 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review, your source for everything one piece. And today we have a review of chapter 993, The Dream of Wano. And what a crazy installment. 993 overall is a legit emotional roller coaster, starting off with some really heart-breaking tragedy in regards to the civilians of Wano, which is immediately followed up by a lot of fun action comedy, especially when it came to the Luffy Sanji group. But then the full stop on this chapter is that big, oh damn moment, as it looks like the vassals have finally pushed their luck just a little bit too far in regards to this conflict. And we now have our first casualty as a result. So in honor of Kiku, may I suggest that you all do what she now cannot and press the subscribe button for the Grand Line review, which will result in you joining Grand Fleet and receiving regular one piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. Make sure to use both arms while you have them and make sure that at least one of them presses this beautiful button. And if you have a spare arm, press the like button as well. But I obviously loved everything about this chapter. It was just such a meaty experience and we have a surprising amount of content to go over, but we will begin with Kiku because it is incredibly difficult to get that image out of my head. It all just happened so quickly and what sells this hitting hard more than anything else are the three reactions that Oda chose to immediately showcase below the panel of Kiku's arm being sliced off. We have Iso who you know, has only just reunited with Kiku and immediately this. Then we also have Kinemon who at this stage I'm also feeling pretty down about because I just have this foreboding premonition that he will have to watch each and every one of the vassals struck down. Sort of like how Luffy had to watch all of the straw hats vanished on Sabri until he was the last one standing. And finally Kiku who has the super evocative wide-eyed shock effect applied. These three reactions are everything you need to know. You have the personal loss with Kiku, the familial loss with Iso and the grand plan loss with Kinemon. All coming together to tell us that this is the beginning of the end. And I suppose the question now becomes just how dark will we go here? This is one piece and if someone is going to die I highly doubt it would be Kiku or honestly any of the vassals apart from Kinemon himself. And while this arm slice-offery business does look quite vicious and shocking it's also nothing new to the series. In fact, the very first chapter culminated in an arm loss and really in a world where Trafalgar Law exists and he is very nearby I do have trouble even seeing Kiku's arm loss being permanent. With that said Kiku is more than likely out for this fight and may very well spark a domino effect of falling vassals because this loss is actually massive. As I keep saying in most of my reviews the vassals are a stupidly powerful force but only when they are assembled together and taking advantage of that compound effect. Removing any one of them from that mix is absolutely devastating and it makes me fear for our next handful of chapters. Because we are undeniably building up to our next moment of grand tragedy on Wano because things have gone far too well for far too long. But to change gears a bit something I found artistically intriguing though would be the panel choice for this final two-page feature. And that's because I can't help but feel that the overwhelming temptation for most authors would be to switch these two panels. You know, have some small panels of Kaido doing his monologue and then make his attack the big feature because it is a big moment. I'm certainly not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just very, very interested in Oda once again choosing the road less taken. Like I wonder if it was a decision made to make sure that Kiku would be the focus of the spread because that is the focal point of the action currently and having this gigantic attack panel would pull focus from that. So yeah, I just enjoy trying to dissect Oda's choices because I just don't feel like we would see such a teeny tiny panel for such a massive scale attack in most other series. But hey, why not? It works. And one other thing before we move on, I love that we had this short flashback of the moment where Higurashi tricked Oden by pretending to be Momonosuke. And more specifically, I love this is something that Kaido clearly often thinks about. Showing that he does have this true sense of guilt or at least some form of dishonor for how this fight with Oden ultimately went down. Which we did already sort of know because Kaido did apologize to Oden right before his death and stated that he had Higurashi killed but seeing it reinforced here is still nice because these glimpses into Kaido's personality are incredibly rare. Even two years into an arc featuring him as the main antagonist, so I thought it was worth mentioning. But elsewhere in the chapter, we had plenty of action stuff, including some more Queen time featuring another one of his terrifying concoctions which seems to turn people into rabid ice demons. And when I say it looks like this thing actually gives them ice horns and everything. So that's a nice artistic yet sadistic touch by Queen there. And of course, it's also wildly problematic because we did not have enough people fighting on our side as it is. And now they can all be turned into, I guess what we'll call ice zombies. Quite the plague indeed. But also in this part of the chapter, we also seem to be maybe solidifying the idea of a Zoro Drake team up because they are still present and captivated. And there's even a really fun series of panels of the two of them framing the revelation of Queen's ice dude. And you can really tell a lot based on reactions because reactions don't just show us what characters are thinking about at any given time. They also show us who Oda is thinking about at any given time. And right here right now the trifecta of focus is undeniably on Drake, Queen and Zoro. So I am very much looking forward to that idea if that does pan out. Something else notable though, which I kind of skimmed over on my first read through is that Robin and Chopper are also here in the increasingly terrifying realm of Queen. But they get shoved in a panel together and are much less significant than the others. But it's still good to see because I was wondering what happened to them and it turns out nothing, nothing yet anyway. Although I have to say having Chopper present is very potentially relevant in the event that he could figure out some sort of quick fix to this plague. But then moving to the funniest part of this chapter we're following Luffy and Sanji which gives us what I believe to be the first climax mini-map of the arc showing the various levels of Onigashima. And I love these mini-maps. They make my life so much easier and I feel like I instantly have a much better geographical understanding of Onigashima as well as what our general goal with Luffy is going to be for the next while which is to reach the roof. And we have an awfully long way to go, don't we? But the main reason why this mini-map is ever so exciting to me though is that we really only tend to get these when a final conflict is in full swing when the chaos is so over the top