 Look everyone, in honor of this chapter, Kandro has drawn you all the subscribe button to press. The act of doing so will result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. Don't disappoint Kandro by not pressing it, because there's no telling what kind of inky vengeance he may be capable of. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have a review of chapter 974, onward to Onigashima. And oh, Kandro, dear, dear Kandro, you've been a very naughty boy. So this chapter is absolutely massive for a grand total of three, count them three, amazing reasons, one of which being that the Wano traitor has finally been revealed. And in many ways this feels like a big sigh of relief, because this train of thought has been going on in the fan base ever since the Zo'ok, where people first started twigging to the fact that, hey, how did Jack find his way to a phantom island in the first place? And ever since then, the theories have been relentless with many, many popular candidates to examine, but as of chapter 974, we can finally stop talking about the traitor. Well, after this chapter anyway, because that's what 974 is all about. It has a fairly exclusive focus, and I would like to offer my congratulations to everyone who suspected Kandro as our samurai Judas. I personally was not convinced that he was the traitor, so this was a surprise to me, and that's mainly because of what they actually discussed in the chapter, which was that Kandro was more than prepared to die with Odin. In fact, it probably would have even been music to his ears at the time. But yeah, with that in mind, I could not bring myself to suspect him or any of the other scabbards, but I think that this was handled pretty well by Oda, who deliberately structured it, so that my feeble mind would assume the best about everyone who had been willing to die with Odin. But in addition to that, we also do get into the fact that Kandro wasn't like really a traitor, I guess. He was more of a sleeper agent, or well, I guess like a fully awake sleeper agent, who did legitimately carry out his duty as a vassal for the most part. Just, you know, whilst feeding Orochi an abundance of information, thus undermining everything. And there's actually so much about this that was very well done, but I do need to take some time to focus on the panel of the chapter, which is where Kandro reveals himself, and this image is pretty much just burned into my brain right now. It is a simple but stunning image that evokes so much. I mean, in some ways, it's like a very stereotypical villain shot. You know, you've got the dramatic lighting, the cruel dead eyes, and the generally smug look written across Kandro's entire face. At the same time, though, it's a very appropriate tonal shift, because after we've known this character for so, so long, since Dressrosa, which is, wow. But in any case, you needed to show this contrasting self immediately, and the only way that that was going to be achieved is through this radically dramatic panel. However, I will say that, as with all super major events, this one was spoiled for me pretty damn heavily, to the point where I even saw leaks of the panel, which is, you know, not cool, not cool at all, and definitely less than the experience of going through the intended to be mysterious first part of the chapter, where Orochi is talking to a vaguely defined figure. But what I will say about it is that even in horribly low-quality images, which my eyes were subject to, this panel still stood out like the artistic marvel it is. But in conclusion, don't spoil the manga for others, because only people with the teeny-tiniest appearances spoil One Piece. And that is just a well-known fact. Now, as for another highlight of this chapter, Kinamon Rage. That panel where he just decapitates the hell out of Kandro is fantastic. And I love that Kinamon is thrown into this mindset of no mercy, and it further goes to show that Kinamon is very much like the emotional core of Wano, as we tend to experience emotion primarily through him. When Kinamon is sad, we're meant to be sad. When Kinamon is meant to be brave, we're feeling brave. And when Kinamon needs to slice up a treacherous artist, then well, we need to unsheathe our katana and do the same. But of course, this also gave rise to a sub-revelation, that not only was Kandro pretending to be a vassal, but there were layers to this man, because he was also pretending to be an awful artist. And as it turns out, Kandro is a master of realism, and can even bring a perfect clone of himself to life. Which is, you know, kind of terrifying, because it means that his potential for chaos and confusion is honestly even greater than that of the Manimon and Omi. But this also means that in a rather bizarre situation that we seem to have on our hands here, I do need to issue an official grand line review apology to Kandro, because I placed him on my list of the top five worst Devil Fruit users in the series. And my reasoning for doing so was simply because his artistic chops were not up to the task of extracting the full potential of his abilities. And that is no longer the case. In fact, depending on how things play out for the rest of Wano, an argument may even be in the works to dub Kandro as one of the best Devil Fruit users in the series. I mean, probably not best, but definitely up there, because this ability is now perfect for him. And oh, oh, oh, small but great part of the chapter, in that we actually saw Kandro as Devil Fruit. And I just get really excited when I see Devil Fruits, because as I said when we saw Orochi's recently, it is a surprisingly rare thing to lay eyes on a Devil Fruit in one piece. So including Filafruit, we have close to 200 Devil Fruit abilities known in the series, but of those, we've only seen the originating fruits of a minuscule fraction of them. So this is always going to be an exciting moment. Also, it means that I don't have to come up with my own design when we do eventually get to Kandro in the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia, which we are rapidly approaching actually. So this was quite well timed, quite well timed indeed. Another small thing I enjoyed was the discussion between Orochi and Kaido, because it finally allows us to understand why Orochi has been so paranoid about the vassals rising from the grave recently. Because previously, we were given the impression that, well, this was just Orochi. Plain old, unreasonably suspicious, cowardly, aesthetically unappealing, and afraid of losing his power Orochi. But this makes all the sense in the world now, because obviously, you know, the first chance he could, Kandro was going to leak the fact that they were alive. So yeah, Orochi has every reason to be scared shitless about the situation, and it just gives a whole new context to our experience of Wano. And in fact, it gives us a whole new context to our experience of everything in One Piece from like Punk as it onwards. And actually, as a result of this chapter, I'm pretty inspired to go back and reread every scene feature in Kandro. And seeing that, if in retrospect, it was really obvious that he was indeed the traitor, as I'm sure many of you will now claim. But without having gone back on all of that as of yet, his grand scale of