 Now I'm afraid that before you watch this video, you will have to pass a quick mandatory power level screening. So please just sit still, this will only take a moment as we measure you. Oh, and look at that, congratulations. You have been deemed powerful enough to unlock the coveted subscribe button for the Ground Line Review, the pushing of which will grant you regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. Hello and welcome to the Ground Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have a discussion regarding the, I guess it's either explosive or a tired topic, depending on your personal viewpoint, which is power levels, yay. Specifically, the common misconception that a large segment of the Western One Piece fan base have regarding power levels. And this topic is more or less a direct response to the release of chapter 980, and I'm obviously not going to spoil things here for non-manga readers, but basically it featured a brief skirmish between some major characters. And let's just say that the outcome did not go as many would have suspected, thus causing internet controversy and in some rare cases even outrage, as the rest of us watch from the sidelines with popcorn in hand, soon to be converted to popcorn in mouth. But this sort of situation occurs because when becoming part of a community and discussing things like strength and power over a certain period, and in the case of One Piece, that period is potentially decades, a sort of communal canon develops, whereby the large majority agree on certain aspects, and when odor dispels such a commonly accepted thought, then that sparks controversy or not controversy. Honestly, it's more like a non-traversey because it is not odor's fault that you have built up false expectations for yourself. And this is something that I do personally grapple with quite a bit when reviewing the manga weekly, not in terms of power levels though, but more general storytelling. So when I review chapters, I come up with all sorts of ideas for where the story is going. And then on the odd occasion, I will be legitimately disappointed when things don't play out how I personally expected them to. It's a completely unwarranted and unfair response. And I really think that the only way you can truly inoculate yourself from such a thing is to not be an active part of a fan base or dwell too much on the series. That's not necessarily the lifestyle that most of us want to live though. So let's tackle the number one issue by far in this realm being power levels. And we're going to begin with the very first misconception about power levels in One Piece. And that is quite simply that power levels exist in this series at all. To put it bluntly, they don't. One Piece is not like many other classic shonen series where a character's power can be accurately quantified in some way. So the obvious example would of course be Dragon Ball or at least prior to Super, you could draw distinct tiers because combat in that series is super simple. There is very little room for nuance and creativity with combative styles. And in 99% of situations, the stronger individual will win because the stronger one is more often than not the fastest one as well as the one with more energy reserves and intelligence is a questionable factor of relevance in Dragon Ball. One Piece is an entirely opposite entity. This is a series where it is possible for raw power to lose to a cleverly implemented strategy or simply a bad matchup of abilities. Very roughly, One Piece operates on a scissors paper rock type of system. And yes, that's what we call it in Australia. None of this rock paper scissors blasphemy, but this dynamic makes power leveling very difficult as just because character A can be character B, that does not necessarily mean that they can be character C because character C was beaten by character B. You really do need to consider the large majority of One Piece matchups on a case by case basis, which I have a whole series exploring called One Piece Battles, which takes an in-depth look at combatants through at least seven different categorical distinctions as well as adding miscellaneous data on top to predict an outcome. And even then this is often not a solid outcome and in many cases I am left legitimately questioning the fight, but that is the beauty of One Piece. It is an incredibly vast world with nuanced individuals who you cannot broadly categorize, not for the most part. And this will bring us to the second common misconception of power levels in One Piece, which is that even if they did exist, which they don't, but if they did, the fan base is using them incorrectly. And here I am referring to the emergence of broadly accepted leveling metrics. And probably the best example of this would be people who use the term Yonko level. Now taking this term at face value, it would imply that everyone granted the title of Yonko are all pretty much on the same level of power. And the existence of this feature is one of the big, big reasons why a lot of fans simply can't get their pawpaw heads around, Luffy being labeled as the fifth emperor. And that's because he simply does not fit their own established head canon definition of Yonko level as he cannot go head to head with white beard, Kaido or Big Mark. Likely shanks as well and possibly even black beard, although I would heavily argue that last one. And that's kind of the problem. So I say possibly black beard because despite his global shenanigans, there really isn't a lot to say that he is too