 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. And today we have a review of chapter 969, Fool of the Lord. And this week we have a very, very strange addition to the Odin flashback, in which our plucky young hero has turned into the titular Fool of the Lord, for reasons mostly unknown. And therein lies a pretty effective description of the chapter as a whole, because Odin has elected to, for whatever reason, strategically keep the motivation behind the bulk of this chapter, and I'm honestly not quite sure how to feel about this initially, because Odin goes from hell bent on destroying Orochi to willing court jester with no transitionary period. Now we are left with a fair bit for us to infer as to why Odin became so cooperative with Orochi. For example, he probably threatened citizens of the capital and even demonstrated his power with the whole poison arrow business. But there was also a part later on in the chapter where Odin references some ships with Kaido, so we are led to believe that Odin did make some sort of deal with Orochi, and then five years later he found himself in a position where Orochi had altered the deal. And as for the basic explanation of why, look I don't particularly care what the conditions were, but looking at the chapter in an individual context, I think that not knowing produces a really weird narrative flow, where we as an audience are suddenly being kept at arm's length from Odin after spending time following his perspective and thoughts, and in fact in the last few chapters he's even acted as the narrator. But as a result we are now viewing him very much as an outsider, and it feels to me like this chapter was intended to be far more powerful of a statement than may have come across as a result. At least to me. So for example, there's a pretty phenomenal idea to work with here. You know the incredibly proud, super powerful, almost heroic image that is Odin being tarnished with his foolish naked antics. And what's more, the fact that he is seemingly willingly inflicting all of this upon himself. That is a great idea in terms of the whole swallowing pride business and doing what a true leader would need to do for the sake of the country. But that effect is significantly dulled because we don't understand the specifics of why he is doing this. Odin is a character that I love. Over the course of a handful of chapters, he has been portrayed as one of the most intriguing figures in the entirety of the series, and we've gone on this incredible eye-opening journey with him. So when this man completely abandons all sense of his established self and swallows his pride, I want to be in on that, because I want to experience it with Odin to make his half a decade of humiliation hit that much harder with me. Because as it is, what I'm kind of left with after reading this chapter is primarily a bit of confusion, and instead of thinking about the emotional effect that these events are having on Odin, I spent pretty much the entire chapter more or less questioning why is he doing this in a wide variety of ways. So for example, at first I was convinced that this was not Odin and it was the old hag, whose name is Higurashi by the way, but you know, using the money money no me to impersonate him. However, Odin does very quickly dispel that idea by including her in a panel beside Orochi. But the very fact that I thought that proves how out of character this is for Odin to be acting in this way, for five years straight no less, and I'm really hoping that keeping this reasoning a secret pays off in a big way, because I think it goes on to hinder almost every other aspect of the chapter. And another example of that would be later on during the fifth year, where Orochi visits Kuri and betrays Odin. That betrayal can be seen on the page, it's very clear in Odin's face, through his shock and his tears, that Orochi has committed an action of the highest degree of dickery. And some of that does also have to do with the Hyogora situation, but once again that betrayal does not hit me anywhere near as hard as I feel like it should, because at this stage we have been so disconnected from Odin, so it doesn't land there and it's obviously something we've come to expect from Orochi, so there's no surprise that he was a dick again. And so what we're left with is this inevitable feeling of dude I have no idea why you were doing this for five years, but this was clearly the obvious outcome. Whereas if we had the context of Orochi saying something along the lines of Hill's slaughter, thousands of Wano civilians in an instant, if Odin speaks out of turn or if he made some sort of deal with him to open the ports of Wano, then at the very least we'd be able to strongly empathize with Odin, because there are some real stakes in play. But as it is, it just, it's a bit of a lessened experience for me. With that said, that's very much in the context of looking at this chapter as an individual experience, which these reviews are based on, so there is that. In volume format, with greater context, this may not be an issue, but I personally found it quite jarring and weird. Anyway onto more interesting stuff, right at the beginning of the chapter we had something else that was very, very unexpected, which was a surprise guest appearance from the Bari Bari Nomii, owned by a man named Semimaru, who we also know immediately is not making it out of this flashback in a good way, because eventually Bartolomeo has to end up with this ability. I do love that Odin chose to bring back another known devil fruit ability though, especially one that is so closely tied to the straw hats. Because seeing the Manamanonomi and the Bari Bari Nomii being used so directly for antagonistic purposes is a very nice twist on how we would normally associate their powers within the series. It's kind of like going into a flashback and seeing a character like, I don't know, Rock Steezerbeck wielding Luffy's Gomu Gomu Nomii. There's something at once familiar, but just plain wrong about what you're seeing. And I know that I personally went oh shit when it became clear that this was the Bari Bari Nomii, because currently this thing is still entirely unbeatable