 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today I thought it would be fun to discuss everything we know about one of the most understated events to have ever happened in One Piece, being the Payback War. Because this is an event that's referenced a lot, particularly in power scaling discussions revolving around a certain Blackbeard, one of its primary instigators, but the clash itself is very much glossed over and there are a lot of general misconceptions regarding how and why this war started, as well as who was involved and the monumental effect it has had on the world going forward. All of which we will be detailing as best we can here today, and the best we can do is starting with subscribing to the Grand Line Review, which will result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. This action is both Marco and Blackbeard approved, so no matter which sign of the coin you land on, it is the correct move to make. And please do say hi if you're a new member of the Grand Fleet in the comments below, welcome. But with that out of the way, what exactly is the Payback War? Well this was a world changing event that occurred during the two year time skip smack bang in the middle of it actually, about a year prior to our current timeline. It was an event that saw a gigantic scale clash between the remnants of the Whitebeard Pirates who had lost their captain during the Paramount War a year prior and the rising forces of the Blackbeard Pirate, which is interesting because in many ways the Payback War is representative of a generational shift in the world, and this very much wiped away the final shred of power that the Whitebeard Pirates held over the Grand Line and specifically within the New World. But first up, let's talk about the etymology behind the Payback War. This is not the official name for this conflict and in English it is known as the Grudge War in both the Vizmanga and Funimation subs. And as far as I can tell, the name Payback War is a relic from the world of Scanlations that has rigorously stuck within the One Piece community to the point where the One Piece Wiki article is even titled Payback War despite mentioning that it does have an official name. Now as for which is more correct, well if we look at the Japanese it is referred to as the Otoshimae Senso, Otoshimae having two meanings, one of which is a settlement for dispute usually caused by some sort of blunder which would generally be financial debt and the other much more applicable meaning here would be to get even with someone and Senso simply means war. So if we were going literal Payback War honestly sounds a bit more accurate because it implies an active quest for revenge whereas a grudge is a very passive thing you know you hold a grudge you don't necessarily act on it. However with how these events actually played out you may find that by the end grudge is in fact the more correct word to have used and we'll go over that. With that said I'm still going to refer to it as the Payback War because Scan or not it is the most commonly recognizable name. Now as for what led up to this event we do need to briefly examine the childhood of one Edward Newgate. He was born on an island called Sphinx and grew up as an orphan under exceptionally rough conditions. Then after becoming a pirate and taking on the infamous Whitebeard name Newgate would funnel his money back to Sphinx in order to make sure that his home prospered and that nobody would have to grow up under the same conditions as he did and this is very very important to mention because this one small yet delightful little island would go on to be a major catalyst for the Payback War. Before that though during his long reign on the seas Whitebeard recruited a young boy named Marshall D. Teach a seemingly innocuous young lad who would grow up with the Whitebeard pirate spending more than two decades sailing with them. However Teach had rather dark ambitions and a particular skill for playing the long game and as it turns out one of teacher's primary motivations for joining this crew was to discover a certain devil fruit which we now know as the Yami Aminomi and while it did take about 26 years to do so eventually the crew did stumble upon this fruit at which point Teach murdered his alleged comrade Thatch and fled the Whitebeard pirates causing an unforgivable rift between Teach and the crew. One that would only go on to get much much worse as it turns out one of Whitebeard's division commander's portgasty Ace made it his own personal mission to hunt Teach down who had now adopted the name of Blackbeard. However Ace's mission did not end well and the two clashed on Benara Island resulting in Ace's defeat and subsequent turning over to the war government who then scheduled his execution. In this decision would spark the much more well-known paramount war whereby the full forces of the Whitebeard pirates marched on Marineford to save Ace and which as we all know also did not work out well and Blackbeard took full advantage of this event to deliver the final blow and kill Whitebeard as well as steal his devil fruit ability being the Gurugurunomi all of which is pretty insane when you lay it all out like that because then you come to realize that this one man was single-handedly responsible for toppling the entirety of the Whitebeard pirates simply through incredible planning and situational awareness. Now from here things get a bit hazy because this would be where the time skip occurred in the series and there is a generally accepted thought that the remnants of the Whitebeard pirates led by First Division commander Marco were burning with the desire for revenge and mustered everything they could to launch a retaliatory attack on Blackbeard and his ever-growing legion of piracy but this is not actually the case. In reality Blackbeard was the instigator of the payback war as his next mission after defeating Whitebeard was to capture his former territories and consolidate power within the new world. Meanwhile the Whitebeard pirates had a very simple mission which was explained by Marco in chapter 909. After the paramount war we at least wanted to protect the village that Popser cared so much for when Blackbeard invaded we started the grudge war against him and here Marco is of course referring to the island of Sphinx which we briefly went over but following the death of their captain and two division commanders being Thachines the Whitebeard pirates had no intention of engaging the Blackbeard pirates for the mere concept of revenge. Their focus was entirely dedicated to protecting Whitebeard's remaining legacy however after the Blackbeard pirates launched an invasion Marco and the remnants were forced to respond