 Ace has a lot to answer for in One Piece. I mean, I'm not saying he's responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened in the series, but it's more like, you know, 94%. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review your source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and the weirdest piece of One Piece merch I own is probably this Dress Rosa Monopoly set. I don't even like Monopoly. I don't know why I have this. But we are here today to essentially examine how one individual character is almost single-handedly responsible for the events of pre-timeskip One Piece. As well as for how and why the world radically reshaped afterwards. And that man, surprisingly enough, is not Blackbeard. I mean, he certainly does get a lot of credit. In fact, at this point, he has more credit than he does teeth. However, there is no one more responsible for the way we see the world today than one podcaste Ace. Within his once fiery fist was the power to radically change the course of this story. And the reason why we are where we are is because Ace made what the Spanish liked called Tres Grandes Erores, which the rest of us like to call three big mistakes. Were it not for three horrendous lapses in judgment from Ace, I'm gonna go ahead and say that Whitebeard would still be alive or at least dead from natural causes. In addition to that, Ace himself would still be alive and the planet would not have fallen into complete chaos. You know, it's little things like that that could have been prevented at any stage during these three mistakes. And we are going to begin this exploration with a quick round of Ace, but in space. A very simple minigame, the rules of which are as follows. Fort Gastiae has somehow found himself in outer space. Fear not though, because someone is on their way to rescue him and it is going to be your job to guess who that is going to be. Now, should you guess incorrectly, 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. Meanwhile, if you are correct, then you too will be shot into space. So another high stakes game here. But who is on their way to rescue Ace? Is it Space God and El, First Lieutenant Spacey, or Marco the Space Phoenix? Please do select your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one. And bam, it was First Lieutenant Spacey and his wonderful moustache. So if you guessed incorrectly, then you know a thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. So Ace and his three mistakes. I want to immediately state that what we're about to go through is not a critique of one piece or how Ace was written as a character. Nothing will be detailing constitute something scandalous, like a plot hole or some kind of manga sin. Everything makes perfect sense in the context of Ace. He is a deliberately flawed character, like very, very flawed, which is a very, very good thing. Perfect characters tend to be quite boring. But the key to Ace's downfall is actually best summarized by of all people, Captain Blue Jam. In chapter 587, when Ace comes face to face with this disgrace, Blue Jam actually offers an intriguing mcnugget of wisdom being, only two types of people survive on the battlefield, the strong and the cowardly. The brave always die first. That's how it's always been. And sure, Blue Jam is a despicable villain thing with these weird, like, crenellating teeth. Actually, I've never understood if he, like, if he ripped out half of his teeth just to achieve that effect, but he isn't wrong. And I don't think that young Ace disagreed with this sentiment either. He did, however, heavily misjudge which of these roles he fell into. From Ace's perspective, he clearly viewed himself as the strong, which he was rewarded for on this, as well as many other occasions going on to defeat Blue Jam with the assistance of Dodan. And that was a hit of positive reinforcement that would go on to eventually doom Ace. Because the thing is, unless your name is Edward Nugget, Charlotte Linlin, or Kaido, uh, Kaido Dragonman, unless your name is one of those three, you are not always necessarily going to be the strongest in any given battle. And when you misjudge your role on someone else turns out to be the strong, then that makes you the brave, which is unfortunate because as we now know, they are the first to die. A prophecy that Ace would indeed go on to fulfill. However, before that, this transitions rather smoothly into Ace's first grand mistake, which is electing to pursue Blackbeard. After the murder of Thatch, Ace was understandably quite emotional and decided to take vengeance all on his own. In doing so, he ignored the advice and wishes of his fellow crewmates slash brothers and even ignored the orders of his father figure Whitebeard. This was a mistake for two reasons. One being that in this case, Ace heavily misjudged what his role on this future battlefield would be. When he set out to deal with Blackbeard, Ace no doubt saw himself as the strong. Ace significantly underestimated Blackbeard's true capabilities and had next to no information regarding his devil fruit or even his newfound crew. Ace essentially chose to run head first into a big old question mark, confident in his allegedly supreme power. I don't know if I'd go so far as to use the word arrogant, but