 Now we move on to a One Piece controversy that rather, unfortunately, involves me. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we are back with more juicy, juicy One Piece related controversy, because as much as I thought that this series was quite squeaky clean when I started making these videos, the more I dive into this deep, deep rabbit hole, the crazier things I find and or remember. One Piece really has had quite a wild impact on the world, and today we are going to be beginning in South Korea, where a section of the One Piece manga was deemed so offensive that an entire exhibition of the series was cancelled. So what kind of material prompted this reaction? Well, it was actually a small series of manga panels depicting this rising sun imagery. Very quintessentially Japan, you could say. This symbol does appear throughout One Piece in several different incarnations. One of the most obvious being to represent the idea of Wano before we ever set foot on the nation, given that it was based on Japan. However, many Asian countries, not simply South Korea, do take issue with this rising sun because it is seen as a symbol of Japanese aggression as a result of a, yeah, the small conflicts that we may know as World War Two. And the word war is, well, it's pretty important in this case, because this One Piece exhibition was going to be held at a war memorial, so a very unfortunate pairing of circumstances in this case. But these images did surface and were broadcast on a Korean news channel, resulting in public outcry and the swift cancellation of the One Piece exhibit. And this quite notably is not the only instance of the rising sun imagery causing an international stir, as the series' demons say also had a well-documented controversy surrounding the earrings of its protagonist Tanjiro. And this one got so bad that they were even changed for the Chinese and Korean release of the series. Although when it comes to One Piece, I can't really find any instance of the rising sun needing to be censored or changed for international release. But then again, the symbol is used very sparingly and for quite minor moments. But you know what? That is nothing compared to the time that another mangaka was threatened with violence for the crime of drawing fan art. So the whole rising sun ordeal is certainly not the only artistic controversy that One Piece has ever featured, although our next one comes courtesy of another mangaka by the name of Keisuke Itagaki, who was probably best known for his work on the Baki the Grappler series, as well as its numerous sequels. But some online furore was conjured when an image surface of Itagaki, having drawn several of the straw hat pirates in his trademark Baki style. And whilst this is, without a doubt, an incredibly cursed image, I kind of love it. And to be fair, most One Piece fans did take this in quite good humor. And if you were a One Piece and a Baki fan, then whoa, this was an amazing image. But as per usual, a small yet loud, ever so loud minority took to the internet to voice their sheer disgust at the image, calling it highly disrespectful and with even one Twitter user, who has since been banned, calling upon Oda to quote, beat Baki mangaka arse with flawless mastery of English grammar there. But it's just such a ridiculous thing to get upset about. I mean, yeah, the characters aside from Luffy and that like surprisingly handsome chopper, I mean, everyone else looks ugly as hell, but it's all in good fun. And I think the situation gave Itagaki a taste of what fan artists endure whenever they post their One Piece related work, literally anywhere online. Sometimes this fan base can be just a little bit too precious. But as for more of a real controversy, may I present you with Vic Minyana. If you've been a fan of anime for, well, really any period, you've probably heard this name and even seen his face. And that's because as things stands, he's arguably one of the most famous English voice actors of all time, a title he will most certainly retain, but for all of the wrong reasons. As Minyana has since been accused of a wide variety of sexual assault allegations dating all the way back to 1989. And just a fun fact in this very unfun story, 1989, well, that just happens to be the year that I was born, so yay. But what does Vic have to do with One Piece? Well, very unfortunately, quite a bit. Because as prolific of an actor as he once was, Vic was given multiple roles within series, including the very notable character of Sabo. However, after the allegation surfaced, Vic was swiftly removed from this, as well as many other roles across a ton of different series. And these days, the English voice of Sabo is performed by Johnny Young Bosch. Which look, I don't know how many of you actually watch the English dub, I don't really. So I do think it's a fairly small proportion of people. But if you were curious about Sabo's shifting tones, well, then that would be the reason why. That's a very well-known English dub scandal though, but it is far from the only one. And the One Piece English dub cast actually includes a