 Now, if you watch a lot of my videos and you're probably expecting some sort of cringy gag, asking you to subscribe to the channel for regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. Well, just like the lid of a particularly tough Bolognese jar, you'd better get ready for a big twist because this time, I am asking you to follow me on Twitter for highly irrelevant One Piece content uploaded straight into your Twitter feed. So yeah, when expecting that, were you? Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today I'd like to dive into one of the greatest strengths of the series, which is its tendency to be wildly unpredictable in terms of basic plot, the act of which could be called some sort of plot twist. And these have been such an incredibly necessary feature in the series because a story simply cannot maintain strong interest for well over two decades if its basic narrative is entirely predictable. Eventually, no matter how great the characters or the world are, people will get bored of going through the motions, and I know that there are some who would argue that One Piece is guilty of this to some degree, and yeah, sometimes it does have a very standard arc structure, which is a fascinating discussion I'd like to get into during another video, but at the same time, anybody who claims that they saw all of the twists and turns of One Piece coming in advance is simply lying. I have no nicer way of putting it than that, which isn't to say that you would have been fooled by every twist, but there are some very key moments that I would like to highlight here today. But first up, because the internet is a semantic minefield, I am going to define what a plot twist is, which for the sake of this video is going to be an unexpected narrative development that goes on to change the course of the story. Plot twists can of course be technically defined as much less impactful events than that, but I'm looking for the ones that seriously threw a wrench into everything we knew of as One Piece and changed the series forever going forward. And as we go through these events, please do let me know in the comments how many of these twists caught you off guard, because everything I'm about to cover effectively blew my mind, so I'm quite keen to hear your experiences as well. But with that out of the way, let's begin. Welcome to the Top 5 Greatest Plot Twists in One Piece. So despite the fact that this may be a less than memorable twist in the series, compared to other earth-shattering ones here to come, I quite vividly recall my reaction when this chapter came out. And just to give this moment some very, very important context, throughout the entirety of the Zo'ak thus far, there had been background tensions displayed between the Mink Tribe and the Samurai of Wano. There were all sorts of hints that if a samurai were to be discovered, then there would be trouble, a lot of trouble, quite possibly leading to a gigantic conflict within the Ark, which I feel is very much what we expected to play out, you know, a more standard One Piece Ark. But Zo'ak went on to be unique in so many ways, but it was stuff like purposely ensuring that Momonosuke stay in his dragon form, as well as the monkey mink thing, who discovered Kinamon and Kondro, and then immediately rushed to tell the rest of the tribe, as if to issue them with a dire warning. But the biggest thing that really threw me off the mark here was the entire flashback featuring Jack, invading the Phantom Island on the hunt for Rizzo, a ninja of Wano. And just watching the Mink Tribe continue to brutally combat Jack and his forces for five whole days and nights, whilst adamantly denying that Rizzo was there. And so as a result, there was this overwhelming impression that the people of Wano were responsible for this tragedy that had befallen the poor Mink Tribe, and that would only have deepened whatever grudge these two groups seemingly had. So when Inuarashi and Ekumonmushi fell to the floor and exclaimed that Rizzo was safe, while my personal reaction to this can be summarized with this look from Zoro. This was such a masterfully set up plot twist that hit so hard. Because at this very moment, you realize all of the pain and suffering that the Mink Tribe went through was for the sake of a bond rather than a grudge. And so it was a bit of a hot pot of emotions at once heartwarming and soul destroying. But also narratively, it completely reshaped the structure of the Zohark, which was looking like it was building to a conflict. But instead, this moment served as its climax or at least its emotional climax. And this is one of those things that just seemed so obvious in retrospect. But at the time, this completely blew me away. And it is certainly one of the greatest plot twists that I have had the pleasure of experiencing within one piece. Number four, Saifah Pole 9. Do which I specifically mean the betrayal on Water 7, where we saw Rob Luchi, Kaku, Kalafa and Bluna each declared their allegiance to this secret cell of the world government. And I really don't want to undersell this moment at all because it should be noted that betrayal is such a difficult thing to pull off in any kind of satisfactory way. It comes with quite a few problems, namely that you need to make the betrayal logical, which usually results in dropping hints along the way that very much blatantly telegraphs the betrayal to the audience, thus making the ultimate moment much less potent. Or the alternative is that it completely comes out of nowhere and becomes an unsatisfactory twist. But I think in this case, Oda really nailed betrayal. Firstly, by introducing us to four quite charming and unassuming characters, like Tate Kaku for example, he played a big part in assisting the Straw Hats with the evaluation of the going Mary and he just seemed like such a joyful carpenter living his best life. And Kalafa was also introduced to us with a nice comic sense and even Luchi had this cool ventriloquist quirk with Hattori. Luna on the other hand, or it was just kind of there, but that's what a bartender would do to be fair, very unassuming. So it was both shocking and quite crushing actually to discover that these four were actually going to become primary antagonists of the saga. Not only that, but the fact that they were infinitely more powerful than any of them had led on. But I also think that this worked really well because One Piece prior to this moment had not seen an awful lot of core betrayal. And whenever it did happen, it was generally something obvious like oh, crocodile betrays Robin on Alabasta, which sure, who could have predicted that? So betrayal as a huge dramatic device was not built into the fabric of One Piece at this time, which made this particular plot twist hit ever so much harder and they do think that it would be nigh on impossible for Oda to pull off the same effect again. Because, you know, for me once, shame on you as well as the rest of the saying. Although that has certainly not stopped Oda from trying, but I don't think that any act of betrayal is ever going to be as much of an effective plot twist as