 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. My name is Liam and rather regretfully, I only have two arms instead of six. And today we have review of chapter 1010, also known as one of the most insane things that we've seen on 1.0 yet. This is another one of those experiences where in summary format, it would probably read kind of just like fanfic, you know. Kid and Killer decided to take on Big Mama Loan, Zoro was a confirmed Conqueror's Hockey user. Oh, and he also used Zashra because of why not? Also, Luffy uses advanced Conqueror's Hockey, which before now did not exist and is going to face off against Kaido one on one. It really is slightly ridiculous in all of the best possible ways. And while I was weirdly lucky enough not to be spoiled on the chapter this week, even if I had heard what happened, I probably would have thought it was fake, especially anything to do with Zoro and Conqueror's Hockey because that's one of the greatest fan-based wet dreams of the internet. But before we get into things, it's time for a quick round of one piece based trivia, very simple mini game where I ask you a multiple choice question and should you answer incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which will also result in consistent injections of one piece culture administered straight until YouTube feed. And if you do guess correctly, then you will be rewarded with an all expenses paid by you tripped to the island of Wano. But here is our question for today. How many years ago did we last see Zoro use Ashra in the story? Is it A, 10 years ago, B, 11 years ago, or C, 12 years ago? I mean, whatever it ends up being, it's been a criminally long amount of time, but which is it? Select your choice now when we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it was C, 12 years. The last time we saw Ashra was in chapter 510, published in August, 2008. So, you know, exactly 500 chapters ago. And if you chose A or B, then, well, you know, thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. But Zoro is definitely where we need to begin. There were two world breaking characters in this chapter and he was definitely one of them. Because even though it was far from the most unpredictable revelation in the world, I was completely stunned by the vague confirmation that Zoro has conqueror's hockey. So much so that I really wasn't sure quite what to say at first. All I'll say is Zoro actually has conqueror's hockey. And so that's pretty cool. Oh, and this is why I don't post for reactions because you could throw like the most world shaking revelation at me and with my stupid Australian sensibilities, I'll just react with, yeah, it's pretty all right I guess. I don't even know what to say about this. It's just slightly problematic because saying things with my mouth is pretty much the entire point of the channel. It's just strange because even though we have collectively theorized about this possibility for years and years and years, in fact, I made a video as recently as February, but I argued for why Zoro probably has it, which I suppose is now going to be flooded with a bunch of comments about how well it aged. Unlike the video I made about the whole Ode Mystery that video aged about as well as milk in the desert. But it feels very surreal because Ode just keeps slapping us in the face with Zoro hype chapter after chapter. Not that I'm complaining, especially because this revelation just makes a lot of sense. Zoro is aiming to be at the top of his own particular sword based empire. So conqueror's hockey just fits. With that said, there is a brief caveat I'd like to go over because I would be hesitant to say that it's 100% confirmed that Zoro has conqueror's hockey and this is entirely because of Enma. Right before Zoro invoked Ashura, we were treated to this panel showcasing Enma specifically. Once again, just letting us know that, hey, hey, this is kind of important and you should probably keep it in mind. And while I consider it to be a small and unlikely possibility, I wouldn't completely discount the idea that there is perhaps some lingering conqueror's hockey in Enma from Odin that was just unleashed here accidentally by Zoro. I mean, I'm not going to argue it too much because I do think it's a shaky concept, but it just fascinates me that Odin went out of his way to go, hey, have a look at Enma right before this revelation. However, I do really enjoy the thought that Zoro was just having his moment of invoking conqueror's hockey without realizing it. Sort of like what Luffy was able to do pre-times give. The conqueror's hockey just started leaking from his hockey orifice. And it's also quite fun because of chapter 997 where Odin made a joke about Zoro having conqueror's hockey, which I supposed is now technically going to be classified as foreshadowing unless the Odin potential pans out and then it could just be a running gag of people thinking that Zoro has conqueror's hockey when