 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we have an impromptu video, something that was absolutely not scheduled, but I do think it's quite important to talk about, and it's a very confusing issue with the manga. Before we go any further into it though, if you're an anime only watcher, do not worry because I won't be spoiling anything. So please do feel free to come along for the ride, because a very strange train of thought has sprung up with the release of chapter 996, or more specifically the scanlation of chapter 996, and now all of a sudden every second comment I see on my channel consists of the theory that Ivankov is now on Wano. That's right, Emporio Ivankov on Wano. In fact some people even take this a step further and claim that it is confirmed that Ivankov is on Wano, and this was quite perplexing to me because I'd read the chapter and absolutely nowhere was that even hinted at, much less confirmed. However this story is going to take quite a few twists and turns, discerning the truth of the matter has been surprisingly difficult, because this is a story where everyone really is just lost in translation, culminating in an effect where half of the fanbase now believes that Ivankov is on Wano. Why? Let's find out. But no matter which side you currently land on, do not forget to subscribe to the Grand Line Review for regular One Piece content, uploaded straight into your YouTube feed including various weeb ravings like this video here today, and yeah I'm sorry I didn't have time to put a game together, press the button anyway, it'll be fun. We begin trying to explain this Ivankov phenomena, and we'll start where I did in the realm of English. So this is a panel from chapter 996 and for people who aren't caught up don't worry it's not spoiler-ific at all, it's just a close-up of Sanji overhearing something, that is legit it. And what he's overhearing is, come my dear, that's it, nwa ha ha, but my lord you mustn't, it would be so naughty. And from this we can tell that Ivankov is obviously on Wano, full stop end of the video. But what do you guys think? Are there videos like this? Okay, let's not do that. But really isn't this all you need to know? Ivankov along with the entirety of the Revolutionary Army is absolutely on Wano, right? Right? Okay, maybe not so much. Honestly this panel is so uneventful that I did go on a bit of a rant in my chapter review about how poor of a choice it actually was to end the chapter with this, considering the other material that could have been used as the ending. But then upon posting said review I encountered a flood of comments claiming that Sanji is sensing Ivankov in a sort of PTSD kind of way. The only vague evidence of which I could see is that strange look on his face and maybe even that little doom down in the bottom right here, although I think that's just a translation of the kind of sound effect, which would be more like a doom than a statement of doom. Whatever the case, it's a stretch because Sanji makes these kind of expressions all the time when exposed to situations that involve and what's the word? Women. That's the word. It could very easily be and more than likely is a strange look because he knows he's about to encounter his exact weakness. But there is a lot more to the Ivankov idea than this. And just stepping behind the scenes for a second, whenever I have a huge disconnect with a massive part of my audience, I usually assume it's because they read something in a scanlation that was poorly translated and everyone's jumped on a bandwagon without cross-checking the official release. And I assume this because it would seem that just under 50% of Grand Line Review viewers do read the scans, so if there's some misinformation there I am almost certainly going to hear about it. So when these situations pop up, that's when I know I need to go and cross-check that, and here's what we find. A very differently translated scan panel where the exchange goes as following. We can do this much, right? Nufufu. No, I can't. No, I... Just kidding. And then all of a sudden everything made so much more sense to me. In this fan translation there are three potential Ivankov flags. The first of which is Sanji's expression, which we mentioned before. The second of which is that one of the speakers appears to be using Ivankov's trademark gag. Because Ivankov basically either says he can't do something or he feigns that something is wrong before gloriously announcing that everything's fine. I don't think these gags land quite as well in English as they might in Japanese, but it's an established Ivankov quirk. And the third would be the laugh, which you'll notice is quite different from the official translation. Here it is stated as Nufufu, which is allegedly Ivankov's trademark laugh. I say allegedly because we're going to explore that claim as well in a bit. And from here what happened is that either one or very many eager fans made a connection and this was one particular image that was brought to my attention highlighting the similarities with Ivankov and this mystery character. Particularly the laugh, which as a purely English reader, I can understand why you might be taken in by this. However, this idea clearly does not line up with the official English translation. So what's the deal? Are the scans right or is the Viz translation right? And in almost 100% of cases, it will be the latter. But to begin there are some problems with this reddit sourced image. Firstly being that these manga panels are not taken from chapter 573 as attributed. The user means to say that they were taken from chapter 537, which was during Impel Down. So already we're off to a slightly dubious start in terms of, you know, referencing facts. The other issue is that these panels were not taken from the official chapter 537. These are screenshots of scan lations. So what we are doing is basically comparing one fan translation against another because it is almost certainly not the same person who translated both. And thirdly when we do cross-reference with the official, in each and every case, Ivankov's laugh is not translated as fufufu or infufu or nufufu, whatever it is, we'll get to that. And in fact, the evidence of the panel with Ivankov about to faint isn't even a laugh at all. It's a noise of exhaustion. So with that you could say that this is all a huge mistake made by the scans. They done goofed again and this is why we should never ever ever ever base an actual theory on anything fan translated. It's still not quite as simple as that though. And this is due to the fact that even though Viz translates Ivankov's laugh differently, the scans are actually more accurate in terms of the literal sound. The reason why Viz changes the laugh in English is purely pragmatic. It's to give the English readers a comparable experience to Japanese readers. Which to be clear is not the same thing as localization or westernization, the goal of which would be to completely convert another culture to that of a western one. Pragmatism is much more subtle than that and it is very necessary to practice. But just for fun, because what is my life, I pulled out my Japanese One Piece volumes, my Japanese is pathetic, but it is good enough for this purpose. So I checked