 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and I wish that my teapot also had testicles. And today we have a very special video because it is a review of chapter 109, which marks the 100th chapter of the Wano Arc. And let's all just, you know, take a moment to absorb that information. Wano began in July 2018 with chapter 909. And here we are now in 2021, just now getting down to business, which is pretty wild. For some other stunning statistics, we are only three chapters away from surpassing Dress Roses 102 chapter count, and thus having Wano become the longest arc in One Piece history, which it most assuredly will. And right now 100 chapters in a series with just over 1,000, while the keen mathematicians amongst you will note that roughly 10% of the entirety of One Piece has now taken place on Wano. And all of those thoughts are pretty incredibly insane. So by going to celebrate with a round of arc inquiry, a very simple minigame where I'm going to ask you a trivia question and you were going to answer it. Should you answering correctly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, also resulting in consistent injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. And should you answer correctly, then you will be awarded by being turned into stone by Boa Hancock, like the perverted scum you are. But here is our trivia question. Which of the following characters did not appear in the first chapter of Wano? Is it A, Jozu, B, Vista, or C, Rakuyo? All whitebait commanders, but which one of them did not make it into the very first chapter of the Wano arc? Please do make your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it was A, Jozu. The whitebait pirates appear in this like funky refresher panel, but weirdly enough, there is no Jozu. Huh, sucks to be him. But if you guessed either Vista or Rakuyo, then does not suck to be you, does not suck at all. And you know the thing to do, so please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet, welcome. But that's enough of that. Let's abruptly get into the chapter, kind of like how Orochi rather abruptly stumbled directly into his demise, his second demise. So whatever potential that Orochi has left in this arc, I think it's fairly safe to say I wasn't expecting most of it to completely evaporate within the first two pages here. It was pretty incredible though, especially to see the sheer bloodlust within the vassals because they didn't even need to think twice. Each and every one of them, well, not all of them, but most of them went straight in for the kill on our Hydra Lad Orochi, which is fun because looking at this panel, I can only see five of the vassals actively slicing Orochi's heads. Nekomomushi and Iso appear to have been left out of the fun. Shame for them. Still, those five plus Kaido means that so far in this arc, a grand total of six different people have taken seven different Orochi heads. Now, if my maths is accurate, then six plus one equals seven and then eight minus seven equals one, which means that you, sir, have bought one head left hiding somewhere. Assumedly, up your ass, I suppose. So something I'd been thinking about since last week was the Yamatana Orochi legend because I was curious if the heads could regenerate or if there was any restrictions on how to, you know, like kill the thing. And while I didn't dive too deeply into it, the original mythology of the creature was less than helpful because as far as I can tell, what happened is the Orochi got drunk and was promptly killed whilst passed out. So I'd like to think that this is just Oda skipping a whole bunch of unnecessary head cutting with Orochi and get it all done in one shot, then have Orochi perhaps be a bit more conservative with his arrogance from here on out. So does anyone remember right back at the beginning of Wano before Orochi's like proper introduction where there were theories that the vassals were going to end up having this epic battle against this mythical monster? So that didn't happen. Something very interesting that happened towards the end here though, it appears to be a pairing of Raizo and Fukurokuju, which is definitely appropriate. Alquerky Ninja versus the literal head ninja. If I come to think of it, they've both got pretty big heads, don't they? Fukurokuju's is just long lost. Raizo's comes equipped with some much needed girth. Why I really like this though isn't so much because of this specific matchup, but the idea that the vassals are going to keep being split up. Like how Inarashi was left behind last chapter to face off against Jack and paired off against various opponents in the same way that the straw hats typically are. Although that shouldn't be too surprising in retrospect because there is Preston for this. Weirdly enough, the most recent conflict of this scale we can look to in the series comes courtesy of Dress Rosa, during which all of the Colosseum fighters got paired off against members of the Don Quixote Pirates, which just as a side note is another crazy thought due to the nature of what Hawcake Island was, we have not had a classic one piece mega battle since like 2015. So you know what, give me some vassal action here. Although rather worryingly, I'm not sure if there are enough opponents on the island left to Cater for all of the vassals because what remains of the Tobiropo seems to be reserved for the straw hats. And we are now starting to run quite low on relevant named villains. Oh, and one thing I did notice the lack