this brilliantly implemented piece of story that took place on Water 7. Number 3 Daddy Dragon Sticking with the Water 7 saga for now, we have another blatantly impactful plot twist in the series where it was very casually revealed by Monkey D. Garp that the mysterious man we knew only as Dragon was, in fact, the biological father of our protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy. And all I really had to say when this happened was what the hell? I mean, yes, it makes a lot of sense in terms of pieces falling into place retrospectively, like why Dragon acted on Logtown saving Luffy from Smoker and such, but to this day, it is still incredibly bizarre to think of this man as Luffy's father. Because, I mean, look at him. He's like an antithesis of everything that is Luffy. All stern and serious, although I guess they are similarly driven, and he does have his goofy moments, very rare moments that is, but standard storytelling theory would have one believe that Luffy's father would be a man, I guess, more similar to Garp, who was an individual prone to Luffy's comical quirks, with a big smile. But I guess that's why this twist works so well, doesn't it? Because then there's this frowning, intense force of aura. And yeah, like I said, Dragon does do some weird stuff, but overall, the impression of him gives off a more mehawk style of permanent sternness. I do have to say though, a lot of that is probably just because throughout the course of the series, we still have not had the chance to properly get to know Dragon, like we have Garp and obviously Luffy. I'm sure that the second we do then, all of this will fit very nicely into place, probably. But back in the ward seven days, and well, even to this day, the fact that Dragon was revealed to be the father of our protagonist was one of the grandest plot twists that one piece could have possibly thrown at us. Number two. The Straw Hat Separation. Alright, next up is quite probably the twist that changed the series in the most radical manner that we will be examining here today, all catalyzed by a certain Bartholomeguma during the initial Sabati arc. And as always, context is everything, so cast your minds back. At this point in time, we have had just over 500 mighty chapters of One Piece, which was over a decade of storytelling, and at any given time, it had always featured the Straw Hats operating as a cohesive group. During various arcs, that group would be split up into some subgroups, but the crew were always together. And at this time, way back in 2008, it seemed absolutely inconceivable that One Piece could survive without that dynamic. So the idea of removing every Straw Hat except for Luffy from the story was on nobody's mind. And then it happened. Luffy punched a world noble, called down a force far greater than they could handle, and desperate action had to be taken, which resulted in just over two years of both in-world and real-world time, where we had a story that focused solely on Luffy, and his adventures going through Amazon Lily, Impel Down, and Marineford. And this came in various waves of shock, because I remember the preceding chapter ended with Zoro disappearing thanks once again to Mr. Kuma, and that in and of itself was a gigantic plot twist, because you know, what's that going to lead to? Like a rescue Zoro arc, but then the next chapter rolled along, and one by one, they each vanished right in front of our eyes, until it was just Luffy, and I simply did not know how to feel, because everything that I knew of as One Piece had been shattered. And stepping into the next chapter, in fact, stepping into the next handful of arcs, was going to bring a complete unknown. It was as if we were starting an entirely new series. And of course, we now know that this would bring some of the greatest arcs that we've experienced, as well as the finale to part one of this mammoth adventure. But back then, there was this genuine sense of, Oda, what the hell have you done? When it first happened that was, and yeah, there just really aren't that many moments, that I would describe as pure shock that gets showcased in One Piece. But this is certainly one of them, as is our ultimate contender here today. Number one. The death of Port Gas De Ace. And now the end is near. With the crowning example of a plot twist, emerging in yet another entirely unpredictable and shock-inducing event. And this was incredibly shocking, because there was so much going on here that led to Ace having this perception of plot armor about him. Like, I highly doubt there was anyone who seriously thought that Ace was going to die. And the most obvious contributing factor for this was how Oda had handled the concept of death outside of a flashback in the series to this point, which was, well, he didn't. People just didn't die, even if they were the recipient of a point blank explosion to destroy an entire capital city. They still didn't die. And that is far from the only example of death being heavily ignored in the series. And everything went to create a perception that still does exist to this day, that everything will be fine. Always fine. And while I have a lot of issues with that from a narrative perspective, it did give Oda one shining opportunity to completely abuse our expectations, which he took and my God did at land. And here's how you know exactly how successful the decision to kill Ace was. Because after the chapter was released, where said death occurred, there were very few people who actually believed that this was the case. There was a really strong sense of, uh, this is just Oda screwing around with us again, and we'll get to the next chapter and he'll be fine. With all sorts of theories about how this death was going to be more symbolic. And I think that's because the chapter was titled The Death of Port Gas De Ace. And so there was this idea floating around that I actually subscribed to, which was that the next chapter would be titled The Birth of Gold De Ace, or something wanky along those lines. You know, with him being Roger's son and everything. But well, the next chapter came around and it was titled Anger Without Words. And I think that this was the moment where it really sank in amongst readers and became one of the greatest plot twists in the series. It was like the fan base was in this collective state of denial, which to be fair, Oda had given us very, very good reason to feel that way from his past actions. But then we were hit with this wave that changed one piece forever. Because as much as we know that death is not likely, under any circumstances, we do now know that Oda is not afraid to use it in very dramatically potent situations, which we have gone on to see in the New Old Era. Although not quite to the same effect that this had. Not at all actually. And so with all of that in mind, it is pretty difficult to deny that the death of Port Gas De Ace belongs right here at the top of the greatest plot twist in 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 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 feed. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.