 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. My name is Liam and I'm a bit hungry, so I am going to be making toast during this review. And today we are here to review a stupidly massive chapter. It goes by the designation 1014, and it features a collection of what is probably our darkest moments of the raid yet. There's a lot of thematic D words in this chapter, particularly Defeat and Deth, that we'll need to go through. And there's also a selection of C words in this chapter, such as Chopper and Caesar, the latter of which is also something of a C word in his own right. But 1014 was a true experience and whatever exaggerated title I have inevitably given this video, I do think that Oda has well and truly earned it. Just like how you, dear viewer, have well and truly earned consistent injections of one piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. So do be sure to claim your prize by hitting the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review, which will result in you getting the thing it is that I just said. So just do it, it'll be fun, maybe you'll even get some toast, gluten free if necessary. But due to the wild nature of this chapter, we're going to go through it in something of a chronological order, and usually I like to discuss things in the order in which was the biggest and most interesting event, but when the entire chapter is just one big string of big events, that becomes slightly difficult. So we land at Luffy and Kaido. We pick up right where 1013 left off, and we have a big big name drop right off the bat, or right off the club, since we're talking about Kaido. But he mentions Joy Boy, which immediately blew my mind. Joy Boy! Oh, did not expect that name to come from your fishy, fishy lips, sir. And furthermore, the implication seems to confirm that, as we've all probably predicted by now, the prophecy of Joy Boy is not one of a fixed figure. It's more akin to someone who is going to appear and inherit the will of Joy Boy. What I'm more curious about, though, is how Kaido even knows about Joy Boy to begin with. I have to assume its information that he picked up during his time with the Rocks pirates, because otherwise the only avenue to really hear this name is via reading Poneglyphs, or I suppose reading Odin's journal, but I think that Yamato was able to keep that quite successfully hidden. In any case, this makes me infinitely more excited to just learn more about Kaido, because he isn't some regular, old, strong dude, dragon, fish bro anymore, and the very idea that he knows of and potentially even understands the Joy Boy prophecy links him deeply to the core of One Piece. And at this point, I just, I really need that Kaido flashback, you know, it's the perfect time for it as well, because Luffy, he's busy having a bit of a swim, so maybe Kaido can just chill and reminisce about the good old days. And on that note, he certainly does look very relaxed in this particular panel. Look at Kaido, he's holding his club so daintily. Aha, my toast is done. Meanwhile, our Joy Boy is indeed currently in the process of drowning, which is generally, yes, a bad thing, and this is no exception. Although this further reminds me of the Luffy vs Crocodile scenario, where from Crocodile's perspective, Luffy met his death on two different occasions. So Kaido is probably going to do the same thing, thinking that, nah, this is the end of Luffy, and then just go and do whatever, have a wander. But we get to ask ourselves the question again, who will save Luffy? Now that he's in the water and seconds away from the whole death thing, it's not going to be Yamato or Marco, because they're both double fruit users, and very far away. And this is intriguing, because not only will Luffy need to be saved by someone not currently on Onigashima, but he'll also need a mechanism to get all the way back up to the island. And this actually narrows down our candidates quite significantly, because most of the characters introduced during Wano are now part of this raid. And the few characters who are not essentially boiled down to Hiyori, Onimaru, Suru, Denguyama, and Toko. If you wanted to throw in a real wild card, then you could also name drop Urashima, because he had time for reasons. And if you wanted to get all conspiracy theory, then you can also throw in Toki. These are the characters who Oda took time to introduce during this arc that have not quite had a full circle purpose as of yet. And there's also an added advantage that by the end of this chapter, Onigashima is very, very close to mainland Wano, so I could easily see a situation where one or even a bunch of these characters see Luffy fall off and then immediately embark to save him. As for how he gets back up to Onigashima, that's a much more difficult question to answer, but I'm very excited for the period to come, because now that Luffy is being temporarily removed, that means we get to properly focus on everyone else before his inevitable triumphant return. And you know what might even be a fun idea, the Big Mom Pirates. Finally, make it up that waterfall and then sort of rescue capture Luffy. And look, I'll never discount the possibility that it could even be a new player in this arc, someone who's arrived to help for the helpful reasons, but I do feel like we have more than enough arc-specific possibilities. So I know this might pain some of my American viewers, but my spread of choice this morning is going to