that we do need regular locational updates. But as for what's happening here I have to say I loved everything about Sanji this chapter. There was a great panel where he performed the party table kick course which is probably my favorite Sanji attack except that he had the double jumper active and it's just beautiful. Although maybe don't spend too much time looking at Sanji's face because it was clearly not his main concern here. But with Sanji he also started to argue with Luffy which is something I appreciated because I very recently made a video on the dynamic of the monster trio. And in said video I stated that Luffy, Zoro and Sanji are a pretty abysmal team when they're all acting together. They are much, much, much, much better acting separately towards the same goal because the three of them do clash in terms of personality. So it was good to see here that Sanji just cannot keep control of Luffy and it did take the overwhelming presence of Jinbei to really calm the children down which was quite unexpected actually. I thought Jinbei might stick with Frankie to deal with some numbers, but that's all right. Frankie's got this, yeah. But then the stupidest, strangest and yet most amazing thing of the chapter happened with the gorilla smile user whose name I believe is Briscola. And he is now my favorite smile for it user because it's, oh my God, it's just so ridiculous. Yet it's kind of cool looking at the same time. This isn't like Holden in his crotch line. A hand gorilla seems, dare I use the word, useful? I suppose I do. But it does look strangely cool. I can't quite reconcile it in my mind. And I love how serious Briscola gets about his gorilla fist and Sanji's level of not caring reaches the point of furious, which I loved. Wonderful odor humor in this section in general. Which I think really disarmed me, pun intended, for the end of the chapter. Odor's very great at mixing comedy and tragedy to enhance both. And 993 is a flawless example. We're not even done yet though. There was so much in this chapter, including a section following Shinobu, Momenosuke and Yamato. Although to me, this was definitely the least interesting section. I really don't care for the whole Shinobu running away from Yamato thing because it's an artificial obstacle with an ending that we can all quite comfortably predict. Eventually they're going to realize that Yamato is on their side and yeah. So this was just another step towards that. However, what was very cool about this part is Baohuang, whose mysterious powers are expanded upon, giving us an effective answer to this whole Onigashima eye cult mystery. It would appear that Baohuang can use these bits of paper to surveil the area, which would be why we've seen so many beast pirates sporting them. Although I do wonder if it works without the paper because who's who has an eye on his body but not in paper form. And this may perhaps make Baohuang the kind of viola of this arc. You know, the individual with the perfect surveillance which gets used to inform the readers of what's going on through various bits of exposition. I do wonder exactly how her powers work though because you would think that they'd need to be Ninjutsu, right? They can't be a devil fruit because she's already the user of a squirrel smile fruit. Unless these powers are completely unrelated to her in the work of someone else, but that sounds a bit convoluted and still possible I guess. In any case, Baohuang is now far more intriguing than I ever thought she would become. But now I want to move all the way back to the beginning of the chapter with our scene in the Flower Capital. This is the sort of stuff that I feel like a lot of people might race through or just slightly skim over because it doesn't contain any truly notable characters but I really, really like this opening. This was the first time that we've really seen the citizens of Wano in a state of genuine happiness and for such a tragic reason. The one day of the year when they aren't directly under the tyranny of Orachi, it's such a classical odor thing to do. You know, revealing the common desire of a mass of people rather than just having them being a nameless thing to be saved. This is the sort of scene that makes everything we went through with the various poor towns worth it because the contrast of seeing everyone happy and hopeful plays very nicely at this point in the arc. In fact, it's pretty perfectly placed because after chapter 992, we were made to feel very happy and hopeful ourselves after seeing the vassal seemingly demolish Kaido. So this scene does a very good job of reinforcing that feeling which makes it all the more tragic when Oda takes the first step towards despair with Kiku at the end. But I mean, speaking of the end, that's not really a concept we can quite comprehend, is it, because Wano is nowhere near over. It's looking more and more like we'll be doing the traditional Kabuki 5 act structure of plays, which I will remind you, act three of those plays are classically characterized by a moment of great tragedy, which we could maybe take to be Odin's flashback or it could be a tragedy yet to come with the maybe certain Kinamon, hmm. But then the fourth act would very typically consist of battles, so that would make sense to start toppling the beast pirates, concluding with a victory against Kaido. And then act five is all about a swift and satisfying conclusion, which would be the post battle events, you know, parties and recovering and all that fun stuff. But now let's turn to the cover story because this is some pretty monumental stuff. It's not every day that we see the conclusion of a 517 chapter story arc, but here we are. Lola is finally married, which is really trippy for me to think about because I still remember when Lola was first introduced, way, way, way back in chapter 476. It was my last year in high school, we were still riding the high of any Slubby. And then all of a sudden Lola pops up out of nowhere and asks Luffy to marry her. And I really never could have imagined that this tiny character arc would conclude almost exactly 13 years later. So newer fans, I can understand this being a sort of, oh, that's cool, kind of a fair, but seeing this cover actually made me bizarrely nostalgic for my early days of One Piece. With that said, it's also quite important for in-world reasons because Lola is the reason why Big Mom has that secondary rift with the obf giants because Lola rejected Prince Loki. And unfortunately for Loki, Lola is now officially off the market. So the fire tank pirates are really putting in some serious overtime into screwing over Big Mom here. But it was a purely delightful cover and it further displays a soft-hearted side of Mr. Capungang Beige, who was a bizarre combination of sappy family man blended with vicious gangland murderer. And weirdly enough, this doesn't even seem to be the end of the cover story, which has had a whopping 37 installments now. And I think that this would have made a pretty amazing ending, but perhaps Oda is planning on finishing this with some sort of intrigue instead, we shall see. But that pretty much does it for chapter 993. And what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you're keen for more videos like this then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel. From all 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.