 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece and today we have a review of chapter 992, Remnants. And this week was probably one of the purest action chapters we've heard in quite some time. This is very rare for one, but it took place almost entirely in a single location featuring the battle between Kaido and the vassals, which just… wow. But there were also a whole ton of two page features which just got more and more insane as the chapter went on. And I really do have to say that moment when Kinemon hit Kaido with the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review was my absolute favourite. Thus granting Kaido regular one piece content uploaded straight into his YouTube feed, so I'd actually say that Kaido got the better of that altercation. And so can you. Just press that button, join the Grand Fleet and let's become the pirate kings of YouTube. But back to relevant discussion, I'm still in a slight state of disbelief with how things end it. But I will say that the frequency of the double page endeavors featuring almost exclusively action made the chapter go by very, very quickly, which I think is a bit unfortunate after a double break. I mean, I'm over here just tapping my strictly metaphorical veins, waiting for that one piece injection, and then it's over in an instant. Oh well, I guess that's just the nature of these things. I still love the chapter and I guess we will start with its greatest focus being Kaido versus the vassals. And I have to be honest, if several or in fact even one year ago you would tell me that a huge part of this raid was going to consist of Kinemon and his allies fighting directly against Kaido, I would have laughed in your face. Except because I know you're a trustworthy time traveller, that laughing would have been filled with tears because that is certainly not what I would have wanted. But in these later stages of Wano, Oda has done a superb job of actually making me care about this goofy band of misfits. I mean, yes, it is sometimes hard to reconcile the idea that Kinemon, the farting perverted samurai, is now holding his own against Emperor of the Sea, but it also doesn't seem unbelievable. I think he has built these guys really masterfully, making them appear as wildly incompetent since the days of Pankazut and then slowly revealing their more serious signs building up to this very moment. And I have a whole ton of favorite panels, but one example that really illustrates this is that great shot of the Scabbards all from the side, all in that exact same position. When I saw that, it was like being hit with this tangible wave of power because here's the really crazy thing, give me any one of these characters on their own and I see none of that. However, if you put all nine of them together, then all of a sudden this is a truly threatening fighting force. And in fact, this entire page goes to great lengths to illustrate that because the panel of the vassals is very purposely balanced to that of Kaido. These two panels are given roughly equal space on this two page spread, which is designed to provide a sense of equality. This is Oda saying through page layout alone that right now this is anyone's fight. That feeling can obviously change in the sudden, but inevitable future, but right now we have a balanced fight on our hands. Or at least that's what Oda wants to make us feel. And he goes on to make good on that feeling throughout the rest of the chapter with some phenomenal action. And with that, I think I have to skip straight to Raizo firstly because what? I mean, he's always been one of the more competent, I feel so strange using that word to describe Raizo, but he has. He's been one of the most competent vassals, but that scroll ability is simply crazy. I actually think we may have a new contender for the most perfect defense in one piece. Like seriously, move away Bartolomeo, get out of here. Because not only could Raizo block a king punch, he could send it flying right back as well. And I also love that he can do this without a devil fruit. Anytime a strange ability is showcased in the series, it has nothing to do with fruit or Haki, it really peaks my interest. Although, it does make me wonder exactly how Raizo accomplishes this. Like, is this his particular individual ninjutsu, or does his power come from the scroll itself to be potentially used by anyone who wields it? I mean, yeah, it's not quite clear how this stuff works in one piece, as opposed to, say, Naruto. And arguably, it doesn't need to be. Raizo put on one hell of a show, so good on him. As did the rest of the vassals of course, most of them had their own badass Kinamon style moment this week. And in fact, I think the only two who did not get their own little showcase focus would be Dendro and Ashura Doji, although they did participate in the finale. However, I can't imagine them being left out of this, so I do expect Oda will give them some sort of little individual victories right before the tide starts to turn in Kaido's favor. And speaking of just a random tangent thought, am I the only one who feels like Kaido is actually more vulnerable in his dragon