 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review your source for everything one piece and today we have a review of chapter 956 big news and that title is a bit of an understatement because this is exactly what I was hoping for and more after the end of Act 2 of 1.0 was announced last week and while do we have a lot to talk about with several massive, massive topics here but I'd like to begin with something that is less speculatory which is the abolishment of the seven warlords of the sea. Now this is quite possibly the biggest event to have occurred in the series since Whitebeard's demise at Marineford and honestly it's pretty crazy to think that there are just no more warlords. This system has been a staple of one piece since the days of East Blue. These insurmountable figures one of the three great powers of the world have played an integral role in the entire journey of the series and the world will never look the same without them. For the record I think this is a terrible decision not from a narrative perspective I love that but from the perspective of the Marines and the world government making an enemy of people like me hawk and weevil just seems like a really bad idea and I highly doubt that any of the ex warlords will be captured even buggy well maybe buggy but the thing is that you now have someone like the world's greatest swordsman running loose on the seas of the world and your forces no longer have any sort of immunity to his devastating power and at a time when you're concerned with the idea of a Yonko alliance it just seems like perhaps not the best thing to do. However from a political perspective it is easy to see the reasoning and I did really like that it was brought about through both Cobra and Riku leading the charge because their kingdoms were almost obliterated by former warlords abusing their positions of power and the other thing we need to remember is that we don't have all the information here. The world government are corrupt as hell but they are no fools and if they are confident enough to part ways with these figures then they may very well have reason to be which I suppose could be found in the form of whatever new development vagabond cows which Fujitora was talking about during the reverie. Also just side stepping briefly speaking of the reverie I'm glad we finally have a solid timeline and resolution on it because it will finally put an end to people insisting that the reverie is still ongoing and that we will travel back to it at some stage. Like I suspected it is over and the events are going to be told to us in little packets of information like this and not only that but the reverie has been over for an entire week which means that its figures could be anywhere by now which is particularly important when we're thinking of the members of the Grand Fleet who are present as they could easily be on their way to Wano as we speak but back to the warlords it was really fantastic to see what remains of them in this chapter. It feels like it's been an awfully long time since we've had the pleasure of seeing most of them especially as a collective. My favorite appearance was Boa Hancock though and I think she was just a great way to cap off the chapter. I love the panel of her just sitting confidently on Amazon Lily because it just exudes power and makes her words all the more poignant. The marines are in for one hell of a fight and unless they've taken vagabonds development with them I think they're in for one hell of a loss as well. Here's the thing though I don't think it's inconceivable for us to be left with this cliffhanger in regards to them and then cut back after Wano to discover that they have all been defeated and or captured. I mean it might be difficult to believe in the case of Mihawk in particular but it would certainly hype up the world government as an even bigger threat than we'd anticipated and it would also be a good show of power for vagabonds work because I imagine that this would be the only way such a thing would be possible. Otherwise I imagine that the warlords will just go into ally themselves elsewhere you know Boa to Luffy possibly buggy as well. Although actually Mihawk and Weevil are very much powerful enough to just remain as lone forces. Either way post Wano the one piece world is going to be completely unrecognizable with the fall of Tuoyanko and the abolishment of the warlords and I just cannot wait. Now the next gigantic piece of news is a bit more speculative because essentially Morgan's revealed that there was a death at the river as well as an attempted assassination and this chapter heavily implies through the reactions of the revolutionaries, the mountain bandits and Markino that Sabo may have met his demise. Now first of all I want to stress that despite all of the trolls on the internet spewing Sabo is dead in all caps in an attempt to spoil people this was never confirmed in the chapter. I believe that is what Oda would like us to believe dramatically but is almost certainly not the case and as evidence toward this I'd like to point out that there is nothing in the chapter relating to Sabo that could not double as the other big event of the reverie. If you look at everyone's reactions yes they're incredibly despairful especially Markino but for the most part people seem more shocked and in sheer disbelief than anything else and this could very nicely fit into the other piece of news which is the assassination attempt. Now if Morgan's had published a story claiming that Sabo had attempted to kill someone at the reverie, perhaps a member of royalty or a world noble then these reactions would fit pretty perfectly as well. Now I will recognize the possibility that the newspaper is referring to his death but even if this is the case it is surely misdirection by