 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we have a manga review of chapter 915, Bakora Town. And well, meh. I didn't really care for this chapter in any way. It spent a lot of time focusing on characters of, how shall we put this, questionable interest. The highlight for me was probably meeting Holdem and I find that to be a bit of a sad statement for the overall chapter. Not to hate on Holdem too much though. I actually really like the bizarre line, human hybrid, whatever the pill thing we have going on here. It made for a pretty fun gag where the lion part of Holdem whacked himself in the balls, but because they share the same body, the lion ended up whacking itself in the balls as well. But getting to that gag did require getting over the initial disappointment that is Holdem's design. I and a lot of fans were hoping that this would be the long-awaited lion's own user, but instead what we got was an obese train conductor looking dude, complete with lion's stomach accessory. So I'm really conflicted. I wasn't looking for comedy in this character, so overall, even though I enjoyed him, he just fell a bit flat to me. It's also one of those situations where I'm not entirely sure who to blame for the disappointment. Was it me for hyping up Holdem in my mind, or was it Oda for deliberately portraying him as a badass lion silhouette just to subvert expectations. Either way, it's a classic example of never being able to predict one piece, which in the end is one of the reasons why I love it. What I will say for Holdem is that he acts as a great example of why eating a smile fruit might not be the greatest of ideas. Up until now, we've just seen lots of people with weird animal parts coming out of places they probably shouldn't, but none of them are particularly negative attributes, and they seem to enhance the abilities of whoever consumed that particular smile fruit. But with Holdem, I could honestly see him having been stronger before he consumed the lion's smile, and now living in a state where he's fighting handicapped because of his fruit quote unquote powers. So yeah, it's nice that we've finally seen the potential negative outcome of consuming an artificial devil fruit. I just hope that Oda can work his magic and turn Holdem into more than just a gag character, especially because he was introduced as a headliner. What I want is to look back on this chapter a month or two down the line and go, my god was I wrong about the dude with the lion for a stomach? But for the purposes of this week, he's just fucking weird. Sadly, the rest of this chapter is also quite a letdown to me due to its focus on Urashima, another character who… why are you even here? I didn't mind him when he just popped in for a bit a couple of chapters ago, but this is a bit much. If we didn't figure it out already, this week established him as a classical bad dude, bro, who wants to force his will on others and consume the beloved pets of elderly citizens, apparently. At the same time, I do appreciate the wider story being told through Urashima, because essentially we know what's going on with the average citizens of Wano through Tama, and now we're getting to know how high a society was affected after the rise of Orochi. And I'm assuming, Kairter, I say assuming because I'm only just starting to attempt to put together the timeline of Wano in my head. This chapter states that Orochi and his subordinates took of Bakuritan a mighty 20 years ago. Other notable events that occurred exactly 20 years ago in the current timeline were the births of Kywin and Steli. So look, it was a dark year for the One Piece world. To put that into some perspective, though, 20 years ago is only four years after Roger's execution. So after that, the Great Age of Piracy began, and the initial rush to become the next pirate king went into full swing. During this time was when Gekko Moria was said to be on par with Kaido, but eventually during these four years, I'm assuming that Kaido grew and cemented his position as one of the Yonko and taking over Wano in the process. I should also say that there was always the chance that Orochi took over the country before Kaido became involved at all, but at this stage I feel it's more than likely that Kaido was the true cause of this change of leadership. What all of this means is that the citizens of Wano have been in a very desperate situation for much longer than I would have initially suspected, twice as long as the people of Dressrosa were suffering actually, and you have characters like Tama and Momonosuke who have never known any other life. So there's a fair chunk of history that needs to be unraveled here on Wano, which is nice to know because it looks as if Odo is planning on living up to his words of making this a great adventure on the land of Samurai. And of course I'm talking about all of this because I really don't want to talk about Urashima, whose copious body filled most of the actual chapter. He did sort of pay off at the very end with Kiku performing a classical Samurai strike, resulting in Urashima's topknot being sliced off. This might seem pretty underwhelming at first as well, but the loss of one's topknot actually has some huge connotations in Japan. Essentially it was a status symbol, you had to be in a certain echelon of society to wear one, so its remover would present lowering your status, like perhaps a samurai who abandons his post and becomes a peasant. So this is really cool because before Kiku performed her strike, she stated that she does not know any one of whom Urashima was referring to as a lower class, after which she proceeded to lower his class. It was a far cooler way of doing things than simply slicing up Urashima himself. The last thing I want to touch on is arguably the most interesting part of the chapter, which is the ongoing cover story. So as suspected it is indeed Bellamy, and he is retiring from the world of piracy to become a dyed goods craftsman. And apparently currently he's not doing all that well in that profession, judging by the tower of lumps on his head. But this is an exciting development because last week I proposed the idea that Bellamy may have been here to commission some flags for the Grand Fleet, and now well I think he's going to do us one better and design and craft the Jolly Rogers himself. A nice bit of personal flair that should give them some deeper meaning. But back to the chapter, all in all I stand by my initial reaction of this chapter being a bit meh. It's by no means bad, it just feels quite slow to me due to its focus on what seem to be gag characters who we barely know. There's really nothing in here for me to grab onto or take seriously, which is kind of annoying because we're here to try and take down a Yonko, remember? With a huge gathering of amazing characters, none of whom we're focusing on right now because we have a dude with a lion's stomach and a sumo. So I find it very difficult not to be disappointed, but at the same time this is how all arcs begin. We have slow developments that build arc specific characters who went up aiding the greater depth of the location, so what I'll say is that I'm glad that we now have one of these chapters out of the way, and I look forward to next week. That pretty much does it for chapter 915. If you enjoyed this video then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe, and if you are in any way keen on supporting this independent channel then please do check out my Patreon discord server or Twitter, the links to which are in the handy description below. Finally, please do comment with your thoughts on the chapter. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.