thus beginning the payback war. What's kind of frustratingly vague about this though is that we're currently unsure what this invasion of Blackbeard refers to. In context it sounds an awful lot like he attempted to invade Sphinx but that's because Marco was talking about that immediately before bringing up the invasion because at the same time it seems very unlikely that Sphinx would be the target because it does remain well and prosperous to this day which I'm not so sure that Blackbeard would have allowed considering and spoiler alert he won the war. So I believe that this invasion is referring to another territory or indeed territories held by the Whitebeard pirates at which point they were left with two options either surrender and give everything up to Blackbeard or fight and start a war. So of course they did the latter and this was by no means a small scale conflict this was by all accounts a clash on a scale of the paramount war in fact according to Nica Robin in Chapter 820 it was quite a large battle with each sign bringing in plenty of help. In the end Marco's group was obliterated it was only after this major confrontation that Blackbeard was first included among the list of the four emperors and we'll get back to that second part in a bit but this statement quite clearly references the Allied pirate crews of which the Whitebeard pirates were associated with a further 43 crews in addition to their main forces comprising of 1617 men. That number is a pre-paramount war figure as well and at the very least there would be two members down I guess following it but the Allied crews did not fare best in that conflict either and while it is currently unknown how many of the Allied crews showed up for the payback war their loyalty to Whitebeard was so profound that I imagine everyone who was physically able to would have engaged but even if we were strictly talking about the Whitebeard pirates alone Blackbeard still would have needed a massive force of his own to take them all on and he built a similar structure to the Whitebeard pirates actually mimicking their division commander system with his own implementation of the 10 Titanic captains as well as gathering quite a range of Allied crews an example of one of those crews would be the Peachbeard pirates although it would be an admittedly bad example because Peachbeard is confirmed to have joined that Legion following the payback war not before or during regardless Blackbeard musted the forces to take on the Whitebeard pirates and their allies which would have been quite the massive conflict and not at all how the scarce portrayals of the payback war have been shown in either the anime or the manga when it comes to the manga we actually have no visual depiction of the battle save for this small panel showing Blackbeard and Marco rather dramatically shaded and everything whereas the anime took a fair few more liberties how shall we say with how they decided to handle this scene and here I'm particularly referring to episode 890 which I suppose is kind of like the payback war if it was depicted as an interpretive dance which is weird but also kind of interesting the problem the anime had here is that the true details of the battle had not yet been revealed so they had the rather difficult job of showing a battle without actually being able to you know tell us anything about it which leads to this very metaphorical scene showing Blackbeard's dominance and ending on this funky kind of floating shot of all of the Whitebeard commanders defeated in front of him this does unfortunately give a bit of the wrong impression though viewing this scene you would be inclined to believe that Blackbeard pretty much single-handedly decimated each and every division commander but the actual accounts of the war painted as more of a marine food style situation although Marco does specifically mention that Blackbeard's use of the Guru Guru Nomee is the reason why they were no longer able to overcome him so that was very much the deciding factor in the fight according to that first-hand account but however close it was Blackbeard's forces were victorious and this delivered a second crushing and decimating blow to what were once the Whitebeard pirates because after having lost their captain and now their territory they had no choice but to splinter off and effectively disbanded the crew thus ending the dominance of one of the most powerful organizations to have ever existed in the series and thus birthing the dominance of another and as I mentioned before one of the most important takeaways in the aftermath of this was that Blackbeard became undisputedly recognized as one of the four emperors which just as a side note I find quite interesting because it means that for a whole year there were only three emperors and it makes me wonder if at any stage Marco was intentioned to become the new fourth emperor simply due to being the de facto leader of the Whitebeard pirates and essentially having command over all of their territories but the payback war wasn't even the end of the grand terror for the Whitebeard pirates their disbandment also quite notably gave rise to the figure of Edward Weevil who is Whitebeard's self-proclaimed son and he and his mother Miss Buckin have since made it their mission to destroy what once were the Whitebeard pirates in order to claim some sort of imagined inheritance which was quite devastating actually and Weevil is responsible for defeating 16 of the 43 Allied crews all on his own interestingly enough though this legacy could also spell some pretty huge future problems for Blackbeard as well though because Weevil himself very much swore to take revenge on the man who killed his father so Blackbeard has ended up creating a very potentially powerful enemy there but that is the story of the payback war as we know it and I honestly think it's pretty unlikely that we will ever expand on it too much in the future because while it is a world-changing event we do have all of the essential information and really what this event boils down to is the truly sinister level of planning and destruction that Blackbeard escape will of the payback war was an event almost three decades in the making and it wasn't even the final phase of whatever Blackbeard's grand plan is to him taking down an emperor of the sea and decimating his unfathomably powerful crew was just another step along the road of what will undoubtedly lead to an even greater conflict but for now that's everything we know about the payback war and what do you guys think please 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 to 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 Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time