incompetence makes a lot more sense at the very least. I mean, he wasn't even trying. And at every point along his journey, he probably would have preferred to die, whether that be at sea or under a spruce or even on zoe. And I should say that luckily, yes, we do have another vassal in line to take Kandro's place, which was very blatantly inserted into the last chapter when Flashback Shinobu inquired as to whether or not she could become one of Odin's vassals. So actually, in retrospect, that is a massive hint that one of the existing vassals was most certainly the traitor, because Toki's prophecy still only denoted nine of them. I should also say that as much of a villainous presence as Kandro is now, his brief flashback was actually quite heartbreaking. You know, having his parents killed on stage, and once again, because they were members of the Kuruzumi clan, which is another flag that Wano was certainly not a utopia, even prior to Orochi and Kaido's takeover. They had serious, serious problems, and this is another situation where I guess the monarchy of Wano is reaping what it sowed. Without the persecution of the Kuruzumi clan, you would not have had a twisted monster in Orochi or the soulless broken existence of Kandro. So I am still incredibly fascinated to learn the reasoning as to why the Kuruzumi clan was slaughtered so mercilessly. But before that, Kaido has a question, which is very interesting because I think this is one of, if not the first time, that Kaido has shown anything of an inquisitive side, making a point of telling Orochi not to kill our time travellers. It's hard to imagine what's going on in his mind though. Like, perhaps it has something to do with the road pornograph he has. Actually, I'm not really sure what else it could be. Unless it's something more honourable, like Odin's legacy festering in his mind over the last two decades, and wanting some sort of closure on a situation that he acted quite dishonorably in. But at the same time, Kaido was a pirate, so nah. Alright, let's finally move on to the second thing that makes this chapter simply amazing, which sees us skip right to the end and we have a beautiful sequence that reveals three very familiar pirates in the form of Luffy, Law and Kid. I could not love more how this played out, with each of them individually coming into focus with these kind of strange panels, where you see very recognisable bodies and mouths, and then with the very last shot of this chapter being this tri-panel display of glory. Now I said before that the Kandro panel was the panel of the chapter, but this is without a doubt the finest set of panels, which legitimately gives me chills, because this is a signal to us that we are done with all this tragic moping around business, and lamenting on the past, and we are about to plow full steam ahead into the true meat of this arc. It's very much like the old saying that you know it's always darkest before dawn, and we just went through the darkest part of Wano, by seeing Odin's death, having Kandro revealed as the traitor, and putting Kinemon and the other vassals into a state where they thought that everything was over. And now here are these three fine gents, presenting us with the dawn of a new day. And it's a great revelation because of how Oda placed these pieces at the end of Act II. You know, Kid's gone off on his own with Killer, whilst Law had kind of severed contact with the Allied forces and gotten embroiled in his own thing, and Luffy, well, yeah, he was with his own crew. We were obviously also going to be here as well. They just weren't shown in this chapter, but the Thousand Sunny was shown a couple of times. So for anyone who believed that that was destroyed, yeah, that was never going to be the case. But the point I was trying to get to is that the last thing I expected was to see Luffy, Law, and Kid all emerge here at once, because their story threads had been completely separate, so this sudden gathering makes for quite the hype moment for me. And I'm really looking forward to seeing the circumstance under which this event came to fruition, which I mentioned we'll be taking care of in some sort of short flashback in the next chapter, or the one after, sometime soon, but just briefly explaining how the Allied forces avoided Orochi's plans. And do you know if I was a betting man, I'd say it was because Dendro was able to counteract Orochi's work. And oh, actually, I can't believe I forgot to say this, but another piece of the puzzle that fell into place during chapter 974 is that Dendro wanting to hide himself from Kinamon and the others is now entirely understandable and logical. Because what would have happened if Dendro did contact them? Well, Kandro would have found out that he was alive in the guise of Kyoshiro, and he would have promptly told Orochi, thus negating all of Dendro's efforts. And given how close he rose to power under Orochi, I imagine that he would have heard quite possibly from Orochi himself that Kandro was the spy amongst Odin's vassals. So with that in mind, Dendro is actually very rapidly becoming the MVP of this entire arc, because I imagine that without him, we would be dead in the water right now, both figuratively and, well, yeah, literally. He is most certainly the true mastermind of Wano. And as for the third and final thing that made this chapter amazing, it's nothing so specific, but rather the very simple fact that we have now returned to the Mod Nera after what has been something of an eternal flashback. As much as I love the Odin flashback and seriously, it has some of the most newly iconic moments in the series, but even then, I think we were all very much itching to proceed with the story. And something that might be interesting to think about now though, is that we're like 17 chapters into Act 3 of Wano, which has mostly comprised of the Odin flashback, yes, but structurally, I'm beginning to wonder where the natural cutoff point of Act 3 will be, because if it is going to be similar to Act 2, then we are more than halfway through Act 3 right now. I'm going to state the obvious, I guess, but 12 to 15 more chapters is surely not going to be enough to even get close to wrapping up Wano. So it leaves us in a situation where Act 3 is either going to be some sort of mega-act, where we're just going to continue until completion, or we may actually be entering a potential Act 4 quite soon. In fact, in some ways, it even makes a lot of sense to end Act 3 right here and now, because then that could be the Odin Story Act, and we could move on to Act 4, which is bound to be full of action and potentially the climax of the arc, and then perhaps an Epilogue Act 5 to round us out. But of course, it is very difficult to tell what Odin may or may not be planning. Well, like I'm saying is that as per usual, I am excited and unusually energized to get to the next chapter. But what did you guys think about Chapter 974? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below, and if you're keen for some more One Piece content, then please do check out some of my other videos, and or subscribe to the channel for regular One Piece amazingness uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. This has been the Ground Line Review, and I'll see you next time.