it was certainly youthful ignorance. Youthful ignorance. That's like the most old man thing I've ever said. The second part of this mistake is that Ace's actions were completely unnecessary because remember he embarked on this quest for almost entirely selfish reasons. He wanted to take vengeance for thatch and even worse, Ace wanted to do this for Whitebeard's honor. His exact line is, I won't let anyone dishonor your name. I am gonna set things right. Which is selfish because Whitebeard himself had no concern for honor. He just wanted to keep the rest of his son safe. So Ace very much ignored the wishes of all of those around him in favor of a personal mission. And motivation is important because a lot of people will make the argument that, hey, Ace went after Blackbeard, stop him doing future evil thingos, which, well, it's just not the case. Ace did this for vengeance and honor. And in doing so, he unwillingly assisted and even accelerated Blackbeard's plans, all of which happened completely unnecessarily. But that's very much who Ace is, a 20-year-old emotion-filled and logear-fuelled powerhouse of the Grand Lion. And it's just very unfortunate that he ended up being the center of this particular storm. That's not it though because Ace does have another fatal flaw as revealed in his flashback. Not only does he perpetually consider himself to be the strong in any given situation, but he also developed a powerful philosophy of never running away. In fact, this was first revealed to us in chapter 587, which is even titled, I Will Never Run Away. However, these two attributes are generally a terrible combination which will further lead to Ace's classification as the brave. Ace II, and I would argue most costly mistake, was not running away during his fight with Blackbeard. There was a point during their clash on Benara Island where it became clear that he would not emerge victorious and staring defeat right in its misshapen martial-de-teach-shaped face, Ace simply said, if I bow down to power, what's the point in living? I'll never live my life with regrets, which is an incredibly strong statement. And I would give him a lot of credit for that, were it not for the fact that he immediately came to regret his actions. Because the reason why this is Ace's most costly mistake is because it sparked the entire paramount war, which we should remember is something that would not have happened without Ace's intervention. Originally, Blackbeard's plan was to become a warlord of the sea by capturing Luffy, which, if successful, would not have prompted the world government to stage such a theatrical execution, and even more, it would not have prompted Whitebeard to invade Marineford. It's only because Ace was defeated here that any of that happened. And to anyone who may want to say that Ace could not have predicted Blackbeard's plans to become a warlord, I mean, no, maybe not as precisely as it happened, but Blackbeard did tell Ace almost exactly what he was planning to do with Luffy, so a more level-headed person likely would have understood the stakes slightly better. But the biggest of problems here is less that Ace underestimated his own strength, but more that he underestimated how much other characters loved him. In his mind, I have no doubt that he saw himself being killed on Banaro Island and then leaving everyone else to live their lives, doing their own thing, whatever it is they do. Whitebeard drinks, Luffy punches things, and Marco has birdie snacks. But instead of any of that, Ace was captured, and everyone who had ever known him showed up at Marineford to risk their lives just for him. It was the complete inverse of everything Ace believed, which you see a bit of during his final moments where he thanks everyone for loving him, because that just wasn't a thought that had occurred to him prior to that moment. He was biologically the evil son of Goldie Roger after all, the sworn enemy of all who exist in the world. But this is where his deep regrets start to seep in. Not seep in actually, it's more like a bursting dam of regret that showers Ace in regretful liquid. There's this beautiful scene in chapter 552 where Ace can't understand why Whitebeard just hasn't given up and left Ace to the fate that he crafted for himself, to which Whitebeard stunningly responds with, no, I sent you on that mission, my son, which is so gut-wrenching and just very classically one piece. This series has a well-defined motif of parental figures willingly and even lovingly paying for the mistakes of their children. Another example that comes to mind is Tom and Frankie, but even Shanks and Luffy is a solid thought. Luffy confronted Higginman the Bear because he dishonored Shanks, or actually from Luffy's perspective, Shanks dishonored himself. Either way, he went after the bandits, Luffy was taken captive and Shanks had to sacrifice an arm to keep Luffy alive. He paid for the mistakes of the child and he did so willingly and lovingly. It's actually not too dissimilar from Ace's situation with Whitebeard actually, except that Luffy and Shanks did have a much happier ending. Marine for Ace is a very interesting character though because it's probably the biggest moment of growth for him. It's the first time that Ace had really