be Vegemite. But we will also be using butter because I'm not a savage. And in case you're unaware, if I was to describe the taste of Vegemite, I would say liquid salt. So good. Going slightly out of order here, Kido then announced Luffy's defeat to everyone via the ever-reliable communication mechanism of cyborg animals wearing paper. And this is probably one of my favorite parts of the chapter though because it's where we got to check in with a lot of characters and groups that we just haven't seen in a while. Robin and Brooke being a pretty key one. It's been about nine chapters since they declared their face off against Black Maria and while Robin has certainly visibly sustained some injuries, it looks like things are going fairly well actually. With that said, this is the one fight that I really don't want to be offscreen too much. Robin deserves a showcase of creative choreography as does Brooke. They make for a very fun combination and I am looking forward to seeing them actually fight the other, the topless spider woman. The other panel of intrigue is seeing Jinbei versus Husu in action. Who has elected, that's so many who's, oh my god, who has elected to fight the whale shark in his human form as opposed to his cat incarnation? Seems like a bad choice though because hand to hand combat is very much Jinbei specialty and cats are the natural counter to fish in general. So there's a plethora of poor decision making at play here. But anyway, I guess this is just a tease for things to come. It might be worth noting that Husu is the only Toby Roper member we actually see in chapter one thousand fourteen, which I do think is odd considering this is a grand catch up chapter. I mean, fair enough, all T in page one are currently down, but Sasaki and Black Maria were very selectively not shown and even more interesting girl. We also did not see Diaz Drake, who was probably the character whose reaction I wanted to see the most. He's definitely hanging around somewhere on the performance floor I believe but who knows what he's been up to. It doesn't seem to be anything wildly useful because right now it's being left up to Chopper to fight Queen, which by the way, so so good. Watching Chopper fight one of the most powerful Zoan users in this world in his monster form is everything I have ever wanted from him. Hell yeah, good Chopper. He doesn't even use Haki and he's just here tossing Queen like a salad. So on the page in question we have a very classically Oda piece of artwork. Every now and then Oda does this thing where he splits a panel into two or three, sometimes even four different panels. Beginning with these small slivers and the way I've always interpreted them is like a camera shot slowly panning down. So in this case we would just see Queen's tail and then it would cut to the impact of the full scene. I'm gonna be honest though this effect is a bit of a mixed bag. There are times when it definitely works better than others and I don't think this is the greatest example of its use. Mostly because due to the nature of this page my eye skips over that and just immediately snaps to the natural resting point of Chopper and Queen. And I think it might be due to the idea that there's only one sliver panel so my eyes just they just incorporate the two together and I miss it at first. Or as a much better example of this would be chapter 795 where Oda took us on this four panel journey through the clouds to arrive at Kaito landing on the ground. However what I will say for its use in this chapter is that it does add a bit of dynamism to the page which would probably look a bit basic without it because then it would just be three panels in one of the most stock standard formations one can think of. So it does break that up quite nicely. But I would say the biggest surprise of this chapter however was not the mention of Joyboy but the flashback appearance of Caesar Clown. This was quite a delightful surprise and a fantastic way to give Chopper something of a power up. It makes so much sense that I'm kind of annoyed I haven't thought about it earlier. Caesar's claim to fame is gentrification experiments and devil fruit augmentation so obviously he'd be a great resource for Chopper's needs. I mean I'm a bit nervous here because under no circumstances is anyone with the last name Clown to be trusted. Well Caesar come to think of it that man was certainly not to be trusted you know the whole crossing the Rubicon and everything. There is no way that he helped someone simply for the sake of helping them and I can't help it feel like Chopper might be in for some twisted side effects here. Fun thing though chronologically we can also place where this conversation happened it looks like it was between punk hazard and dress rosa because Caesar doesn't have his his funky hat and he still looks quite freshly beaten up by the fists of one monkey d. Luffy. In any case it's also a cool little fact that Chopper and Caesar have this sort of like I hesitate to use the word relationship but that's kind of what it is because Chopper can't really seek help from many people it just requires too much specialist knowledge so even if it's a villain I'm glad that we're making use of that. But we now arrive at the Momonosuke section which is where things reach peak insanity and we have a couple of big questions to ask here regarding the idea of death. Before going down that rabbit hole though I did love Kiku's confrontation with