 What if I told you that in 1996, one year before One Piece began publication, that author Ichiro Oda was walking down a road in his country hometown of Kumamoto, when suddenly he caught sight of a farmer in a state of undress, wearing nothing but a straw hat, and proudly claiming that he would become the king of Kumamoto. And later that night, Oda would use this inspiration to draw the very first sketch of a character who would become known as the infamous Monkey D. Luffy. I mean, obviously if I told you that, I'd be lying. But in the end, that's kind of what myths are, just glorified, well-told lies. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review Source for everything One Piece, and today we are here as truth seekers. It is going to be our task, nay, our duty, to examine some of the most enduring myths in One Piece, and to ideally shatter them before your very eyes, in order to reveal the cold, hard, and sometimes even stranger truth behind them. Because to be frank, here is a shocking statistic. Apparently One Piece has been in publication longer than about 45% of my audience have actually been alive. So, there's that. And during that time, whilst you were all evolving from embryos to messy teenagers and ultimately into semi-functional adults, One Piece has been subject to staggering amounts of misinformation, misinformation that then became urban legends, urban legends that became fan canon, and fan canon that has now passed into the realm of myth. And to begin our exploration, we are going to have a quick round of myth or fact, a very simple minigame the rules of which are as follows. I'm going to present you with a common One Piece fan statement, and it is going to be your job to guess whether it is a myth, aka untrue, or whether it is a fact, aka a fact. Now, should you guess incorrectly, then your splendid punishment will be subscribing to the Grand Line Review, which will also result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. And if you are correct, then well, aren't you clever? But here is today's statement. Zoro has been canonically referred to as the first mate of the Straw Hat Pirates. Is this a myth or is this a fact? I'll give you some time to decide and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it is actually surprisingly enough a fact. Zoro has been referred to as the first mate on not one, but two separate occasions once by Mad Monkerouj on Sabote and once by Bartolomeo on Dressrosa. So for everyone who selected myth, 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 that is as good a place to when you start because despite the fact that it was a fact, the idea that Zoro is the first mate of the Straw Hat Pirates is still actually a myth. I know that sentence I said was just very confusing, but just stick with me for a second. It is a very popular myth that makes a lot of sense within the context of the series. So popular in fact, that as you can see, canon characters have actually started running with this myth. In fact, if you take a closer look at Bartolomeo's statement, he quite blatantly says that Zoro is considered by him to be the right hand man and the first mate of the crew. And I always found this pretty funny because Bartolomeo is meant to be a character who embodies the one piece fandom just inserted into the series. So it's a pretty perfect statement. However, in reality, well, the reality of this fake comic world, in reality, the Straw Hats do not have a vice captain or a first mate role. I mean, yeah, you could say that Zoro fulfills the purpose of that role, I suppose, but here's a bonus fun fact. Originally, Usopp was going to be the official vice captain of the crew, which was revealed along with some original concept art in one piece green. Much more importantly though, Usopp was also meant to have this like a funky pirate hat, which he never got. And I personally feel quite robbed on his behalf. Moving on though, we have another Zoro related myth, except this time it has to do with his childhood friend, Kuina, who tragically passed away. But if you look at this topic anywhere on the internet, you will usually find a claim that says something along the lines of, Kuina did not die by falling down the stairs. This is a Japanese euphemism for committing suicide, which if that was true, would be super, super dark. However, it is not, it is a definite myth. I have never been able to find anything whatsoever that substantiates this idea of an alleged euphemism in Japanese culture. And if you have more information regarding it, then yeah, please do let me know in the comments. But at this point, I don't think it exists. I suspect that this is more a case of a fan theory turned fan cannon turned myth. Mostly in an attempt to reconcile what I will admit is a bit of a weird situation. I mean, compared to every other flashback in the series, this death seems odd, very odd, and quite out of place. But at the same time, that is exactly sort of what it was meant to convey. The sheer fragility of humans, and while it doesn't seem very one piece in retrospect, that's what we've got to deal with. Moving on to someone who once visited Zoro's village actually, is one that is well and truly solidified in fan cannon. That being the idea that Monkey D. Dragon has the highest bounty in all of one piece, which I suppose would be easy to tell if we knew what it was, but we don't. So this situation, look, it's not strictly speaking a myth, but it's definitely not confirmed either. However, many people, including myself in the past, have taken it as confirmed due to Dragon's epithet, which is often cited as the most wanted man in the world. And if you were the most wanted, then logic would dictate that you probably have the highest bounty on your head, at least amongst your living contemporaries. And if that were the case, then I would agree, but it isn't, so I can't. Depending on your translation of choice, Dragon's official epithet is either the world's worst criminal or the world's most heinous criminal. And whilst this may seem a bit like spitting hairs in the grand scheme of things, neither of those come anywhere near close to saying that he is the most wanted. So look, I'm not going to say that Dragon definitely doesn't have the highest bounty, but I do want you to question that far too commonly accepted idea that he definitely does, because that thought is based entirely on some kind of fan translation that decided to arbitrarily label him as the most wanted man in the world, so kind of that. In any case, let's skip forward in time to a relatively recently generated myth, which is that one Charlotte Katakuri is a logia type devil fruit user. I cannot accurately quantify how many times I see this statement in my YouTube comments section. It's one of the most frustrating things to read. Whenever I mention he's a Paramecia user, I'm always met with this bombardment of comments going, no, Grand Line review, you don't know what you're talking about, he is a logia. However, in all fairness to those commenters, that did used to be true. This is one of those confusing situations where the truth is quite difficult to discern unless you happen to be there at the time. By which I mean reading the series weekly when chapter 863, where our Lord and Saviour, fish Jinbei, identified the mochi mochi no mi as a logia type devil fruit. Yes, those were the words he said. However, when this chapter was