 Mihawk is the kind of man who will find any excuse just to visit his bestie Shanks, and the latest of said excuses was to present him with the subscribe button for the Grandline Review, the pressing of which would give Shanks regular One Piece content uploaded straight into his YouTube feed. And luckily enough, Shanks still has one arm available to do just that. Hello and welcome to the Grandline Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we are going to be taking a sliver of time to give some focus to one of the more legendary characters in the series, the world's greatest swordsman, Dracula Mihawk. And it's primarily because the more I think about this man, the stranger his existence in the series actually becomes. Mihawk is one of those characters who appeared extraordinarily early on in the grand scheme of things, way back in Chapter 49 actually, which you know when we're almost at the 1000 mark is pretty damn ancient. But back in the days of Baratier, Mihawk was an unrivaled presence. He stood entirely in his own league in every respect, be it strength, aesthetics, or narrative role. In many ways it was like taking a character from another more established series and throwing him into early One Piece, just to decimate the main cast. However, even to this day with all of the progress that we have made as readers and watchers of the series, that impression of Mihawk still has not entirely disappeared, not at all. And he still very much seems like an entity who exists separate to everything else that is One Piece. And we're here to explore that idea today as we dive into the purpose, connections, and even future of the world's greatest swordsman. And I really do need to begin with that very first word, purpose, which can be divided into two separate streams of thought. One of which is the narrative purpose of the character, a feature that I often dwell on in many of my discussions. But the other in this case is what I think is a much more important idea, being the canonical purpose of Mihawk, i.e. what this man believes in, fights for, and effectively dedicates his life to doing. Now in the cases of most characters in One Piece, this secondary factor is almost always viewed without most clarity. The obvious example being that Luffy's driving purpose in this world is to become the pirate king, while Zoro's is to become the world's greatest swordsman, and so on and so forth. That idea is not exclusive to our main protagonist though, because the great antagonists of One Piece also come with this purpose attached. For example, Sakazuki's purpose is to serve absolute justice, Dolph Lamingo's is to live life as if the world is his plaything, you know, his divine right. And in fact, many other antagonists even share Luffy's drive to become the pirate king. And you know what, even side characters have this feature attached like Hachan. His purpose is to live peacefully and make delicious takoyaki, which is always weird because you know, he's an octopus cooking other octopi, but whatever, we'll get over it, he sure did. But then we turn our attention to Mihawk, and he is one of the extremely rare characters in this world whose driving force cannot be clearly identified. I don't necessarily have any idea why Mihawk does the things he does, like I have no idea why he accepted a position as Warlord of the Sea, I have no idea exactly where he stands on a moralistic scale. However, we can certainly speculate, and oh, we will. But before that, I should also highlight Mihawk's position in One Piece, because while there are characters out there who are comparable in terms of power and mysterious purpose, what makes Mihawk completely unique in the series of absurdly unique individuals is the fact that he operates exclusively alone. Mihawk is a pirate without a pirate crew, he floats around this world on his dingy of doom, and seems to cut down whatever he comes across should he feel like it. In many ways, Mihawk could better be described as a human calamity, yet another unstoppable risk of embarking into the ground line, you know, comparable to that of extreme weather, sea kings and whatever other natural danger, you could find that will instantly wipe out most bold embarkees. This is really strange though, because nobody else at the top of this world presents himself as such a solitary existence, and obviously we can immediately point to the four emperors, each of whom are sky-splittingly powerful in their own right, but they also rely heavily on crews and no matter how strongly they are individually, they would not stand in these positions without them. That links back into purpose and driving force though. Each emperor of the sea has a crew in order to assist them with achieving certain goals. For example, Big Mom is one of the many beings in this world striving for the Pirate King title, but she also has a broad goal of bringing every race together in her twisted paradise, as well as a ton of short term goals like eating delicious number things. But even for the ones whose goals aren't quite as clear like Shang's for example, we do know that he at the very least had that driving force to go out of his way and form the Red Hair Pirates. And I suppose in this world he seems to act for the sake of stability and diplomacy. And so the fact that Mihawk to our knowledge has never formed a crew of his own actually speaks volumes in regards to his sheer lack of desire in this world. He doesn't really seem to want anything and so he does not form any effort to go out and get anything. Mihawk seems like a man whose problem in this world is boredom. He pits me of first world problems, but here we are, and that can actually be seen in his introduction during Baratie, because he quite literally stated that he only destroyed Don Krieg's entire armada for the sake of fun. And even then he didn't look like he was having a whole lot of fun whilst doing it, just a fleeting thrill and then back to boredom. Mihawk acts like an MMO character who has overlevelled himself so much that the game just isn't fun anymore. There's no challenge and that is an important word, because if I was to speculate on Mihawk's driving force and we're doing this video now so I shall, then I would simply identify it as seeking a challenge. And almost every interaction we have featuring Mihawk does point towards this, such as the stories about his prior duels with Shanks. They were events that Mihawk would have been driven to compete in, and the fact that he stopped engaging Shanks once he lost his arm in his blue also speaks to the idea of challenge, as a swordsman Shanks simply may not have been challenging enough for Mihawk to take on at that point. And another moment that I found very intriguing was during the Paramount War. For most of the affair Mihawk was his usual apathetic existence, however there was one instance where he really mentally kicked into gear, sending a flying slash towards Whitebeard, who was then known as the strongest man in the world. And he did so because quote, I just want to measure the distance between that man and us. And notice how Mihawk says us and not I. He recognizes the Whitebeard