Kandro and the thought that even knowing that this was a fake Odin Kiku still hesitated because of how much Odin means to her. It's tragically sweet because it makes me love Kiku that much more and it simultaneously just sort of rips my heart out because as a result she has taken what appears to be a very fatal wound. Kandro followed shortly after being struck down by Kinemon granting Kandro the onstage death he'd always dreamed of paving the way for a dramatic set of last words as any actor craves. The thing is though at this point in Wano and in fact at this point in One Piece I don't actually feel these sorts of scenes anymore. I don't believe that Kiku is dead I don't believe that Ashura Doji is dead and honestly I am highly highly skeptical that Kandro was dead as well. Because at this point Oda is the king of false death drama the sheer amount of times he has written a death scene for someone only to have them be alive and well and they even live happily ever after later on has very much desensitized me to this sort of material in One Piece. Oda has proven to me over and over that death is not usually something to be taken seriously so I just I don't. I see Kiku's tears and I understand the intention of this scene but in the back and actually even in the front of my mind I'm like yeah but you're gonna be fine which is why the most interesting thing to me would be to choose this very moment to subvert that. Set up a scenario where perhaps the vassals are dying one by one and have them ultimately end Wano in the afterlife alongside Oda and hey if that were to happen that it also might fulfill some foreshadowing with their graves in front of Odin's castle but as of right now I can't bring myself to believe that's where we're going especially with Kaido appearing at the end of the chapter. Thanks to the very existence of Kandro there's very much question over whether or not this is actually Kaido. It really could just be more ink shenaniganry even though it does appear to be Kaido using imbued conqueror's hockey to just slam down on Kinamo. I mean how ridiculous would it be if Yamato left Momo to go and fight Kaido just for Kaido to immediately arrive here and kill Momo that that would be an anti raid point actually. That's one of many reasons why I don't know if this is actually Kaido. This Kaido is just so suspicious he doesn't say anything and the one close up we do have of him is a fairly blank and emotionless face for Kaido. I mean to be fair he does a lot of that on his own anyway but everything we see happen in this final segment of the chapter just makes me more and more skeptical like I don't know what to believe so it's just safer and easier to believe nothing. Now having said that I want to go full tin foil for a short time here just give me like 15 seconds but this is now the second time that we've had an Odin related ruse. Two fakes and if I were to be someone who forges crackpot theories based on minimal evidence patterns then today would be a feast because I would say that this is a great setup for the actual Odin to make an appearance except it would be a sort of boy who cried wolf situation. Our characters have now seen so many fake Odins that they would not believe it if the real one appeared right in front of them and if the rule of threes is indeed a thing which it is we've now seen two Odins so will the third switch it up and be the real one? Who knows? Not me, not you, but maybe Momonosuke because he's been doing some light reading amongst all of this and thus he has now become one of the most knowledgeable and integral characters in the entire series. We as readers don't know why that is yet but that's not important because Momonosuke does. Momonosuke alone knows the truth, actually that's not true. He and Yamato alone together know the truth and maybe Kaido. Another important thing is that Momo's voice of all things activates randomly during this chapter which is rather fascinating because it does imply the presence of someone or even some thing that we are not currently aware of. Given his reaction I'd assume it's not Zunesha because Momo would be able to recognize the elephant's voice, I don't know if that's too logical, but with that one possibility crossed off that narrows things down to almost everything. Maybe even sea kings and that could also open up another avenue for Luffy's salvation and I really don't want to speculate too hard because this is one of those situations that is just so vague. You could probably make an entire video out of potential answers but massive things are happening on Wana right now, things that are likely very good for us. Although the overall tone of this chapter tells us that we're entering some dark times here which is expected. This rate has been going far too well for far too long and we do need some drama to amp up the stakes again. With that said I still don't think we are anywhere near a failure state. As it is two of the Tobiropo are down, one of them has defected, almost all of the gifters have defected, everyone else is let's be honest useless, and it really is just Kaido, Big Mom and a handful of top officers left to demolish. So despite the bleak nature of this chapter we are still in a really good spot and to continue putting yourself in good spots then do check out this video which covers the Wana mysteries that need to be solved. This arc still has a lot of big questions to answer and I look forward to seeing you there.