now convicted sex offender. And this would be a man by the name of Scott Freeman, who was the voice of Yasopp, Kamakiri, and Hamburg. So nothing wildly important in terms of the series, although I do love Hamburg dearly. But when Scott was convicted and sentenced to jail time, Funimation, of course, severed all ties with him. To dive back into the actual series though, let's head into the one thing widely said to have perhaps ruined One Piece, which is Haki. Now that's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but Haki has been a pretty damn controversial topic ever since the concept was first properly explained. And just to set the scene, let me take you back to a simpler time, when the only power system in One Piece were devil fruits and raw determination. This series had an incredible, almost magical charm to it that no other shounen at the time possessed. Because in One Piece, there was no universal way or substance by which to become more powerful. However, when this universal concept of Haki was fed into the series, there was quite a fan base uproar. And somewhat understandably so at the time because it did feel like a bit of a retcon of the last 12 years of publication. And Haki very much threatened to make the world going forward far less unique and much more streamlined. And whilst I definitely don't think that fan fears were quite justified in that respect, to this day, Haki is still a highly controversial topic seen by many to have supplanted devil fruits as the primary power focus of One Piece. And it really would require something of an entire video to fully flesh out this topic. But despite the fact that there is a decent variety to Haki, it will remain a grand controversy likely for the entire lifespan of One Piece. And even when it does come to those individuals who do truly love Haki, it's still very hard to find one who would call it the superior device over devil fruits. Or so I thought because this poll conducted on my channel shows far, far stronger support for Haki than I ever would have dreamt. So at the very least, good on Haki for surpassing all expectations. But now we've come to the point in this video where it's time for a quick round of controversy or non-troversy, a very simple minigame, the rules of which are as follows. I am going to present you with a theoretical controversy to do with One Piece and it is going to be your job to guess whether it is a legitimate controversy or an illegitimate, filthy, non-troversy. And should you guess incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which will also result in consistent injections of One Piece content administered straight into your YouTube feed. Yes, sounds good. And if you do guess correctly, then Big News Morgans will post an article smearing you online. So we do have some pretty high stakes here for you, less so for me. But here is today's controversy. The third opening of the One Piece anime, Hikariye, was banned in Taiwan following provocative public statements from the singer. So was this a controversy or a non-troversy? Select your option now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it is a pure non-troversy. I have no idea who the singer even is and Taiwan is pretty cool. So if you guessed incorrectly, then you know the thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet, welcome. But even though that was a non-troversy, Hikariye itself is actually much more of a legit controversy. Firstly, fun fact, guess who sang the English version of Hikariye? Well, that's right, it was performed by Vic Minyana. So we have yet another fragment of One Piece history that will forever be stained in controversy sitting there. But the greater problem with Hikariye is definitely the opening itself, which seems like such a bizarre thought, right? Hikariye is probably one of the most chill, beautiful and inoffensive anime openings that has ever been produced. What could possibly be wrong with it? Well, the date it started airing is a pretty big indicator. Hikariye first appeared in episode 116 on June 23rd, 2002. This episode was titled Transforming into Nami, Bon Klai's hard-hitting ballet kenpo. So we're quite far back in the series around the climax of the alabaster arc and in fact, we're still about 14 episodes away from the end of the alabaster arc, which is really interesting when we look at Hikariye because in that opening, it features Nika Robin as a fully fledged straw hat, which she did not become until after alabaster had concluded. So anime-only fans will probably be quite familiar with this incredibly shocking spoiler, which came out of absolutely nowhere. You know, you're just watching the alabaster arc minding your own business, man, that Zoro sure is cool and such. And then the opening tells you, well, like 15 episodes from now, Miss All Sunday is going to join the crew. What? And you might say, look, Grand Line Review, as an anime-only watcher, I was already spoiled on Robin joining the crew because I had already seen her in so many pictures online and such. And that might be true today, you know, 18 years on. But that was