back on all of the Oshima and Holden stuff and being balls deep into act three of one right now, I just don't know how particularly necessary it was. I mean, the story itself served as a vehicle to introduce Kiku, I guess. And maybe having some extra combat was more of a technical requirement because one piece is a battle manga. But I really do feel like we could have gone straight from the Hawkins fight to Odin Castle with a stop in Okubori town along the way to show the plight of the Wano citizens. And not a lot would have changed in the grand scheme of things, except we would have had some more lean storytelling. But of course, the counter argument to that is that this stuff is what makes one piece feel like a fun adventure. The fact that what we're doing is not always about end game serious business. And if Luffy wants to have fun and jump into the Sumo ring in the middle of the greatest conflict he's ever faced, then well, that's what we're doing. So with that in mind, it does become a bit hard to criticize because one piece would probably lose a lot from removing these sort of crazy side quests. So all in all, Act One was great. It was short, relatively concise and ended on an incredibly dramatic beat. Act Two, maybe not so much. Now to be fair, I think there are very, very few stories in the world where you could point to Act Two as a favorite element. This portion of the story has the job of setting everything up for the eventual big payoff in the next act, and it doesn't have the shiny new feeling that the introductory act gives you. So it can become a bit tedious, especially reading week to week. And I think Act Two did give us a lot of that. Probably one of my biggest gripes about Act Two is its focus on the prisoner mine because that's where Luffy spends most of it, which is fine for a bit, but the location became very fatigue inducing for me, especially when we had chapter after chapter of Luffy using the Great Sumo Inferno or whatever it was to train his armament Haki, which brings up another thing actually, because one of the best things about One Piece is that it really sets itself apart from other shounen in that it does not do training arcs. Luffy either learns what he needs to win the heat of battle, such as with Katakuri and Observation Haki, or it happens off-screen like developing Gear Second or the entire two-year time skip. And for the first time since the series began, a lot of this prisoner mine stuff, and even after Luffy got out, felt like a bit of a training arc for him. And it's not to say that it was bad, it just felt, I guess, much more standard. Act Two did exponentially better at its tail end though, especially after Big Mom invaded Udon, although the amnesia plotline is still, you know, it's a questionable element. I personally love what Oda did with Big Mom, taking her back to this more innocent state and showing the kind of chaos that she could cause on our side. I think it was a very fun way to explore one of the strongest beings this world has ever known, but I will admit that the amnesia felt mighty convenient and not satisfactorily explained, but it's very forgivable to me personally because it did give us some good Big Mom content. Things only became more hype afterwards though, when she and Kaido clashed on Onigashima, and I think that this is the moment that Act Two sorely needed at this point, a nice action-packed high to begin escalating the stakes once again. And really, everything after this clash was greatly enjoyable. Luffy took over the prisoner mines or got Enma, Big Mom and Kaido formed an alliance, and everything felt like it was moving at a decent pace again after being bogged down in prison for such a long time. Act Two also saw the death of Yasu, which is important to talk about, because the further we remove ourselves from that event, the more powerful it becomes. Yasu's death did not hit me at the time, nor do I think it was intended to, because we didn't know this guy. He was some random of Wano or Daimyo or whatever, and it was tragic, but that was about it. However, the more Yasu appears in the flashback content in Act Three, the harder this event hits me in retrospect. And I think that is a very clever device from Oda, one that I much prefer to exploring a character in great detail right before their death and thus flagging it. It's kind of like what happened with Ace really. He got killed at Marineford, and then we had an entire flashback featuring him, after which his death hit me much more potently than it did at the time. But now back to some negatives, and probably the most annoying thing about Act Two for me is Hiyori. Now I went on about this at great length when it happened, but this storytelling is either not complete or it was done haphazardly. As it is, I still refuse to believe that Kumurosaki and Hiyori are the same person. There is just no way. Hiyori is portrayed as far too naive to have been the master of manipulation that Kumurosaki was. It was like in between the chapters where Kumurosaki was quote unquote killed