 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece and today we are here with some FACTS, some F-A-E-C-T-S, that's how it's spelled right. FACTS, Shocking FACTS mind you. Which if you are a veteran One Piece of Fire like myself, then you may very well have come across these in your travels. However, if you are a new or a casual One Piece fan, then I can quite confidently say that a lot of what we're going to explore here today is simply going to blow your mind. And in exchange for said blowage, all I ask is that you hit that funky red subscribe button for the Grand Line Review, which will also grant you regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed, but much more importantly, continue to build the Grand Fleet so that we can become the undisputed kings of One Piece YouTube, a very niche title indeed. Let's get straight into things today because we have a lot to cover, which will begin with Shocking Facts. Number 10, the Super Novas were not planned. And by that I mean that they did not exist anywhere in Oda's notes or even his mind until the very chapter in which they were introduced. That's right, Trafalgar Law, Eustace Kidd, Diaz Drake, Capone Gang Beige, and the other ones were never actually intended to be part of One Piece. According to where Chiro Oda's message in the 27th log release, he created them in a desperate rush because he was worried that the Sabadear Capelligou arc would not be interesting enough as it currently stood. And I don't know about you, but I personally find this absolutely maddening because apparently in response to this sheer desperation, the designs for nine incredibly striking characters just came to Oda unconsciously from nowhere. Thus I suppose proving the theory that pressure creates diamonds, or at the very least in Oda's particular case. And from here he also didn't expect any of them to have anywhere near as big of a role as they currently do especially Law. And so I think what we have here is an example of creative intuition at its very best. Oda felt that a singular arc might be lacking a bit of excitement, so he responded by not just providing excitement for that particular arc, but also an entire future's worth of excitement. Because I don't know about you, but as we are on Wano, I really cannot picture things without the supernovas being involved. And I also think it's quite funny because it does go to show that One Piece is nowhere near as planned as people think, although there is still very extensive planning, as can be seen in shocking fact number nine. Jinbei was planned to be a crew member from the very beginning. And this, well, this is something that we only found out relatively recently actually, but longtime fans of the series might be quite familiar with this particular image. This is a conceptual sketch of the straw hats featuring some very familiar faces like Luffy, Zoro Nami, and Sanji. And I suppose I'd call Brook a familiar face, but he doesn't have one. Yo ho ho! And as for the rest, well, they needed a bit of work. Still, what we did not see is that in this sketch, it also originally included the Oji Jinbei design, which was rather sneakily erased when a sketch was released. But the full thing has now been made available for us to gaze upon and enjoy, showing us that Oda had always planned for there to be a fisherman as part of the straw hats, right from the get go. And you know, it took us an awfully, awfully long time to get there, but we did, which I suppose goes to show that One Piece is very much kind of like the ultimate fusion of master planning and master improvisation, the results of which we will see in a few other shocking facts. But while we have all of the straw hats here, it's time for shocking fact number eight specifically, which is that the straw hats are currently the only crew in the series where each and every member has an assigned bounty, or at least a bounty that we know of. And I was quite surprised by this because I felt for sure that there was another small crew out there with a handful of members who each had known bounties, but nope, it's just the straw hats. Every other crew was either far too big to have every member recognized, or too small and insignificant, or in the case of the new Giant Warrior Pirates, both far too big and far too small and insignificant. But no, tangent averted, the straw hats are still the only crew in the history of One Piece as we know it, where every member has a known bounty. And now that we have some money on the mind, let's go to shocking fact number seven. And this is one of my personal favorite facts, but One Piece is the third highest selling comic book series of all time. It currently has a sales total of approximately 470 million, which is drummed only by Batman in second place with 484 million, and a much more further ahead Superman with 600 million. But how crazy is that? Especially because Batman and Superman have had like a 60 year head start on One Piece, given that they were created in 1939 and 1938 respectively. And at this stage, there is no doubt whatsoever that One Piece will surpass the sales of Batman. It is as good as guaranteed. Superman, well, look, it's a very different question, but there is potential. I guess if it was to happen, I imagine it would be towards the end of One Piece, with the release of the final few volume skyrocketing sales of every other volume, with people who just want to catch up or collect them all. It is still a pretty rough ask though, considering it's taken 23 years to get to 470 million. So another 130 million, it's a number. But I'm pretty damn happy with the idea that by the end of its life, One Piece will be at the very least the world's second best selling comic series. Now as for shocking fact number six, we have something quite obscure. So most of you are probably familiar with the idea of the Pandaman, but in case you're not, he's an easter egg character that gets sprinkled into the background and sometimes even the foreground of manga chapters and anime episodes. He also quite frequently makes his way onto the front of Japanese volume covers hidden under the dust jacket. That's not the shocking fact though, this is very well established. But did you know that the Pandaman lore goes a layer deeper? And there is another easter egg character even more obscure and well hidden than the Pandaman, and that is Tomato Gang. Tomato Gang is a debt collector and the reason why the Pandaman is consistently on the run because he's had some financial troubles and Tomato Gang is here to collect. However, it should be noted that Tomato Gang has not made a post time skip appearance, indicating that whatever financial