 When does a person die? Well, that would be when they are forgotten. But I have a more important question in mind, and that is when does a person subscribe to the Ground Line Review, that is. And that would be when that person wants to receive regular One Piece content uploaded straight into their YouTube feed. Hello and welcome to the Ground Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we are here to talk about that guy that everyone likes. I think his name is something along the lines of trace, or space, misplace. Ace, that's the one. Port Gas D Ace. And more specifically, I would like to talk about his impact on the series as we know it, because I highly doubt that any of you would call Ace anything less than monumentally important to the world and its characters. But even then, I still think that his grand relevance is heavily understated, a lot of the time. And I would go so far as to call him quiet, possibly the most integral character in the series, Bar Luffy and Roger. Maybe, even then, it's arguable. In addition to that, I also think that the general focus on his relevance in the story is misplaced. Because I imagine that most people would cite Marineford as Ace's greatest impact on One Piece, but I am very much of the mind that Ace's tremendous effect on the series only truly becomes clear after his death. Which, spoilers, I guess, for Ace's death. In any case, to begin this discussion, I would like to very much build on our picture of Mr. Ace in the most lackluster of places, which is his proper introduction during the Alabaster Arc. And initially, he certainly does not seem like one of the most world-checking individuals that One Piece would ever feature. Because he is presented to us in a restaurant, stuffing his face with every morsel of food imaginable, and then even engaging in a bout of narcolepsy. His introduction was heavily comical, to say the least. Which is actually quite rare for a character in his position of prominence within the series. I mean, One Piece is no stranger to quirky character intros, but the greater trend is that the more top tier players of the world have something of a serious, cool debut. Which did go on to happen through Ace's brief conflict with Smoker. So, you know, Ace was cool, he was funny, he had a great design, all of which was very evocative of Luffy. And the purpose behind that, of course, being the reveal that Ace was Luffy's brother. All of which is great, but in retrospect, it superbly understated what Ace represented. Both to Luffy and to the greater realm of One Piece. Factors that we would only become enlightened on over 500 chapters later. And this was a fairly brilliant piece of seating by Mr. Oda. Because while he made sure to convey Ace as much further along in his journey than Luffy, shall we say, he also made Ace very relatable to the readers and watchers through the use of classic One Piece quirks. Which only continued on in the manga as we would eventually follow Ace's cover story hunting for Blackbeard. Which was overwhelmingly comical and a lot of general fun. Which solidified Ace as a sort of identifiable protagonist on his own journey running parallel to Luffy. With that in mind, I dare say that Ace in this early phase of One Piece was nothing all that special. At least not compared to what he would become. He was very much pushed into the background for the time being. And to be fair, so was his current target at the time, Blackbeard. And together these two auxiliary figures would become the center of an endeavor that reshaped the entire world. In fact, auxiliary figures is a heavily misleading thing to say about them. I mean, from our perspective, yes, Ace and Blackbeard were more background figures. But in reality, it was Luffy and the Straw Hats who were the tertiary characters in this grand story. While Ace in particular was the central figure. And that would become apparent after the events of Sabote. After Ace's loss to Blackbeard, he became quite a literal focal point of the world as well as the series itself. Once Ace's execution was announced, Oda immediately shifted gears for the very first time in One Piece, which went from Luffy striving to become the Pirate King to Luffy striving to save Ace. And this is one of many features regarding Ace that I believe is understated. Because by the simple virtue of his situation, he temporarily changed the direction of One Piece. Like forget what was happening in the world for a second, Ace directly changed the form of the narrative itself. That had not happened prior to this point and it has not happened again since. Thus making the Paramount War era one of if not the most unique slice of One Piece that we have ever experienced. And that's just the meta aspect of it because we haven't even started on the eye of the storm that Ace became, which obviously begins with the concept of his execution, actively starting a war between the world government and the Whitebeard Pirates, which is the largest scale conflict that we have seen in the series to this day. Although that might come to be eclipsed quite soon. But it also came with the, you know, minor trivial revelation that Ace just so happened to be the biological son of the former Pirate King, Goldie Roger, quite possibly the most infamous and well-known name in this global society. Which in addition to being a literal center of attention as a war catalyst, also pushed Ace further to the forefront of everything. I mean, consider this for a second. Ace was the biological son of the only pirate king that we have ever known. In addition to that, he was also the symbolic son of Whitebeard, the strongest man in the world and Roger's most powerful rival. Though we definitely don't stop there because Ace was also considered family by the hero of the Marines, Monkity Garp, another fierce rival of Roger who took Ace in and quote unquote, raised him, by which I mean he dumped him with mountain bandits, but still the connection is undeniably there. So what Ace now represents in this Paramount war is one last clash of the old guard as well as the turning point into a new era. And it's amazing to think that one counter one fire boy can cause all of that, but he did. And as I stated earlier, he would go on to be tragically killed during the Paramount war, which also serves as the symbolic passing of Roger's generation. His last biological legacy on this planet, Whitebeard's death, as well as Garp and Sengoku's semi-retirement from active duty, all of that vanished along with Ace. But that wasn't it because as is often the case in one piece, one character's death tends to directly lead to the growth of another, in this case being of course, Luffy. Before we get too deeply into that though, this very much marks the point I was talking about where Ace becomes far more relevant to the series in death than he ever was in life, which is crazy to think about given everything I've just said about his prominence and narrative shifting ways, but this would