 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review, your source for everything one piece, and today I would like to leap head first off of Sky Island and land into the hard ground of embrace that is the philosophy of Kaido. For the past almost 100 chapters of Wano, we really haven't had the chance to delve too deeply into Kaido's mentality, which most prominently includes his hobby of repeatedly attempting to kill himself, or at least that's very much how we've described it. However, as Kaido slowly reveals more and more bits of personality and I mean very slowly, one thing has become quite clear to me with this man, or I suppose this creature, which is his ultimate goal and tragic path forward in the series, culminating in what is either going to be a spectacular death, worthy of rivaling or perhaps even surpassing Whitebeard, or his comparatively meaningless erasure from this world. With Kaido, it would seem that death is more important than life, or more accurately death is what completes life. Why does he believe this, and how will it affect the events of Wano? Well stay tuned, but for now it's time to play Kaido or Kaidont, and the rules of this minigame are quite simple. Here we see sake bottles. Inside one of them is going to be our emperor of the sea, and inside the other two will be subscribe buttons for the ground line review. You need to select one of these bottles, either A, B or C, and if your bottle contains a bread button then you Kai do need to subscribe to the ground line review for regular one piece content uploaded straight into your youtube feed, and if you manage to find Kaido, then you Kai don't need to subscribe. Sounds easy enough, right? So go ahead and pick your bottle, I'll give you a few seconds to make your selection now, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Bam! If you picked bottles A and B then welcome to the grand fleet, and if you picked bottle C then I'll get you eventually. But heading back into the actual video, one thing that we've known about Kaido ever since his introduction is that he is a death seeker. In fact the very first thing the narrator said about Kaido is this man claimed he was searching for a place to die, and the death seeker concept is nothing new to media, in fact it's not anything new to one piece. One of our most loved characters Niko Robin was also a death seeker prior to the events of any slobby. In her case this mentality was caused by her childhood trauma and distinct lack of hope for the future. Particularly because the one thing that she had been told over and over again is that she simply did not have the right to live. So trauma could be one motivation, but one piece has another example of a death seeker that we spot in chapter one being Goldie Roger. In his case he had an incurable disease and was going to die anyway, so he decided to choose the way in which he would rather leave this world, and you could say more or less the same thing about Dr. Hiralok on Drum Island, however brief a quest that was. But there are a slew of reasons for characters embarking on their own journeys with the intent of ending their lives, and ever since Kaido's introduction we've been looking for his particular motivation, and for most of the series we've assumed it was one of two things. Either it was the afore mentioned trauma reasoning, albeit different to Robin's case, sort of like the idea that Kaido had suffered ever so much that he just wanted to put a full stop to this whole life thing. Which is backed up by the narrator stating how many times he'd been captured, sentenced to death, and all of that stuff. Meanwhile the other potential motivation would be she aboard him. As the strongest creature in the world, Kaido is like a player using God mode in any given game, thus making playing the game of life eternally boring, and as such he keeps throwing himself into the worst of the worst situations, just to see if he can gain some sort of entertainment even if it results in his demise. Both of which were quite difficult to reconcile. The trauma angle because Kaido does seem very active and motivated with particular goals on this planet, so it's hard to see him having given up on life, and at the same time his chronic mood swings and depression indicate far more than simple boredom. And recently I think we found a new and more accurate answer. I won't go into manga spoilers for anime only watches or people who just aren't caught up, but Kaido recently reiterated a point that he has stated once before. There was a very curious line in chapter 795, the very first piece of dialogue we hear from Kaido in the series actually, where he states that old white beard did it right. It, of course, being death. And basically Kaido has now said the exact same thing again, except that he also included Roger in the statement, the latter part of which is fascinating for many, many reasons. But firstly, I think this does clear up Kaido's motivation. As a death seeker, he is actually something of a death worshipper. Someone who believes that the act of dying in a correct and impactful manner is what completes an individual's life. In fact, what is done in life is effectively secondary to its final conclusion. And with this in mind, Kaido becomes really interesting to me because I'm seeing this incredible inferiority complex developing within him. Think about it this way, Kaido is the pinnacle of life. He is the most powerful creature in this world, and there is nothing that is capable of even coming close to threatening his life. Which would be an ideal scenario for most people because that does bring a nice sense of safety. However, for Kaido, being burdened with this overwhelming strength is almost sort of like a great shame. The fact that he is too strong and too invulnerable to achieve what he desires most, which is death, to complete his life. It's a cool dichotomy. And as such, Kaido is stuck in this really depressing state where he turns to alcohol to drown his perceived failures. But in addition to that, he also develops a hobby of suicide and is even now trying to structure the biggest war that this world has ever seen. All in the service of creating something hopefully capable of being able to give him the death and glory he craves so much. It really doesn't seem like Kaido wants to die to get rid of any existing pain. He just wants to achieve his own ideal of perfection, which he has seen embodied in both Whitebeard and Roger. With Whitebeard, his departure at the Paramount War was one of the hardest-hitting moments in One Piece as a reader or watcher, but it also sent incredible shockwaves throughout the planet. He passed away after almost single-handedly leading an assault on the Marines. He died standing proudly, and with his final words he claimed that the One Piece did indeed exist, which set the world on fire. And this is the sort of thing that Kaido wants to achieve. And if anything, Kaido was probably incredibly jealous of how Whitebeard was able to exit life. Considering he was the strongest man in the world and he's still