Oda for a revelation later on and I think that we all need to casually stop stating that Sabo was dead because even if Morgan's did report his obituary we know it's not true. Characters in one piece are absurdly hard to kill and if there's no body on screen then it did not happen. From a narrative perspective killing Sabo is also in my opinion an abysmal decision to make so I've done a whole video on reasons why I'm not Sabo's greatest fan which involves the various ways in which his presence destabilizes an otherwise very tight story which you know check it out if you'd like but my main point here is that the only way this situation could be made any worse is if Sabo died before he actually had a chance to make a narrative impact. Oda did not pull Sabo out of his arse and cram him into the story just to have him die off screen like this. What I will admit to though is not really understanding the reasons why the world government would lie and say that he's dead if they'd simply captured him. For example if they'd caught him then you'd figure they could use Sabo being alive to lure out the other members of the revolutionary army in a similar manner to which ace was used to face off against Whitebeard but I'm really not sure what advantage the world government would gain from keeping him alive after faking his death which actually makes me lean more towards the idea that Sabo was reported to be involved in the assassination attempt story even if he obviously isn't the one responsible for the act. I mean we know for example that Vivi may have been chosen to be snuffed out of history so what if an attempt on her life was made and Sabo having been defeated and captured during his skirmish with Fujitora and Ryukugu was blamed for it. The world government could then go on to use him as I stated before to lure out the revolutionary army and perhaps even create marines for 2.0 which I have to say was one of the things I was really worried about with the Sabo character because I really do not want any more similarities to ace and him being captured by the marines would just continue this mirror image game. However if I'm right here in Sabo's implied death is just misdirection then well we need to talk about who actually died. One answer was brought up before being Vivi who we know may be a target of Eamon therefore the Gorose and therefore the entirety of the world government and I think that that would just be the most depressing news possible. However we do know for a fact that Luffy Blackbeard and Shirahoshi are fine which were the other images Eamon was looking at so until I see her face I will be fearing the worst for Vivi but if she isn't dead then the assassination attempt was at the very least on her life because Scarpe did state that there was an incident with the alabaster kingdom and I mean I suppose it could also be King Cobra he was old frail and far too curious for his own good even requesting a meeting with the Gorose he could have been killed and even had the death stage as being of old age but basically there are options here and I don't think we should be jumping to conclusions as of yet because we just don't have enough information. Now as for the distributor of said information Big News Morgans is always a pleasure to see and I loved his character moment in the chapter where he proclaimed to be a proud journalist although he did admit to misleading people from time to time. Plus he's a pretty powerful dude himself managing to knock out a member of Cypherpole which even if this dude is from one of the lower cells that's no easy feat for a civilian so Morgans has some moves and just on this for a second the guy that the Cypherpole agent was impersonating is actually a profound tertiary character named Attach who actually once headed up the marine photographics department. He's the one who's applied the photos for the straw hat bounties for example although he was let go after the paramount war for making a total of 57 blunders one of which was leaving the lens cap on whilst taking a photo of Sanji leading to the notorious sketch. In any case it's not clear if Attach has always been a Cypherpole agent or if the agent was impersonating Attach but I would be leaning towards the latter. But of course Morgans section had one more tantalizing piece of entry because it ended with a call from a certain Wapol claiming to have some information. Now I find this interesting because Morgans assumedly already has all of the big scoops so Wapol rather and characteristically was probably calling to provide some sort of truth clarifying one of the big three news items and remember this call was prior to any kind of publication so whatever information Wapol did provide will have been in the newspaper. Now there's a lot more intrigue in this massively packed chapter and next up let's take a look at the very casual appearance of Blackbeard. Now Blackbeard very much stands out in this chapter because he seemingly has nothing to do with the majorly focused upon plot points being the warlords the death or the assassination attempt. Instead Blackbeard is after a very classically unnamed Japanese object and this is another one of those scenarios where there were horrible scans floating around with contradictory information one of which referred to this thing as them is in plural. This is not the case and the official translation clearly states that whatever Blackbeard is after is a singular thing. Now both he and the Marines have a vested interest in this which can only lead us to speculation of great importance. The first thing that would come to mind is obviously the final Road Ponyglyph that's pretty essential for Blackbeard's ultimate goal and it would also be of paramount interest to the Marines to confiscate. However it could also be perhaps an ancient