had to deal with the consequences of his actions, which were now quite literally threatening to destroy the balance of the planet. And because he recognized his choices so far, I led to this. Ace went on to adopt a completely neutral perspective for most of the war saying, I don't care what the future holds for me, I accept it. I reach out to the hand that offers me help and I accept the blade that would execute me. I won't fight anymore. I'm sorry, everyone. And look, this lesson, it came a bit late and in the most dramatic of circumstances as he watched both his father and all of his brothers risking their lives to save him, but better late than never, eh? Except, you know, it's even worse than late, learning your lesson late and then like unlearning it during the most crucial moment of your life. Because after having accomplished the impossible and finally becoming a free man once more, Ace repeated mistake number two, which makes this mistake number three, only this time against a much more deadly opponent. Ace's third and final mistake is that he did not run away when being confronted by Marine Admiral Arcaino. And I'd like to point out that at this stage, Whitebeard's death was set in stone. Nothing was preventing that. Mistake number two had ensured it, but as such, Whitebeard issued a final command. These are my final orders as your captain. Listen carefully, Whitebeard Pirates. It's time for us to part ways. You must all survive and return to the new world, which is like an honorable way of telling everyone to run away. Something which Ace has a well-established version to and all it took to tap into that were some playground insults from one Arcaino. The Whitebeard Pirates are a pack of cowards, but considering who your leader is, that's no surprise. Whitebeard is a loser from a bygone era. I mean, a playground kid probably doesn't use the word bygone, but the rest of the insult is something you would expect to hear from a five-year-old. But this was actually a piece of strategic brilliance on the part of Arcaino, knowing exactly how to trigger Ace, who immediately turned around and said, hey, you take that back. Which, no, is not the strongest of comebacks, but by this point, we all know that Ace is not the strong, he is the brave. And he would be the brave all the way to the grave. The key factor here being that when Ace stopped running to send back his childish comeback, Luffy also stopped running. And during Ace's spat with Arcaino, Luffy reached his physical limits and became defenseless in the worst possible spot on the entire battlefield. And look, I'll admit, it's hard to tell exactly how things would have worked out if Ace had kept running because Luffy, assumedly, would have collapsed at some stage anyway. But what I will say is that Ace stopping to pick a fight with the strong was the worst possible course of action in this situation because it further endangered his brother, it directly disobeyed Whitebeard's final order and it actively negated everything that the Whitebeard parents had sacrificed just to ensure Ace's safety. Ace was once again ignoring the wishes of everyone around him in favor of his own personal mission. And I just find it very interesting that after having the epiphany about how his irrational actions had sparked a global war on the execution platform, Ace fell back on his fatal character flaw right at the last second, which once again is not a critique of One Piece or Ace. I think it's quite morbidly beautiful that Ace was simply doomed by who he was. And in the end, he took responsibility for that by sacrificing himself for Luffy. It's a very almost Shakespearean tragedy. But with that said, if Ace had not made three arguably simple and unnecessary mistakes, we would be looking at a very different series. Pursuing Blackbeard was a pursuit of hubris, not even attempting to retreat from Benara Island was shockingly poor judgment and confronting Akayunu in the worst possible moment during Marineford confirms that Ace didn't actually learn from his first two mistakes. And there's only so many you can make in this world before the consequences become rather deadly. Even more so than Blackbeard, Ace is responsible for the series as we see it to this very day, which is what I love about the character because Ace shows how small flaws and decisions can result in these gigantic world-shaking ripples, which is also something that we consistently see and love from Luffy. And speaking of Luffy, he isn't all that different from Ace, if at all. Luffy is also someone who I would consider to fit the role of the brave, rather than being the strong or the coward. The difference being that Luffy has fate on his side. Without all of the inherited Welsh Nanagan remake, no mistake, Luffy likely would have ended up dead or permanently imprisoned long, long ago. His mistakes are supported and even encouraged by fate, whereas Ace was subject to a, well, a more human existence. And unfortunately, there are only so many mistakes that us average people can make. And it would be a great mistake if you want to check out more videos on this channel such as this one examining the real-life figures who inspired one-piece characters. Lots of fun to be had, so I look forward to seeing you there.