thereof was Iso, he was quite absent from I think every panel in this chapter. Like the only panel I could make a reasonable argument for is maybe this one because that here squiggle that might be Iso, very maybe. It doesn't really matter though because I'm sure it's not some sort of grand conspiracy. I just enjoy seeing what Oda chooses to focus on because there are times where he will deliberately just not draw characters who are meant to be in a present location simply to increase the focus and effect on the ones that he wants to zero in on. To the main event though, the bulk of this chapter was dedicated to a very fun sequence of the worst generation versus the emperors. And it looks like we have finally made some sort of decent progress. Before that though, I think it's incredibly important to talk about that amazing combo attack from Big Mom and Kaido. I could be wrong, but this may very well be the single most powerful attack that has ever been featured in One Piece. I'm trying to think of others, but the only potential candidates I have that spring to mind are like Kaido's Borobreth or Elizabethos King Punch. And I don't know, maybe you could also throw in some devil fruit business from Whitebeard and Sakazuki. But still, I don't think that any of them are quite comparable to this. And one initially strikes me as the composition of the panel. It's almost underwhelmingly simple. About two thirds of it is pretty much just blank white negative space. Something that you don't often see in a big showcase panel of One Piece because Oda likes to cram as much detail into these events as possible, which is why something like this is actually quite special. Because this attack is so powerful that it is effectively erasing any semblance of detail that comes into contact with it. It's very simple, but extremely effective, especially in a series like One Piece, which is well known for cramming as much detail and texture into everything as possible. And the attack itself is obviously an homage to the Elbafian giants who performed essentially the same technique way back on Little Garden, which decimated the island eater. But as insane as this attack was, something even more wild happened, which is that it was blocked single-handedly by a green-haired swordsman. Potentially the most powerful attack in all of One Piece, blocked by three swords and a dream. I honestly feel like I'm reading Zoro fan fiction. To be fair, I do think that this is a bit overblown. It's not like he was actually capable of blocking or deflecting it. It was just a temporary stop to allow lore to move everyone to safety. So you know what? Let's try not to ride Zoro's dick too hard here, but at the same time, he keeps consistently performing in this arc time and time again. I almost feel like we need to start keeping track of all of this with some sort of raid point system awarded to characters for just amazing crap that gets done. For example, slicing down Scratchmanapoo. That's a raid point. Casually attacking Queen and making him squeal like the rounded pygmy is. That's a raid point. Being the first character to actually make Kaido dodge an attack, ding, raid point. And now having blocked one of the greatest attacks in the history of the series, whilst the rest of the worst generation just kind of stood there and shot themselves. Yes, big raid point. So that is Zoro sitting on four raid points currently, which I do suspect is more than anyone else. With all of that said, Zoro has taken this a lot more harshly than most people seem to realize because there is a very concerning panel right at the end of the chapter with Zoro coughing up quite a bit of blood. A panel that I'm not entirely sure why exists because it has very little to do with the situation at hand. The other three surrounding panels are about lost Mac talking big mom and confirming that Zeus can't save her. But amongst all of that, we just see Zoro interrupting by coughing up some blood. So Oda clearly thinks that it is very important for us to know that Zoro is in far worse condition than the rest of the chapter would portray. So I'm not entirely sure what to make of that except that Zoro probably has quite the struggle ahead and may very well need to either take a break or even drop out entirely from this fight in the very near future. It's definitely not what I want but at the same time, I look at this panel and I go, oh, that hurts. Moving to lore though, this chapter finally answers a question that just about everyone has been asking ever since the introduction of his abilities, which is, you know, why not teleport the emperors or literally any opponent into the water and just be done with the arc? And of course the expected answer is Haki. Their Haki is simply too, too powerful, which I don't know. Oda put himself in a very tricky situation here and I mean, it does make sense but it's kind of a weak explanation, especially since Haki isn't something that is always active. So a really great strategy instead of, you know, charging head on in with the vassals, probably would have been to have lore sneak up into the festival and swap Kaito's body with someone or something or whatever. Unless we're saying that Kaito always keeps his Haki active or that Haki remains in place, sort of like a passive effect, either way, this has always been the problem of lore. His abilities are simply too strong. So situations like this where we need to explain why they can't be used just end up being kind of