much out of the realm of possibility for Luffy to deal with. Physically, we've been shown evidence that he simply is not all that strong and he mostly progresses in this world via the same mechanism as Luffy, which would be the art of fate. And so there is a huge, huge flaw in the armor of classifying someone as Yonko level because the six candidates who would officially make up that category in the minds of fans already have a great disparity of personal power between them. Black beard does not possess the strength of say Big Mark or Kaido, but he has made it to the position of an emperor through the device of sheer notoriety and amassing a legion of support behind him, just like Luffy. And that's why this Yonko level garbage doesn't work because it isn't simply strength or power that allows someone the title of an emperor. So for example, if we take a character like say, Dracul Mihawk and decide to label him as Yonko level as many do, then what does that even mean? And to answer that, it means nothing because what it implies is that yes, he is powerful but how powerful are we talking Blackbeard Yonko level or Kaido Yonko level? Could it even be Whitebeard Yonko level? Maybe even Shang's Yonko level which is the epitome of pointless discussion as we know almost nothing about Shang's actual strength. And this is a common problem that will arise when trying to use titles in power leveling. Inevitably, you will always need to fall back to an individual character for comparison rather than a broad group, which is fine. And in fact, that is probably the most effective way to judge the power of any given individual. But for another title example, let's use Mihawk's title as a warlord of the sea. You could never say that any character is of warlord level because it is meaningless due to the incredible disparity of power between all of them. For two examples, let's take Crocodile and Doflamingo. Both possessed the warlord title but one was defeated by a pre-gear pre-times get pre-hockey Luffy, whilst the other was able to tank gear fourth and it took a King Kong punch as well as the rebellion of an entire nation to overcome. The two are not comparable at all in terms of power but they each managed to acquire the warlord title due to their own personal circumstances. And as such, that title cannot be used for anywhere near an accurate measure of strength. Now I will say there is one potential exception to this. The one title that you could maybe possibly get away with using is Admiral level because for the most part, each of the admirals have been shown to be on quite a similar all-around area of power to their counterparts. And yes, we do know things like for a fact, Sakazuki is stronger than Kuzan specifically but it took them a 10 day battle that permanently altered the climate of an entire island to reach that conclusion. So the two were pretty evenly matched as would seem our all admirals. So that is my one little concession on using titles for the purpose of power leveling. However, it is a very rare example for one piece and I still think that if you are going to for whatever reason, get your hands dirty in the realm of power scaling discussions, then you should steer clear of titles because it opens up the idea of using other titles and then things become a giant mess as per usual. And speaking of giant messes for one more title related example, I now present the worst possible power leveling definition in this fan base, which is Yonko Commander level. Now this obviously refers to top officers in each Emperor's crew, such as the Calamities or the Sweet Commanders, Ben Beckman's, whatever. It doesn't really matter because it's absurd. Just as with the Warlords of the Sea and even the Emperors of the Sea, there is a ridiculous disparity of power within every character who holds one of these positions within the series. I mean, even with Big Bum's individual crew, there is a gigantic difference between her Sweet Commanders. Like Carter Curry and Cracker cannot be placed on the same quote unquote level and then have that broad level used as a relevant metric. But it does get used. And as a result, you see a lot of really poorly thought out arguments claiming things like Omg, Luffy can't be Yonko level because Carter Curry is only Yonko Commander level and Luffy couldn't even beat him. And if you want to weigh in on another controversial discussion over whether or not Luffy actually beat Carter Curry, I have an entire video on that here but that is not our focus today. No, our focus abroad statements like that that is something of a cancer upon one piece discussion online because of the sweeping generalizations made and the lack of any internal consistency. So for example, and this is my final point on titles I promise, they don't even form a cohesive system if you do choose to use them. I mean, how does someone who is considered Yonko level stack up against another character who is considered Admiral level? And the simple answer is you would need to look at both characters individually because look, there are all of these wonderful fake tears going around but there is no way to effectively rank those broad tears. I mean, I guess if I had to give it my best go, I'd say that Yonko level goes on top because of characters like Whitebeard and Kaido followed by Admiral level next but that doesn't really work either because there are characters in the Yonko level tier that seem to be blatantly outclassed by those on the Admiral level. And in fact, there are even beings