begin to be delivered to us through a highly unexpected, second Luffy flashback. Or I guess first technically, because his childhood events with Shanks pretty much played out in real time, didn't it? It was only the anime that made it a flashback. Whatever the case, this event really fleshed out Ace in a way that I personally never knew I needed before then because here is the thing about Ace. Prior to now, we really didn't actually know this guy. We knew how others felt about Ace. You know, Luffy, the Whitebeard pirates, Jinbei and Garp in particular, but we did not know Ace himself because his appearance in the series was primarily comical in his introduction and during the Paramount War saga, he spent almost the entire thing just sitting in chains looking all sullen. So finding out about his fairly rough heritage and dreams for the future, retrospectively revolutionized how I viewed those events. Looking back on the Paramount War, I feel far, far more empathy with Ace, as well as Luffy actually, which just adds a whole new layer of importance to Ace's existence, which only occurred after he died, which is kind of sad, but hey, tragedy. But as stated before, the ultimate purpose of this was to serve Luffy's growth, which is done through some fairly clever juxtaposition, having two stories involving the death of one of his brothers, Sabo in the flashback and Ace in the modern day. And in each case, needing to overcome his grief to strive forward and Ace's words in this flashback after the Sabo incident really hit hard. We have to live our lives so that we don't have any regrets. Nothing's gonna stop us. We're gonna be pirates. Those words pulled Luffy out of darkness as a child and that sentiment is what did the same after Ace's death. And as such, to some degree, Luffy will always be carrying the inherited will of Ace throughout the rest of the story. I say to some degree though, because there is an even stronger example of inherited will in the works in the form of Sabo, because another consequence of Ace's death was breaking through Sabo's dubious amnesia, something that I suppose may never have actually happened had Ace not passed away. And as such, this activated the true inheritor, who not only acquired and consumed Ace's devil fruit, but also narratively stepped into the role that Ace had once occupied in Luffy's life, which was the older brother figure. And that has massive ramifications on post-timescape events, and it will no doubt continue to do so. But in these events, Ace will forever be present because I find it quite hard to see Sabo and not have Ace in the back of my mind. Because say what you want about the idea of this character being an Ace clone or not, and I have said such things in many other videos, but it is an intentional parallel and one designed to further Ace's legacy in the story. But even then the specter of Ace remains extraordinarily prominent outside of that. And this is most evident on Wano of all places. Now I'm going to throw up a spoiler warning for anime only watches, because I'll briefly be going over some fairly big stuff here. And if you're not caught up with the manga, you might want to just skip to this time here. Yeah, this one. But for everyone else, here we go. So the first obvious Ace connection on Wano is with Tama, a delightful little bond that we learned about early on, which was important because this was the key factor that formed the bond between Tama and Luffy, which given the length of Wano is easy to forget about. But even at this late stage in the arc, Luffy still very much has her in the forefront of his mind. Tama is directly influencing and driving Luffy's actions. And a lot of that spawns directly from Ace, but we can go much further than that and examine Jinbei's reappearance on Wano. And this might seem like a bit of a stretch at first, but in the end, when you think about it, Ace is the entire reason why Luffy knows Jinbei at all. In fact, Ace is the reason why Jinbei was imprisoned to begin with for refusing to fight against the white beard pirates. And thus that common thread Luffy and Jinbei to breaking out of Impel down together with the ultimate uniting goal of saving Ace. And as a result of that entire experience, Jinbei would eventually, and I mean very eventually, go on to join the straw hats. And it's just crazy to think that that whole series of events was sparked by Ace's very existence. So his profound impact on the series is on full display even with this seemingly unrelated relationship. Furthermore, with the arrival of Marco and Iso, this is just emphasizing Ace even more because Luffy's association with these individuals began just as with Jinbei, fighting for the goal of saving Ace. And yes, there's a strong Kozuki element to play here as well, but the reason why say Marco and Luffy can so easily form an alliance is because of that shared experience of Ace. And then there's the more recent big reveal, being the son of Kaido Yamato, who directly mentions Luffy's similarity to Ace, indicating yet another shared experience of this man who I will emphasize has been dead for almost half the series at this point. So it's pretty amazing that hundreds and hundreds of chapters later, Ace's existence in One Piece is still continuing to be a core driving factor. That is the incredible power of Ace in this story. I couldn't even begin to think about what this world might look like without his existence because it has formed this giant narrative load bearing pylon for almost every major occurrence in One Piece. Without Ace, there is no paramount war. There is no Blackbeard ascending to become an emperor. Samba may have never regained his memories and Luffy may never have even met much less recruited Jinbei into the crew. In fact, Luffy may never have even embarked on his journey to begin with without Ace being a strong older brother-style role model as a child. There is just so, so much in this series that Ace is directly responsible for setting into motion that his legacy has become an unstoppable snowball effect on this planet, which is very much akin to that of his father, Roger, who sparked the great age of piracy, the results of which are still currently playing out in real time to this day. So I guess that does make quite a lot of sense, but in the end, we need to come back to the words of the ever-wise quack Dr. Hiraluk. When does a man die? A man dies when he is forgotten. And with that broad philosophy in mind, Ace is certainly not going to die anytime soon because he is an active driving force, not only for our main character, but for so many other wildly important figures in this world. And I don't think we've seen anywhere near the last of Ace's unforgettable impact on the characters of the series, whether we know them or whether we still have yet to meet them. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel from all glorious One Piece business uploaded straight until YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.