awkward. Hey lore, why can't you, you know, use the power? You know, the one that's like an instant win condition against any opponent, because that would be really helpful right about now or better yet, even long before now. Well kid, to be honest, I just don't want to, which I find to be every bit as satisfying of an explanation as the one we got. But while Luffy does cool Luffy things, our remaining worst generation members do come up with a very cool plan to remove Big Mom from this nightmarish picture and I like it. It was the perfect use of the individual skill sets of every other combatant except for maybe Killer who just ended up like chasing a sword. And it very much reminds me of the time when the straw hat successfully repelled Big Mom downstairs. Once again, showing us that Big Mom really isn't also great without an entire empire or at least a few other figures to support her because alone, Big Mom can meet her doom by being struck with a simple rock. You know, I quite vividly remember making fun of lore when he tried to assault Kaida with rocks back in like chapter 1001. And I think I might have to eat those words now because whilst those rocks didn't work on Kaido, they most certainly did work against Big Mom. So you know what? I'm just gonna stop questioning your rock related tactics. Now in regards to Big Mom's fate, I highly doubt she's actually going to fall into the sea. Right now the worst case scenario would probably be for Kaido to swoop down and save her then emerge back on top of the roof with Big Mom riding him as much fan art has depicted. It's quite interesting though because if Big Mom does fall then I'm not entirely sure that she has any way of getting back onto Onigashima meaning that she would effectively be removed from the entire conflict. At least until she could create some sort of other flying homie to get back up. But this could very much be signaling the start of our serious battle time here with everyone just focusing on Kaido. Assumably after taking care of the rest of the beast pirates from a story perspective, I imagine. Meanwhile Kaido versus Luffy during this chapter was nothing less than exceptional. There was another fun smack talking moment where Luffy noticed that Kaido dodged his attack, which is all the fuel to the fire that Luffy needs. During the last chapter, he insisted that their attacks were having an effect against Kaido and Kaido himself has now just confirmed that. So when Luffy's deranged mind, which is probably best represented by this panel, all he has to do is keep punching and he will eventually win. What is this Luffy face? It's such an unflattering angle. But Kaido is even worse. Look at this guy. What is this? He looks like he has no idea what's going on. Like he's having a complete inner crisis and doesn't even know who he is. So there's some interesting strange Kaido art here. The Kaido does repay the shenaniganry from Luffy with what looks like a brutal clubbing from above. And looking at this panel just sends me consistent waves of pain because this one has to hurt like nothing before. From what we can see, Luffy couldn't even try to block it. It's quite the attack. And I actually think it looks much cooler than the Emperor Combo attack earlier in the chapter. Now, as is often the case, one piece was on the cover of Weekly Shonen Jump, which is nice and simple. Just a classic shot of Luffy being adorned by the atmosphere of the flower capital. There's really not too much to say about it. It's definitely not my favorite cover by a long, long stretch. It's just a little bit too basic for me, I think. The color spread on the other hand is anything but. A nice little scene of the straw hats in the snow with Tama and Ko. I love everything about it, including the ridiculously detailed jackets. It's always fun to see what Oda chooses to write on color spread clothing and stuff such as Zoro's jacket, which just says three swords. And I have to say it was quite the lucky and fate to coincidence that he managed to find a piece of clothing that said exactly that. Considering I'm pretty sure he is the only user of three swords in the entire world. So he may have started his own brand. But here's the thing that I think people are really going to jump on. Ah, Tama has the straw hat. So Tama Fanakuma confirmed. Confirmed again, I guess. Tama taking Luffy's straw hat. At face value, this is a very playful, fun thing because she is about to put it on one of the statues. But to the conspiracy theory internet, this is going to be another piece of evidence for the Tama train. Now there was already a big call for Tama for straw hat after Act One of Wano, where Tama became the only post timescape character to have worn the hat. Other than Luffy, of course, and our loyal rock friend. So this color spread can definitely be interpreted as some sort of foreshadowing because there is also precedent for that. Like when Robin stole and wore the straw hat long before she joined the crew. But I have to say I remain unconvinced. Of every possible new member from Wano, Tama feels the most unlikely, even with all of the stuff behind her. Who knows though, maybe in a year's time we'll all look back on this and go, holy crap, Oda was practically telling us right here. So keep an eye on this space. And to check out other examples of grand one piece in World Conspiracy Theories and do check out this video which dives into some of the most puzzling and disturbing background mysteries of the series.