weapon being either Pluton or Uranus as I highly doubt it would be Shirahoshi aka Poseidon. But it is nice to see Blackbeard making a move and using the chaos of the world to his advantage as he is ever so proficient at doing. While everything plays out on Wano and with the warlords he's just casually building up his empire to become the final boss of the series. I will say that despite the implications of his words this part was probably my least favorite bit of the chapter just because I think it's a really boring close-up of Blackbeard. There's nothing hugely dynamic about the panel and artistically it just seems a bit lacking in the chapter with so many beautifully drawn panels catching up with key characters. Like mehawk, Drake, Bohan, Cocktail, Flamingo, so many characters have drawings that I had trouble taking my eyes away from but with Blackbeard it was just kind of like okay let's move on. Despite the fact that what he's talking about is probably in reality the most important plot point of the chapter. Although to be fair I guess there isn't much that could artistically trump his appearance in the previous interlude. Next up more major news and we actually have the introduction of another organization this week with Sword. A specialist faction of the marines kind of like their own militaristic version of Cypherpole I guess which is a nice contrast because CP0 are known as Aegis which is a shield in Greek mythology so that would leave us with sword versus shield. No one of course sword are captained by a certain deers drake. I should say that whether or not sword is officially connected with the marines is very much up in the air at the moment and I say this because if it were mandated by the marines then I'm not so sure that Q-Zaru would have engaged in combat with drake on sabotee. Unless of course it was a very very clever ruse. If anything though sword might be an independent faction of the marines with a sense of justice that doesn't quite align with how the world government uses the marine organization and working towards revolution from the inside. So I do love this revelation though because all of a sudden drake's actions in the story make perfect sense and it's also a very good sign that he will more than likely be making a temporary alliance with Luffy because you know for the greater good and all. Plus drake did seem quite concerned with Luffy's current status and it's almost certain that he is the one who let Laura escape after decimating Hawkins. What's more interesting though is that Kobe is also a member of sword and I love that even more than the reveal of drake. It's always great to see Kobe moving on up in the world because he's become such a reliable guy. Also one more point of interest is that the way to identify sword members may be through a shared feature that both drake and Kobe have which is their scars. Now this might be unlikely is completely coincidental but there are a few other marines who bear a similar scar. There's also very good and maybe even doberman who according to his scars may be a member of several different sword organizations and one we also should not forget one Admiral Fujitora. Once again pure speculation we really should not be considering anybody with a scar as a sword member I just thought it was interesting that Kobe and drake share that very similar marking but scars aside this also might be where we start considering the possibility of Kuzan also being a member of sword infiltrating Blackbeard's crew in the same way that drake did with Kaido. Maybe there's even a member in Big Mom's crew as well who knows. But let's go on to address our ongoing cover story. Beige has landed at Dress Rosa and rather conveniently they've run into someone who knows Lola and it's pretty funny how he says that she's actually managed to find a husband referring to Beige and mistaking chiffon for Lola. So maybe this is going to put the fire tank pirates on a path that doesn't necessarily lead to Thriller Bark. Although someone raised a great point many many chapters of years ago which is that Thriller Bark isn't even in the Florian Triangle anymore as it was seen when Gekko Moria stormed Blackbeard's island in which case Lola and her crew must have left somehow and who knows where they are now. It might be in the New World but it could still be in paradise because assumedly Lola fled Totland in the New World and may have stopped in address Rosa before moving into paradise so I remain as intrigued as always. And finally I just want to get somewhat serious here for a second because this week as amazing as the chapter was it did show us a truly despicable side of the online one piece fan base. Now obviously the events here were pretty earth shaking with massive implications for everything going forward but I was honestly astounded by the sheer amount of people who went out of their way to spoil it particularly the abolishment of the warlords and the potential of Sabo's death. You could not go anywhere without someone recklessly posting all-cap spoilers or just straight up scanned pages. Even my own YouTube comment section wasn't safe as all of a sudden videos were bombarded with comments like Sabo is dead with no regard for others whatsoever and I know that this is a very small minority of fans most of you are amazing with spoilers and great human beings as well but that small group of you are the scum of the earth and a huge reason why this particular fan base can become so toxic and I just want you all to know that no amount of ruining experiences for others is going to fill the void of misery in your lives but thankfully for everyone else one piece is so damn good that even when it's spoiled it is still phenomenal. That pretty much does it for chapter 956. 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