in reality there's always just a weird coincidental explanation. What is simultaneously glorious and frustrating though is Ashura. Firstly, I love that we saw it. It's been far, far too long. It was almost at the point where I felt like Odin may have been intentionally trying to forget about it just because of how weird it is, but even better than seeing the technique itself was getting to experience the Law's reaction to the event. Law's reaction to Zoro, he just has no idea what he's looking at. All of a sudden Zoro spawns four extra arms and two extra heads and Law's just like, look man, I have traversed all over the ground line but what the hell is this? Ashura is still kind of weird though because here's the thing, at first I kind of muddled my thoughts a bit here and suspected that Kaido's explanation for Ashura was Zoro using conqueror's hockey to spawn his limbs and swords and stuff. Upon further reflection, I don't think that's the case anymore because Kaido only mentioned it after being cut which would imply that he's referring to the damage inflicted rather than the fancy demonic auto phenomenon. Then again, there's also this really cool panel of Kaido reacting to Ashura with the utmost of seriousness and a shot of like pure dread in his eyes or to did his cool straight line shading effect here. So I guess Kaido could have picked up upon it then. It's just very hard to say and it's probably left deliberately ambiguous for the sake of fun fan discussion which is what I hope this is. Whatever the case we've rather unceremoniously reached a point in this series that Zoro fans have desperately craved which was him being pushed to his limits post timeskip. I don't think it's quite the way anyone would have imagined it playing out but as suspected from the hints of the last chapter, Zoro is pretty broken and at least temporarily going to call the quits for now. I can't imagine that he'll stay out of the raid entirely though there's just too many decent healers roaming around. I mean, lore right next to him is a doctor. Downstairs Chopper is a miracle making doctor and even Marco is a straight up Phoenix magic shaman doctor. So there's a lot of good options floating around to get Zoro back up on his feet. Whether or not he'll be facing off against Kaido again is another question and one that we may answer when we get to talking about Luffy. But first we do have something rather important to do because Zoro has actually become the first character during this raid to land a properly wounding hit on Kaido as slash that will indeed leave a scar very akin to the achievements of one Kozuki Oden. So that is a definite raid point for Zoro bringing his total to five. With that said, Zoro was the mere opening act of 1010. Anything he achieved was pretty much immediately blown away by the one and only Monkey D. Luffy who for the first time in I think ever has convinced me that he might, might be able to take on Kaido one on one. For a very long time, I've felt pretty strongly to the belief that Luffy would not be able to bring down Kaido on his own. There's just a lot of problems with it from my perspective one being that it would immediately make Luffy the strongest pirate alive potentially actually even the strongest character alive in general which seems like a bit of a big leap and not at all friendly to the nature of the underdog story beats in one piece. With that said, in this moment, I am well and truly prepared to eat my words because as much as it may not satisfy me in the grand scheme of things, I simply can't deny that seeing Luffy deliver a proper smackdown to Kaido is just so much fun. I love this panel in particular, the gut shot and this should be a very familiar shot to all of you because it's very classically Luffy. In most of his battles there is a moment where he gets in this solid gut shot one that forces his opponent to lean forward and cough up blood. And this is generally the moment where it becomes clear that yeah, Luffy can actually win this. So it was very exciting to see once again surreal though because this is legitimately the strongest pirate alive in his Zoan hybrid serious mode form being decimated by an attack delivered from a simple rubber lad. And you better believe that's a raid point for Luffy. A much needed raid point as well because as of right now Luffy hasn't actually done all that much on his own during Onigashima. What's mostly happened is a lot of team ups are being saved although a point will definitely be awarded for his smackdown of Kaido chapter 1000 and along with this conqueror's Haki based demolishment that will bring Luffy to the enviable number of two raid points. Let's get back to conqueror's Haki though where there was some ambiguity with Zoro there is absolutely none with Luffy. He just came to a realization mid battle that Kaido was imbuing his attacks with a different brand of Haki. And as a user of conquerors himself Luffy recognized its distinct