found a way, something that Kaido has been unable to do. And thus, even though Kaido is the one still living, he is inferior to Whitebeard because he can't find that path forward, at least in Kaido's mind. Meanwhile, Kaido also cited that Roger did it right, which is quite unexpected actually. Throughout One Piece we've repeatedly heard people mocking Roger's death, particularly the idea that he was quote-unquote caught by the Marines and executed in the weakest part of the planet. Like he met his end in east blue, what a disgrace. But Kaido doesn't see it that way. He doesn't seem to care about the symbolism of the location, or the fact that one of the most powerful people in the world met their end via a very basic execution. What Kaido sees is the effect that Roger had in how he chose to pass, which is undoubtedly the most important death in One Piece. And that's also a key difference to remember. Roger was not captured, he turned himself in. This end was chosen by him, and Kaido holds immense respect for Roger's completion, I guess is what we're going to call it. And just a short spoiler section now because we have something else relevant to this topic to talk about. If you're an anime only watcher or just not caught up with Act 3 of Wano, then please do skip to this time to hear my thoughts on Kaido's future in Wano. But for everyone else, here we go. Someone else who we desperately need to add to this respect list is Kozuki Oden. In fact, before delivering the final blow, Kaido even states that the citizens of Wano would speak of Oden for years to come, saying that he died a spectacular death. And Oden goes on to state that he doesn't care if they forget his name, which is fine because that's Oden's ideal, but Kaido sees things differently. And then, rather than letting him live and ride around in the pot, Kaido shot Oden, which I always found interesting. Kaido does state that he is going to shoot Oden to put him out of his misery since his body is already effectively dead, but I think about the situation differently now. With this new perspective, I can now see a scenario whereby Kaido assisted Oden in completing the glorious death that he himself is seeking. Death completes a person, so Kaido completed Oden, rather than letting him slowly melt away in a more anticlimactic manner. So instead of a gradually deteriorating Oden, the last image that people have of this man is a samurai standing proud. I am Oden and I was born to boil. After that line, Kaido hits his cue with perfect theatrical timing and made sure that Oden would be the most memorable figure that Wano had ever seen, which on the one hand is very counterproductive because that memory is leading to the rebellion against him, but then again, this is Kaido's guiding philosophy. He can't just stand by and not have such a respectable figure achieve completion. And that brings us to Kaido's future. For quite some time I've suspected that he is destined to die in some form or another, and that is a bit of a controversial thought in one piece about any character really, because death isn't a thing that Oda likes to engage in all that often. In fact, rather infuriatingly, he more commonly writes and draws death scenes only to retcon them in a late date and reveal that character X has somehow survived, thus ruining the retrospective dramatic impact of their actions. And wouldn't Kaido just hate that? Imagine Kaido watch Pel sacrifice himself for an alabaster. I think Kaido would be quite proud. Pel had completed himself as a guardian of the nation. And then imagine the sheer disappointment Kaido would feel learning that Pel was still alive. What a waste of a character he'd think because Pel will never have a better opportunity for completion than that. But with a character whose guiding philosophy is intrinsically linked to death, I have a hard time seeing a situation where Kaido survives his major role in the story. With that said, we're still going to consider it so things can really go one of three ways with Kaido. Firstly, he achieves his ultimate goal and dies in some sort of spectacular manner at the climax of Wano, perhaps he gets brought down by the worst generation, slowly coming to respect them, maybe even seeing a hint of Roger and Luffy, at which point he welcomes his completion, which is both tragic and satisfying. Then again in option two, we have Kaido meet his death but not in said spectacular manner. He dies in some incredibly ironic way, like maybe drowning, and having his legacy being forgotten by the world, because he passed away quietly on an isolated nation, as opposed to say Whitebeard, who died loudly and proudly at the center of the planet, being broadcast to everyone in the world. And I think that would be so incredibly depressing to deny Kaido his goal, but then again, he is an antagonist and they can't usually have the thing that it is they want. And as for option three, that would be Kaido surviving, which I don't see as highly likely, because he would need to have his entire philosophy changed over the course of the Wano climax. He would need to do something like develop a different appreciation for life, one that doesn't focus on the completion of death, which isn't impossible, I suppose. I mean, Luffy was able to change Kartakuri's perfection philosophy during their battle, so there is precedent for it, but it's quite a tall task. And the reason why that needs to happen is because, well, what happens if Kaido's philosophy doesn't change? Well, he gets beaten and then he just continues to do that same thing that he's always done. He might retake Wano, he'll definitely continue to instigate a world war, and who's going to stop him? As it is, it's going to take an impossible combination of forces and fate, just to give us a singular opportunity to defeat Kaido right here and now. And if we don't, then he'll just keep showing up and we just don't have the time to deal with him going into the final saga. So that's why I think it needs to be one of two things. Either he dies and is removed from the story, or he changes his views and retires quietly into a corner somewhere, never to bother people ever again. And I suppose thinking about it, it's not as ridiculous as I might have thought to Morph Kaido's philosophy. That's kind of what Luffy does best, really. Crush the dreams and ambitions of his opponents rather than kill them. And then said opponents just sort of fall away from prominence, allowing Luffy to proceed with his own wild ambitions. I'd be pretty incredibly curious to see how it happens, I guess, to find a way to disenfranchise Kaido with the whole death idea. Once again, I think it's a tough ask though, and I'm still much more on board with the idea that Kaido will get what he wants during Wano, and that somehow everyone will be a winner. But I do feel much more invested in Kaido after exploring his thought, he isn't as flippant or as shallow to me anymore, and I very much look forward to learning even more about the strongest creature in the world. 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.