within the one piece world. Although I am very much in the camp that it's not impossible to break the barrier, but at this stage you know this thing has been shown to tank a king punch, so I really don't like Odin's chances. Although maybe we'll get to see just how these barriers can be broken coming up, but I do think it's more likely that you would just need to take the user by surprise. In any case, it's a nice little addition to the flashback here. Another one of my favorite parts of the chapter was the tiny panel featuring a young Gekko Moria and Kaido. And whoa, how cool does Gekko Moria look? He seems like he was a true force to be reckoned with in his rookie days, almost evoking that used as kid level of sinister youthful menace. And I don't know if this is just the perspective because, well Moria is a big lad, but Kaido looks a lot smaller here in terms of pure bulk at this stage in his life. Which from that panel alone does give you the impression that these two could have been equals, I mean maybe, although obviously not with how things turned out, but I also really like that right behind Kaido you can see the silhouette of king which is a great teeny tiny detail. And this also goes a long way in fact all of the way to explaining how Moria acquired the corpse of Rima, because as it turns out he just all out invaded Wano with his crew which is such an awesome move from one of my least favorite characters in the series. This is the Moria I want to see more of, the man before he became a broken shell. And another thing I need to mention is when Odin found out the news of Roger's execution, which came courtesy of a newspaper from Orochi which was an oddly nice thing for the Shogun to do. Although maybe Orochi knew about Odin's association with Roger which you know isn't inconceivable because of Orochi's relationship to Kaido and the knowledge he would have of the outside world, but I'm actually thinking that Orochi may have seen this and given it to Odin with the intention of torturing him. Sort of like, haha your friend is dead, although it very much had the opposite effect. What I really like is that Odin has the Ray Lee reaction though, which was described as this kind of profound fit of both laughter and crying. Which I assume is how just about all of the former Roger Pirates would have taken this news. I mean maybe not shanks, he did seem pretty firmly depressed in that one panel we've seen of him reacting to Roger's execution. But speaking of execution, the final two pages of this chapter has begun a series of events that I'm not quite sure I'm ready for. And before we get into that I have to say that these two pages were easily my favourite of the week, with the group shot of the scouts from behind as well as the individual close-ups of their faces. In regards to that it's probably important to note that Dendro is back in action, still looking in awe for Lot like Koshiro, who if you don't remember was Oro sensei in East Blue. However at this point I think that idea is thoroughly debunked because Koshiro was confirmed to be in East Blue at the time that Roger was executed. So despite many many people pointing out the incredibly similar appearance, I think that this is an idea that we can finally let go of. I mean to be fair it is still technically possible but it requires such a huge stretch of thinking, such as Koshiro making a return trip into the new world just around this time but that sounds really clunky and weird. But this is very much it. These last two pages signify that we are well and truly in the business end of this flashback and that it will end with Odin's execution. So this is where the true tragedy that all one piece flashbacks are so great at portraying begins. I do however find it interesting that we've come this far into the flashback without exploring Toki too much, but then again after Odin meets his inevitable fate maybe exploring her story will make up the tail end of it. Or perhaps down the line she'll even get her own dedicated flashback. All I'll say right now is if we do not learn anything more about Toki's abilities and the fact that she very very likely lived during the Void Century then this woman surely has some connection to modern day that needs to be explored separately. Which I've spoken about to death in an entire video recently so I won't harp on about it here. And there were some other miscellaneous things in the chapter like the fact that young Shinobu seems to have overheard the conversation between Orochi and Odin so that might be the key to Odin's dramatic reveal of the deal that they made like say we're back in modern day and Shinobu tearfully reveals why Odin acted like a fool to all of the citizens of Wano to convert public opinion in their favor and turn the tide of battle something like that. But overall this chapter… look it was alright. It definitely wasn't bad by any means but like I stated at great length I really don't like that after becoming so well acquainted with Odin that we were suddenly pushed into viewing his story from a more outsider perspective. I wanted to be able to experience every high and every low of this man's story and to be frank that just didn't happen here. Not understanding his motivation very much hindered the impact of him willingly turning into a public disgrace as well as Orochi's betrayal at the end and you know what I think it even impacts the epic march of the scabbards. Because if we still retained that connection to Odin then I'm certain that we as readers would be furious with this situation and cheering on these ten figures with every ounce of our being. As it is though I guess that effect is still kind of there but once again significantly lessened. And in all fairness this chapter also suffers from what I would call post roger blues. Because after a string of chapters featuring insane content like literally finding the one piece the first Wano centric chapter was always going to feel like a bit lacking in comparison. But it was still good solid build up to an incredibly tragic event and just wanted that tiny bit more. And that pretty much does it for chapter 969. 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