compiled into volume 86, a very curious change was made where Jinbei now states that Kata Curry is a special Paramecia, quite different. And there's a whole ton of speculation as to why that change was made. However, this original logia labeling is still persistent in the fan base to this very day. And you know, it also doesn't help that Kata Curry is capable of completely mimicking his logia powers through future sight and such. That and, let's be honest, he was 100% originally meant to be a logia user, but he isn't. He's a very special boy and thus this whole logia business is but a myth. Onwards to some filler fun now because I get asked this question a lot on YouTube, but may I now present to you the myth of the second Ponyglyph on Alabasta. Now, Manga readers will be well aware of this by default, but this may come as a surprise to many anime viewers who remember that in episode 102. The straw hats just casually found a Ponyglyph lying about in the desert. And in fact, this was the very first Ponyglyph to have actually been shown in the anime. So in retrospect, it carries some pretty incredible significance, especially once you learn what their actual purpose is. But in terms of serious canon, this Ponyglyph does not actually exist. This was anime original content, aka filler, where the Terwe production team took some pretty massive liberties, which has resulted in this ongoing myth that the straw hats will have to one day travel back to Alabasta in order to read this Ponyglyph. But they don't because it doesn't exist. And there is another very popular myth that has the straw hats inevitably traveling back to Alabasta as well, which is the idea that the ancient weapon Pluton is hidden on the island. Now I do need to apologize for this because I was also very guilty of spreading this myth in my early days, which resulted from a process that I would describe as sheer brain failure. But basically, when Nika Robin reads the actual Ponyglyph on Alabasta, it details where the ancient weapon Pluton is. And later on in a flashback, King Kirby states that if Robin had actually given crocodile that information, then the kingdom of Alabasta would have fallen into his hands, which I suppose is very maybe implying that Pluton is hidden on the designation. But that's all we really have. So this one gets hit with a very solid unconfirmed. And it's problematic because we do have precedent elsewhere to examine, which is the Ponyglyph on Scypia, known to contain the location of another ancient weapon being Poseidon, which was far, far away on Fishman Island. So Pluton may not necessarily be on Alabasta. Because in a way, it's kind of like giving someone a map and then telling them they don't need the map because they're already where they need to be. So I guess we'll have to leave this one up to time to determine. But right now Pluton on Alabasta is very unconfirmed. In keeping with the Robin theme though, let's step back a couple of decades to the Ahara incident and a myth that's spawned from that being the idea that Robin's mental figure, Jagwadi Sol, is indeed alive. And sadly, I do need to break it to you that he is less than alive. One might even say dead. Now this might be a slightly controversial statement because talking about death in one piece always is. And this is another instant where theories have infested our brain things whispering sweet nothing such as, Sol is alive, he's in impel down, who's aren't only for rose him. But no, along with the rest of Ahara, Sol just blew up, dying with a smile on his face like all members of this de-clan business. However, once again, this is controversial. So much so that even the other fine scholars of the one piece Wiki could not come to an agreement resulting in a bit of an online academic spat. Basically, it began with a user named Justin who decided to pose the question of whether or not Sol was actually dead, citing evidence both for and against. And at this stage, another user named Joe Kiddo did not take kindly to this and decided to respond with, oh, come on, Justin. Sol is dead and that's the fact, so please stop trying to be full of yourself and leave Sol in the dead category, okay? Peace out, man. Which prompted Justin to reply with, you're talking to me about being full of himself, Joe. You're the one who said flat out that we should all just shut up and let you run the Wiki and do whatever you like. I don't think you have much room to talk on this particular matter. Snap, Justin. Snap, so I guess that's a score one for Justin there, but really in the end, it is a score none because both of you are arguing about a fictional giant with a cowboy hat on the internet. But now we come to my favorite myth. When I say favorite, I mean it's the one I'm the most sick of hearing about, which is that allegedly, Etura Oda once stated that if a human were to eat the hito hito no me, which is chopper's devil fruit, then they would be granted enlightenment. This comes out without fail and en masse every timeless fruit is mentioned in any video and it is a myth, it is 100% pure myth. And the origin of said myth is the SPS of volume 20 where the following question is posed. What happens if a person eats the hito hito no me? To which Oda replies with, I suppose I should say they become human. Oh, I guess you could say that means like becoming an adult or finding your true spirit or something. So basically people will live more human-like. Well, I guess you could say that or not. Basically not. Goodbye, runs away. In effect, telling us that Oda was completely talking out of his ass before, you know, promptly denying his ramblings and then running away as best one can in words on a page and not literally doing it. And as far as I can tell, the only reason for this enlightenment myth has to stem from a very poor fan translation of the segment. But seriously, I have never encountered a myth with as much staying power as this one with such an overwhelming amount of people just believing it at face value because some dude bra on an internet forum said so. Although to be completely fair, I am also some dude bra on the internet, giving you an online translation from the one piece wiki and oh look, by now we know how Justin and Joe can be. So let us instead decide by opening our Bibles to one piece volume 20 chapter just after 184 page number, not listed. What would happen if a human ate the human human fruit? There's a saying we have in Japan to become human or rather to come of age. It means to act like an adult or to stop acting crazy, to behave the way a human being is supposed to. Maybe that's part of it or not. Well, no, yes, that's what I mean. Runs away, he runs away on page. Again, now some key words that you did not hear in this passage include enlightenment, wisdom, knowledge, insight, refinement, and enlightenment again, because this concept never even comes close to being mentioned. So the next time you'll encounter someone who spouts something along the lines of the hito hito no mi will grant a human enlightenment. Well, you, you can look at them dead in the eye and you can tell them, no. But if you'd like to see some more fun facts about the series and I highly recommend checking out some of the biggest controversies in one piece right here, but please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join the discussion on our Discord server. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.