form? At the moment, this seems like a fantastic matchup for the vassals so far because they scamper around and attack Kaido from just about anywhere because he is such a huge target. And then all of the advantages of becoming a dragon like Bora-Breath are completely neutralized by a wide array of techniques. So maybe it's just a grass is always greener scenario, but in this situation, I feel like he would be doing a lot better in his basic only form. But moving on to my favorite part of the chapter, which was the panel of Kinamon, Dendro, Ashura Doji and Inorashi invoking Odin's sword style. Because firstly, it is perfectly drawn. I love the vassals in the foreground that are treated with this much darker shading than we would normally see because it signifies a shift worthy of paying attention to. Sort of like an aesthetic cue saying, this is serious business. Plus, I didn't even really realize it until I saw this panel, but Odin's sword style is 100% recognizable. Thinking back to images of him, like on the cover of volume 96, to me Odin's technique has always seemed a bit more like an arbitrary dual sword pose. Very cool, but nothing that really solidified a style in my mind. So I love what happened here because seeing the four of them adopt this pose is about as good as seeing Odin himself just rock up to the battle. And of course, his legacy was more present with the short comic flashbacks that were given next to it. Speaking of though, that is a very interesting thing that Odin does. So you've got these two pages, right? Each of which contain epic panels taking place at the height of drama. And juxtapose against them to the side here are the smaller panels of comedy, mostly featuring Odin being a self-absorbed goofball. And I love how seamlessly Odin can go from comedy to epic, then back to comedy and finally land on action-packed payoff, which is only actually possible thanks to what was explored in the comedy. I need to emphasize this is not an easy thing to pull off. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, this would be incredibly jarring and it would probably ruin the moment of impact. In fact, I don't think many other authors would have even tried to do this and the way it would have been treated would be a scenario where we cut to like a serious flashback of Odin instructing his vassals and then them kicking into action or something that would provide a more one note consistent atmosphere. Instead, what we have here is Odin hilariously failing to teach the vassals coupled against the modern day revelation that they did in fact, eventually learn. And I get that a lot of what I'm saying probably seems really obvious because you've all seen it happen in action on page, but the fact that it looks so easy and flows so well does not take away from how difficult it is to pull off. Oh, and just a fun offshoot idea, I suppose this would mean that Odin two sword style is now officially a recognized martial art in this world. And I would fully expect this to become a signature school of Wano. And while one of my greatest desires at this point would be to see Zoro adopt a technique or two, he does very much have his own thing going on. Although that huge connection to Odin is still there in Enma, so who knows? But weirdly enough at this point, Zoro doesn't even know Ryo, which at least four of the vassals do. And that seems like a fairly important thing that he's going to need to learn at some stage given that Armament Haki is his specialty and all. Hmm, but leaving Kaido in the vassals, this chapter did indeed have other content. In fact, it hit us straight in the face with a very casual conversation between Big Mom, Perispera and Marco, a surprisingly casual conversation. It was a weird little break in the chaos to see Big Mom have this cordial chat, but I liked it. And I find it particularly interesting that Big Mom seems to have a degree of respect for Marco, the likes of which we very rarely see from her. I mean, I imagine it's all because of Whitebeard, but still, it's nice to see how these interactions play out. Sometimes world figures meet up and it's quite predictably volatile. And other times they just have this delightful catch up. Shortly after though, we cut to two very brief scenes which play out more or less the exact same way over two panels, one of which is Karat running away from Wanda and the other is Luffy running away from the miscellaneous samurai. And I have to say, I don't really know why these two are so deliberately similar. It's certainly not an accident. I just don't know if what he was trying to do really landed with me. Mostly because the Luffy section in particular seems entirely unnecessary because nothing has really changed with his situation. So I do actually wonder if this was a case of either Oda or an editor feeling that this chapter was a bit straw hat light and maybe needed an injection of Luffy to remind everyone that, you know, this is indeed one piece. Cause actually, you know what thinking about it, he is the only straw hat shown in the chapter and that is just a single panel. So I really do wonder if Luffy was just thrown in