out chapter 537 and Ivankov's laugh can be seen here. The sound of which would be nfufu, or more accurately with the like squiggly thing. It would be more like an nfufu. And this is all written in katakana by the way, which is very important, you'll see why in a bit. Which brings us back to chapter 996. Because the information we are equipped with right now tells us everything we need to know. Looking at the following Japanese texts, this laugh is spelt with the following hiragana, which is not katakana. Now if you're new or completely foreign to Japanese, the language essentially has three different alphabets or what we would call alphabets. One of which is kanji and the other two are more simplified sounds depicted with hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is generally used for Japanese words, whilst katakana is used for loan words from other languages. Generally that is very generally. But katakana can also be used as stylistic speech, a way to indicate on page that a character is different, foreign, or just stands out for some reason. Which Ivankov certainly does, and in one piece he uses quite a bit of katakana, especially when he's yelling. And that difference alone should immediately rule Ivankov out as the mystery character speaking at the end of chapter 996. If Ivankov was to use his trademark laugh, I have no doubt that that would have been in katakana. But just in case that didn't convince you for the more, the hiragana laugh is not even the same sound as Ivankov's. It's very similar, however this laugh is actually nufufu, rather than Ivankov's nufufu. It's quite a subtle difference but a very important one because Ivankov's sound is somewhat unique, whereas nufufu is far more generic. Just about anyone could be laughing like that, anyone but Ivankov that is, because he has his own strange speech patterns. So with that in mind, what is actually happening in this scene? If this isn't some grand mystery character then just what the hell is this? And the answer is kind of underwhelming. But what's happening here is a very cliche Japanese comedy bit. And the best explanation I've seen of it comes from Arter of the Library of Ohara, which goes as follows. However, this expression is written in a very specific way that refers to a gag in Japanese theater known as Obimawashi, where a man, usually a lord or high-ranking person, forcibly undresses a woman by pulling from her kimono obisash. And then he goes on to state that the woman in the scenario is usually making that typical sort of Japanese half-hearted effort to say stuff like, ah, you mustn't. So basically what Sanji is hearing with his very, very finely tuned observation prowess is a woman being undressed. And so he's had this very sudden and very typical Sanji-like reaction. And that's really all there is to it. I actually feel quite vindicated in questioning why this was used to end the chapter because as it turns out, it's every bit as mundane and cliche as I interpreted it to be. But what this does is really highlight just how rapidly misinformation can spread and infect an entire fan base. Like, I am not joking when I say that every second comment on my chapter review is theorizing or just outright claiming that even Kov is now on Wano with the rest of the Revolutionary Army. This is despite the fact that the very last place that the Revolutionary Army would have any interest in is Wano. This whole Wano arc is a squabble between pirates, whereas the revolutionaries are focused on the world government. In fact, we still have no real idea what their current state is, but there was an attack on the Reverie, as for how many of their forces participated, who knows. But why would they turn their attention to Wano amongst all of that? And the answer in the minds of these fans is it doesn't matter. This is a case of people getting so unbelievably hyped up for some sort of gigantic chapter 1000 reveal spectacular show that they simply forget the story they've read so far in favor of some kind of outlandish theory like the Revolutionary Army participating in the battle against Kaido. And collectively, we all need to be really careful about stuff like this. Like whenever you see an image like this one, don't just take it as fact, because as we've now explored at great length, there are layers and layers of misinformation and basic misinterpretation at play. As much as many of you may not enjoy reading the official translation for whatever your reasons are, I've heard them all, it really is the best solution to stuff like this. Like making poorly interpreted connections based solely on poorly translated Japanese is in my opinion a bad way to go about this series. There are so, so many avenues for deep and thoughtful theories and discussions with One Piece. However, more often than not, we're just stuck wasting time talking about absurd things like how even Kov is on one or confirmed based on nothing except one internet randoms misunderstanding of a translation provided by another internet random and granted that really massive stuff like this doesn't pop up too often, a lot of this stuff does still foster a disconnect of ideas within the fan base. Like another great example would be chapter 990. After I posted my review of that, I was inundated with comments saying stuff like, why didn't you talk about the Wisdom King? When will you talk about the Wisdom King? Why aren't you talking about the Wisdom King right now? So please, the Wisdom King. And I'm just sitting at my monitor going, what the hell is the Wisdom King? So once again, that's my cue to go and check the scans and sure enough, some dude on the internet has poorly translated a sentence which has made a large portion of the online fan base completely lose their minds. Who is the Wisdom King? Is the Wisdom King Joy Boy? Could the Wisdom King be Luffy's new gear? Gear 5th, Wisdom King. And ever, so much more crap like that. Whereas in reality, the actual chapter comes out and this is just a passing statement from Yogoro saying that Luffy kind of reminds me of a guardian deity. Doesn't he look like a statue of silence? But each and every week without fail, there is a disconnect like this. It varies in terms of scale, but this is the danger of basing your one piece experience on scans alone. You will come out of a chapter with a very potentially warped perspective on what's actually happening. And then in the next chapter, when you know even Cove is not in fact on Wano, you'll be disappointed because your crazy thought that made all of the sense in the world based on a purely fan translation did not come to fruition. You got hyped for nothing over nothing. So I guess just be careful how much you invest in information that comes outside an official source or at the very least, look if you are purely a scanlation reader, I'm not here to judge you, but try not to sound so sure of yourself in any forum or YouTube based discussion. Because, and I really do mean this in the nicest way possible, you don't know what you think you know. Your experience with one piece is slightly different and quite inconsistent as opposed to what the actual series is. 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 feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.