definitely not true back in 2002. Robin was still an incredibly new member in the manga and there was almost no widespread media featuring her. So it was a really weird choice that the anime just up and spoiled her joining the crew, resulting in a din of controversy because anime-only fans have it hard enough without the anime itself spoiling them. But what if I told you that there was one occasion where things got so bad that even the manga readers got spoiled by the anime? Well, it's true and this happened very recently. So I'm going to have to throw up a bit of a spoiler warning if you are not caught up to the manga of Wano, please do skip to this time. But for everyone else, strap yourselves in because this is a pretty damn crazy event. Because as it turns out, manga readers did have the story spoiled by the opening over the top. Now this theoretically should not be possible. At any given time, the manga operates about a year into the future of the anime. So whatever the anime is covering shouldn't even come close to the current manga material, let alone go beyond it. And so this is an unprecedented case where the opening went beyond anything that had been published. Because what over the top did was essentially confirm that Kyoshiro was actually Dendro about half a year before that revelation actually happened in the manga. And the opening did so by including Kyoshiro in a montage of all the vassals, effectively confirming that he was the sole remaining vassal to be revealed. And to be fair, yes, people already had long since theorized that Kyoshiro was Dendro, but there is a big difference between having a strong foreshadowed assumption and a blatant spoiler confirmation by the anime long before manga readers found out in the actual series. So it was a pretty crazy situation, proving that the anime production team have quite a bit of advanced insight into the series. And they likely know quite a bit that we still have yet to see on page. And hopefully they won't spoil any more of it. But now we move on to a one piece controversy that rather unfortunately involves me. One piece YouTube controversy. Such wonderful drama that I generally don't like to bring up on the channel primarily because there isn't all that much, thankfully. But there is this one particular individual who has managed to stir the entire global one piece community. And his name is EnaruReviewPH. He is a Filipino one piece YouTuber who has built an entire well monetized career by stealing content from smaller global one piece creators. And that's because Enaru's business model is as follows. He steals entire video scripts, translates them into Tagalog, plagiarizes video editing and on occasion even re-uploads entire videos with him redubbing it into Tagalog. Now two of the biggest victims of Enaru have been the French YouTubers Nino2119 and GojiYoutube who have put together this funky montage of Enaru's very blatant plagiarism and theft. Even I have been targeted by Enaru. He's plagiarized several of my videos but it doesn't stop at just YouTube. He also straight up translates theories and comments from Reddit as well as steals fan art to use in his videos all without credit. In fact, it's even worse than that because Enaru claims credit for crafting every theory or discussion he posts as well as also claiming that he personally drew all of the artwork featured on his channel. And just to further clarify, this is not a simple issue of Enaru taking ideas or inspiration. He is lifting entire scripts and forum posts in order to construct his content. And in particular, his video script plagiarism is so blatant that many of his viewers just flat out refer to him as the Pumbun Song Translator or National Translator. And via the mechanism of pure, blatant theft, Enaru has gained 350,000 subscribers, 37 million lifetime views. And before he was originally called out, he was gaining upwards of 5 million views a month. He is not a small channel by any stretch of the imagination and in fact, he often completely dwarfs those which he plagiarizes from. The parties involved have attempted to contact Enaru on multiple occasions to, you know, address this issue in a private subtle manner at which point Enaru promptly apologizes but then proceeds to continue stealing their work anyway. And that's why a bit of a public call-out has become necessary and online controversy has been stirred leading to a difference in opinions slash civil war amongst his fans. Many of whom still support him not in spite of the fact that he's stealing but because of the fact that he's stealing, even earning him the nickname of the pirate king. So look, if you're a YouTube content creator or maker of fan art or even just a regular post or on Reddit, just be aware that this guy is very potentially stealing your work and making quite a bit of money off it. And as such, he is rapidly becoming one of the biggest controversies in One Piece. But if you'd like to see some more controversial fun stuff then please do check out this One Piece controversies playlist, lots of crazy stuff. So I look forward to seeing you over there.