is on an entirely different level to him, but at the same time he also includes everyone else present on Marinefit in his assessment. As if Whitebeard is the crown jewel, and Mihawk and everyone else are just the riffraff. On this battlefield, Whitebeard would appear to be the only individual that Mihawk saw as a challenge, one that he had actually resigned himself to not being able to overcome actually, but he still wanted to know exactly how far behind he was. But of course the most paramount piece of evidence for Mihawk's challenge-seeking ways comes in the form of our green-haired swordsman. After recognizing the talent, potential, and honor Zoro had as a swordsman, Mihawk vowed to wait at the top for him, no matter how long it may take for Zoro to get there. And that is a pretty grand statement, one that shows Mihawk's sheer confidence that he will still be the top dog by the time Zoro is ready, but also one that intrinsically links Zoro's dream to what we could maybe possibly identify as a driving force for Mihawk. It is entirely possible at this point that Mihawk exists simply to be defeated, that he is so utterly bored with this world that he is awaiting that moment of new power springing up to overcome him. However it may also be to do more specifically with swordsmanship, because let's talk about the whole world's greatest swordsman thing for a bit. It's a really strange dream when we think about it, because there are almost no other characters in this world who actually strive for this position despite it being an alleged global standard. We have Zoro, we have Kuina, and you know I think that's it. No other swordsman has really shown an interest in pursuing the sword for the sake of the sword, and they generally wield it for another purpose in life. Swordplay is a tool for achieving something else, not a path in and of itself. It's completely different from the goal of say becoming the pirate king, which Mihawk himself has said would be even tougher than surpassing him. However that particular dream is held by an extraordinary amount of characters, which leaves Mihawk with very few playmates in his area of niche interest, and those that do arise are often delusional rookies with no concept of what it is to actually be a swordsman. And perhaps that's why Mihawk is so disinterested in actually pursuing any sort of sword-related challenge. He doesn't go out of his way to seek strong opponents, because nobody who has any interest in taking him on is worth his time, so what do you do in that case? Well you obviously take up gardening, horticulture is a fine hobby after all, but at this point I'd like to highlight an image that we have of Mihawk as a child, one of the few pieces of background knowledge we have regarding him, and just how different is this image from the Mihawk we know now. This kid here almost evokes a Zoro style of appeal. I don't know about you but I look at this image and it has an aura of pure drive around it. You know he's injured and his clothes are tattered, but he has the only thing he clearly values in the world, which is his sword and the desire to pursue that craft to its absolute heights. Little did this driven young lad know, however, that achieving that desire would bring him a feeling of such emptiness in this world. And look this is another massively first world problem, but that really is the issue with actually achieving your grandest dreams. If you do live your life for that one profound purpose and against all odds succeed, then you will be left with very very little to do, and that is Dracule Mihawk, man quite literally suffering from success. That isn't the only thing that makes him unique in this world though, because Mihawk also holds a very solitary personality. In fact, within this entire planet I can really only think of three people that he has commonly associated himself with, being Shanks, Perona, and Zoro. And in the case of the latter two, that's because they crashed his island paradise code to see a Bartholomew kuma, although he did go on to form a very interesting connection with the two of them. And I'll dwell on Zoro here a bit more, because what Zoro presented in this moment was an evolution of his dream. As much as Zoro wanted to surpass Mihawk and become the world's greatest swordsman, he had a stronger desire, which was to live and become stronger for the sake of Luffy, which is certainly the reason why Mihawk agreed to train him. Here, Mihawk saw that Zoro was living for something beyond the more simplistic desire to become the greatest. A goal that Mihawk himself knows is a particularly hollow existence once achieved, because what is the point in living for the challenge when the challenge no longer exists? Of course, there could also be a secondary motive behind this, should Mihawk still have the embers of challenge within him, which is this really bizarre sense of training someone for the purpose of defeating you. You know, maybe he's just become so frustrated with the lack of a worthy opponent that he just said, effort, I'll craft my own opponent then, haha. And whether or not that's actually what was going on in his mind, that is more than likely going to be the inevitable outcome. And so we come back to one of the original questions. Why does Mihawk exist in this story? And narratively, it would be to be defeated or to provide a driving force in regards to Zoro. Although perhaps Mihawk's connection to Shanks will also very much play a part in it, if said emperor is ever brought into key focus. Although in terms of the actual character, his purpose is very similar. It would seem that Mihawk's ultimate desire in this world is to either be defeated or at the very least to have that thrill of a challenge once more. Something that he clearly has not experienced since gaining the title of the world's greatest swordsman. But even then, it is nice to take a step back and really recognize what an extremely unique existence Mihawk is in one piece. He is one of the very, very few characters who has achieved seemingly everything he ever wanted to in this vast and brutal world. For all intents and purposes, he has conquered everything this planet has to throw at him, which earns him an exceptional amount of respect for me, because even characters like the four emperors have not reached the same destination that Mihawk has. Each and every one of them still struggled daily to implement and attain their desires. Meanwhile, Mihawk is just chilling on his gothic island with a glass of wine and his ghost waifu. And yeah, maybe outside of the world of swordplay he is not the strongest character and he's not the pirate king or anything, but none of that really matters. Mihawk took this world by the balls and castrated it. And he now stands at its ultimate peak, looking down, watching the squabbles of every other force on this planet with, at best, mild interest. That is Draykill Mihawk, an unparalleled existence in all of one piece. 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 feel free to check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. But for now, this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.