within the Yonko commander level who can stack up evenly against Admiral level combatants. So there's no actual distinction at play between these tears which renders the whole tier system entirely pointless. I mean, if someone on Yonko commander level can be considered equal to someone on Admiral level and then someone on Admiral level can be considered equal to or greater than someone on Yonko level then what was the point of even creating these tears in the first place? Or are we supposed to dive even deeper and say that this Yonko is actually Admiral level whilst this Admiral may very well be Yonko level and this Yonko commander is actually more accurately Admiral level whilst this Yonko commander probably shouldn't even be in the Yonko commander level despite being a Yonko commander. In the end, they don't actually tell you anything and they only serve to muddle up discussion. So in conclusion, stop using titles to power scale. Next up is a misconception that I think thankfully a large majority of the fan base have gotten over but I do still see it enough to mention it here which is that bounties do not equal power. Unfortunately, there is still a healthy trend of power scaling according to the bounty metric and it's all but entirely irrelevant in the modern era of One Piece. Now granted, this was not always the case like when the series first started during the East blue era, bounties were probably quite an accurate representation of direct strength. You could take characters like Arlong and Kuro, compare their numbers and very accurately judge who would be more likely to win in a fight. And you could do that quite consistently with most of the very, very early characters. However, this is no longer the case because when we have characters with a 500 million very bounty, taking out characters with bounties of over a billion berries, we do hit the realization that, uh-oh, these numbers are a bit pointless. What bounties are an indicator of is the perceived threat of an individual by the world government with the limited knowledge that they have available to them. That is very important. It is the knowledge of the world government to play, not the knowledge of the readers and watches of the series. So yeah, it's fun to see bounties change and often some of the biggest moments of the series spawned from that, but using them in direct correlation to power is one of the most unreliable metrics that this series has access to. Now, one of the more accurate systems one could use in the series, I suppose, would be Haki because it is a universal system. Unlike Devil Fruits, Haki does not necessarily produce a unique outcome. And in many cases, you can make solid assessments based on who obviously has greater levels of armament or observation Haki. Not so much Conqueror's Haki though, not yet anyway, but using Haki is not an effective method alone by which to judge others. To illustrate, NL is one of the finest observation Haki uses that we have ever seen in one piece. I really want to emphasize that. His Devil Fruit gives him God-like omnipotence. No, he doesn't have the cardicuri depth of future sight, but NL's particular brand of observation is still incredible, but even that did not stop him losing to a pre-timeskip, pre-gear, pre-Haki Luffy. It's a cool thing that he had in his arsenal, but it goes to show that you cannot depend on Haki or even Devil Fruits for that matter to power scale people. Once again, it all needs to be done on a case-by-case basis. And even then, there are so many variables to consider. So a good example of a shocking moment in the series would be when Caesar clown defeated Luffy, Smoker Toshigi, and several other straw hats. In an instant, mind you, because the group were not anticipating his power to remove all oxygen from the immediate vicinity. And look, Caesar is not a powerful character by traditional metric means. His Haki is nonexistent as far as we know. You can't place him on any vague title tier. His bounty is fairly low. He isn't physically strong in any way, but because of a funky quirk with his Devil Fruit, he can still demolish characters who would be widely considered to be capable of wiping the floor with him. And that sort of interaction can happen anytime, anywhere to almost anyone, which is exactly the case in chapter 980. A certain character with an unknown power took advantage of that situation and emerged as the undisputed victor in a brief, and I want to emphasize that word, brief skirmish. It was not an extended battle. It was not an accurate judgment to power. And the segment of fans who were losing their minds in the depths of disappointment need to calm down and reread one piece because that is the entire history of the series. Characters caught off guard or caught within a bad ability matchup can unexpectedly lose battles. Welcome to the glory of this world. And just imagine how disappointing it would be if things were the other way around. And we always knew who was going to win before a fight even began. In which case, one piece may not even be worth reading. So please, for your own good, stop power leveling. And if you do insist on the practice, then don't overreact to the briefest of conflicts as if it was a key scientific discovery that changes everything we know about human existence. What do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you're keen to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business, uploaded straight until YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.