to keep the straw hat presence in the story and not make it seem like they'd completely vanished from the situation. Otherwise this teeny, tiny Luffy section really serves no purpose. Karat's identical panel on the other hand does serve a purpose because it would seem that she has spotted Paris Barrow. Although to be fair, I'm very much left to kind of just assume that because the transitions are a bit unclear. We just go immediately from sinister looking Big Mom to Karat on a vendetta. And I have no idea how she found out about Paris Barrow. Big Mom was thrown outside by Robin. So I guess Karat's sharp eye is just caught a glimpse of the Candyman. Weirdly enough, what I find more interesting is that Wanda is not fighting with the rest of the Ming tribe. So I guess the Kaido attack force was restricted to those who can completely control their Sue along forms. And I guess Wanda can't, hmm, question mark. Whatever the case, I'm not sure how this whole Karat versus Paris Barrow setup will turn out to be. But I will say I'd probably be a bit disappointed if Paris Barrow's only purpose on Onigashima was to show up for Karat to take revenge for killing Pedro. However, with that said, I am quite happy that almost 90 chapters into the arc, Karat seems to finally have an individual drive for being here rather than just being a mink and having loyalty to Kozuki and all of that. So this is nice. And the other thing of note is that in this whole opening section, we take some time to focus on Black Maria playing the shamisen, which is interesting, very interesting. I always tend to sit up and pay a bit more attention every time this instrument is whipped out because it certainly does add flavor to the scene in question. But I do wonder if this is Otis setting up the end of act three. Because all of the acts do begin and end with the mysterious shamisen player who is not Black Maria and is almost certainly Hiyori because her outfits match Komarasaki and the Hiyori looks. But it might be quite a bit of despair for fun if act three ended with Black Maria playing us out or it might be Oda just introducing the element of music here. So it doesn't seem like a sudden interjection when we do play out act three, if we do play out act three. Because obviously all of this is why on speculation but I just don't think that Oda would have Black Maria do something so iconic as a simple exploration of her character. There's an infinity of other things that he could have done to highlight her if he wanted but this action to me seems to connect directly to the core fabric of this entire arc. In fact, thinking about it, it doesn't really do much to highlight Black Maria at all. It pretty much just highlights the music. But after a two week break, one piece has had some bonus features for this chapter. One of which was being on the cover of Weekly Shonen Jump. And usually I don't mention the covers unless there's something particularly special and this one probably is because one notable thing is that it reveals Yamato's color scheme which is fun because of all of the thoughts in my brain thing. I certainly did not predict this sort of gradient hair. It's very evocative of Senku from Dr. Stone. I quite like it though, especially because of all of the crazy and vibrant Wano hair we've had so far. I'm not so sure we've gone with pure white for anyone as of yet. Actually, that's not true. It's definitely not true because speed had half white hair. Remember speed? Me neither. Haven't seen her since act one. What this color scheme does do though is potentially ruin any idea that people had about Black Maria being Yamato's mother because Black Maria is officially a blonde. Not that hair color genes in one piece should ever be taken seriously at all. But I do find it very interesting that Yamato would seem to share at least half of her hair color with Hiyori which I think does make aesthetic sense and say are both at least thematically connected by Odin. But I do feel like this is going to trigger a whole new wave of Hiyori is person X theories which to be fair, I've been quite guilty of making myself. And in this case, I suppose it would turn into Yamato is Hiyori and the Hiyori we know is actually Toki and I'll just leave it at that cause I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again. Probably the most striking thing about Yamato's color scheme though is the horns. It's a very bold decision to go for vibrant devil red. And I have seen some people on Twitter who aren't so keen on that element but I think it's pretty essential. If the horns were something that matched her color scheme a bit more like say, I don't know a black or a white or even an aqua, then they'd blend into the design far too much and they would make Yamato look quite flat. So the horns or at least some element of Yamato needs to stand out. And if it's not going to be the hair then the horns are a natural choice. And red is a fine color to do just that. But that pretty much shows up for chapter 992. And more importantly, what did 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 for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.