issue he had with Pandaman, it may very well have been solved during those two years. However, he did appear on the hidden cover of volume 85, so let the conspiracy theories begin. And on that train of thought, shocking fact number five. Aliens exist in One Piece. And furthermore, even if you've seen every episode of the anime, you're probably still unaware of this fact because they were only showcased in the manga. Quite specifically, during the NL's Great Space Operations cover story, which saw NL literally travel to the moon, or one moon anyway, it's been heavily hinted that there are multiple moons surrounding the One Piece world, or that the One Piece world is in and of itself a moon, but that's a discussion for another time. But on the moon, NL met two fascinating races, one of which is a series of automata with very space-like names such as Cosmo, Galaxy, and Spacey, the spaciest of the names. And it should definitely be noted that these little guys are not the aliens in question because we did see a flashback of them traveling to the moon via balloon, as you do. But that is okay because we also have the big giant Fox space pirates who are absolutely extraterrestrial. Furthermore, it's also revealed in this cover story that NL's ancestors and likely all sky citizens came from the moon, which you know what, that does make a Rujan alien, as well as every Skypean local, which weirdly enough includes the Shandorans, even though they chose to settle on the Blue Sea. They are still aliens, each and every one of them. And I will never, ever, ever understand why the anime refuses to animate these stories because this one in particular is just pure insanity. I mean, who doesn't want to follow NL to the moon to fight a series of furry aliens? Speaking of though, this cover story ended rather ominously with NL now in charge of a legion of space cyborgs and ready to set sail for who knows. But that does very importantly explain where he was, which relates to shocking fact number four. Every known Logia user was present at the Battle of Marineford, with the exception of NL. And I should say that this was every known Logia user at the time. So it's pretty hard to deny that Logias were the king of class back in the pre-time absurdly powerful and practically unbeatable. So it's only natural that if an event, say, some sort of paramount war were to occur, then these legends would absolutely be involved. And you wouldn't be wrong, because in fact this war was sparked by two Logia users, one of which being poor Gastias, and the man who defeated him, Marshal D. Teach. Ace was then the catalyst for the war and Teach obviously rocked up at the end, but we had our three admirals, Aokiji Kizaru and Sakazuki, all of which were equipped with Logia Doom. Then lower down the rankings we had Mr. Smoker, our very first Logia user in the series, and also calling in for classic one piece we had Sir Crocodile, our very first defeated Logia user. But still it's pretty cool fact that once again, apart from NL who was on the moon, our entire Logia squad up until this point saw fit to assemble at the Battle of Marineford. And while we're on the topic of pre-time skiplets, sneakily transition into shocking fact number three. Did you know that the entirety of pre-time skip one piece, which just as a reminder is chapter one all the way through to chapter 597? Well, did you know that all of those events took place over the course of roughly four months? That's right, from the moment Luffy set sail from Fuchsia Village to the point where he begins training with Ray Lee, is a mere four months. Potentially even less, but probably not. And we know this because a very detailed timeline of one piece does exist, and bonus fun fact, it even includes the year that the series takes place, which pre-time skip is the year 1522 of whatever one piece calendar is used. And essentially Luffy begins his adventure in May of 1522 and then puts it on hold to train in August of 1522, which very much implies that for the most part, the straw hats were effectively as strong in their arc introductions as they were in their late stage pre-time skip fights. Minus upgrades of course, like Diablo Jamba, Ashura or Gears. Aha! And now that I've said the gear word, I should immediately move on to shocking fact number two. There is an incredibly subtle significance to gear fourth, primarily being the chapter in which it was introduced, which would be chapter 783. That number again is 783. And this is not where we see Luffy using gear fourth for the first time, but this is when he announces it. Now this is really trippy, but when we reverse that chapter number, we end up with 387387. And maybe that doesn't sound so special until you realize that this is the chapter where Luffy announced gear second for the first time. And this is just one of those things that is so insanely coincidental that I refuse to believe that it is in fact a coincidence. The history of One Piece has taught us that Oda is very, very aware of numerical patterns and designations. And while I think that no detail like this was not planned from the beginning, Oda did take it into consideration and structure things so that these chapter numbers would mirror each other perfectly. An opportunity that could really only be given to such a long running series. And if you've ever wondered why One Piece turned into such a long running series, then you may very well be interested in Shocking Fact number one. The biggest reason for the extended serialization of One Piece is the seven warlords of the sea. According to Oda's comments in the 23rd log, One Piece was originally just supposed to be a story about fighting against the four emperors. But then Oda came up with a cool idea to introduce a series of pirates aligned with the world government. And because he didn't like the sound of Gobukai or Nibukai being five and two warlords, he went with Chichibukai being the seven warlords. And that singular decision has led to entire arcs and even sagas focusing exclusively on these members. For example, the whole alabaster saga with Crocodile, Thrillbark with Gekkomoria, and how could we forget both Punk Hazard and Dressrosa which focused on Doflamingo? The answer is we can't forget because it lasted so long that it was burned into our brains. Those two arcs known as the Dressrosa Saga took 148 chapters to complete and were told over four different years from 2012 to 2016. So with that in mind, yes, it's pretty easy to see how the warlord decision practically made One Piece what it is today. And that's it for our shocking facts, but what do you guys think? 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