and Hiyori appeared that the character had been completely redesigned from the perspective of personality. It has me convinced that there is something deeper going on here like perhaps Kumurosaki is in fact Lady Toki or Hiyori is simply pretending to be naive and is working against the allied forces. Because the one scenario you can put together in this situation is that the master manipulator is pretending to be dumb, whereas you can't go the other way around. You can't have the naive person pretend to be the master manipulator. Kumurosaki and Hiyori just feel like two completely different characters and it's really quite jarring to have to associate them as the same person. There is a greater story to be told here though because we do need to find out how Kumurosaki survived or indeed if she did survive. So I'm going to hold off on calling this a floor for now. This could be the most brilliant masterful foreshadowing from Oda for some sort of heist film level flashback but it could also be just poor storytelling. At the moment it feels very convenient and unsatisfying that all of a sudden here's Hiyori and she's absolutely nothing like she was originally introduced to us as. Some other great things about Act 2 though pretty much anything with Zoro and Sanji was amazing. Sanji got to use the Raid suit and Wreck page one which even though it was a short fight I loved and Zoro got to go up against Kamizo who turned out to be killer in another short but glorious battle and Zoro and Sanji even got to reunite and team up in one of my favorite panels of the entire arc where they came together to protect Oko. So Act 2 had a lot to offer us but I do think it will be remembered as the more lackluster Act of Wano at the completion of the story because it just felt so slow for the majority of its tenure and in the end it just had the unenviable job of setting up all of the pieces for future payoff. Now briefly moving into Act 3 we aren't too many chapters into it but it is by far my favorite Act of Wano so far which is ridiculous because at the moment the bulk of it is a flashback featuring Kozuki Oden but this, oh this is a very special flashback. One that takes the entire fabric of the series that has been woven in over two decades and celebrates it with this very charismatic figure. And of course it's particularly difficult to ignore the glory that is seeing Roger land on Loftail and actually finding the one piece instantly becoming one of the most iconic moments in the series and propelling Act 3 of Wano into the stratosphere of greatness. There is not one thing I can flaw about Act 3 thus far and I hope that Wano only gets better from this point on because after the flashback the bulk of this emotional undercoat will be dealt with and we will use that as a backdrop to go into what promises to be one of the greatest battles this series has ever seen. But sadly that is all I really have to say about Act 3 at the moment because you know, we're not very far into it and honestly, like I said, I can't floor it at all thus far. So I'm really excited to see where 2020 takes it concluding the flashback and moving back into modern day. That's not quite all there is to Wano though and one thing I'd like to make special mention of is Oda's masterful use of characters throughout the arc thus far. Wano is a mega beast of important world figures as well as island specific characters and I don't know how he does it but they are all handled in such a very satisfying way. Like as much as I feel like I always want more from figures like Drake or Hawkins, Oda keeps them invested enough to keep that interest going but with that wonderful layer of mystery still attached. One more negative I will say though is in regards to the straw hats because we've now been in Wano for a year and a half of real time and we still have not seen all of the straw hats in the same place yet alone the same panel despite the fact that they're all here. You know, all together for the first time since sailing to Dressrosa. So that feels a bit not great because it's like the straw hats have become an auxiliary element of their own story and I'm just waiting for the day when we get that entire crew panel which surely has to happen soon. One thought I've had is that Oda might be purposely waiting to showcase this, waiting for Jinbei that is so that when he gets added into the mix we can have our ultimate post time skip straw hat crew panel. Still at the moment I'm really craving that entire crew dynamic and Wano has not delivered on it as of yet but all in all as much as it does have its minor faults many of which presented themselves in act two. Wano has been a very successful story thus far in my opinion. There aren't many people who are capable of weaving such a grand adventure and even if there are faults from time to time they are very forgivable in the long run and now I eagerly await the conclusion of this mega arc. But that pretty much does it for this Wano in review discussion thing. 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