flavor which is kind of cool because it's the sort of thing that Luffy was only able to realize after being brutally hit a couple of times one of which was way back during act one How classically Luffy is this? He's figured out another technique just via the process of being repeatedly beaten up. And just a quick shout out to my channel banner artist Revajo who aesthetically predicted Luffy's conqueror's Haki imbuement over a Yenel with this beautiful image showing the black lightning trail emanating from Luffy's arm. Now when the opening of this video I did refer to it as advanced conqueror's Haki but I'm not entirely sure that's the right terminology. It feels more like a different application of the basic sort of like our observation has a wide variety of basic uses like predicting your opponent's attacks or feeling the emotions of others. Those are both basic uses but then again like I don't know we're using armament Haki instead of conquerors and that's definitely the advanced setting so I don't know Haki is just very vague and odd like that. Right now I'm just going to call what Luffy does a conqueror's fisting but chapter 1010 really does mark the point in one piece where Luffy is pretty much officially risen to the top of this world given that he is now performing feats of a similar nature to that of Whitebeard and Roger albeit on a smaller scale regardless it still puts Luffy within a very very different realm of combat and I actually think that his confidence at the end of this chapter is quite well earned. Oh man what an ending like is he actually going to do this? Because that Luffy pose right there to me suggests that he is. The final panel of this chapter is also important in the same way that the gut shot is. This Luffy pose is quite possibly the most iconic in the entire series and it happens when Luffy is driven to the point of excitement to accomplish something huge. An example of where we've seen it before would be during any slobby right before the straw hat slept into combat with CP9 and to a lesser extent we also saw it quite recently on Wano when Luffy finally broke out of his collar and decided to wreak havoc. What it does to me though is signify impending victory and obviously yes we do have a long way to go but this is a very positive sign and like I said before Luffy does have good reason to be as confident as he is because this has become a battle of conqueror's Haki which more so than any other brand is based on pure willpower and mental domination and in a battle of willpower look Luffy isn't going to lose. That's what we quite painstakingly discovered throughout the Kartakuri fight and if Luffy had been able to channel his willpower this potently back then well that fight probably would have gone very differently. So this is a true clash of kings now whose desire is going to prevail. Got to be honest in this situation I really would not put my money on Kaido. Not that this guarantees that the fight will be one on one from here on out we could always find ourselves in another Dressrosa style situation where Luffy needs a whole ton of help during the climax but what we do know now is that Luffy has the appropriate tools he needs to potentially bring down an emperor of the sea and that is very exciting. Not to be forgotten in all of this is Eustace Kidd who admittedly I kind of forgot about which is why I'm only just talking about him now. Whilst it looks like Lorenzoro might be out of this fight for now Kidd is still very much in it boldly declaring that he and Killar shall take on the biggest of mothers. And the reason why I think that's important is because Kidd is also a confirmed conqueror's hockey user so if he could exploit a similar phenomenon to that which Luffy unlocked then all of a sudden Kidd versus Big Mom well it's not as ridiculous as it sounds still an incredibly uphill battle I suppose especially because something very interesting is happening with Big Mom. At the request of Prometheus and this is just my interpretation but I think that Big Mom is planning on ditching Zeus you know they had that brief discussion about how useless he is rah rah rah damn cloud rah rah and then all of a sudden we have some other clouds stirring so I wonder if Big Mom is now creating a new Thunder Cloud homie to replace Zeus something a bit more in line with the fearsomeness of Prometheus and that's an option I like because that opens up all sorts of Zeus-based possibilities because if he does get ditched by Big Mom well where is he going to go running? There is only one place and that place would be Nami because she feeds him all of the delicious cloud gnomes and if that were the case then Nami could permanently end up with the upgrade of a lifetime although if you'd like to experience an alternative lifetime then do check out this video exploring what the series would look like if Luffy was a bounty hunter lots of berries to be made so I look forward to seeing you there