 I would like a world where every instance of a bandana is replaced with a banana. The word sounds similar enough to me anyway, and then every time Zoro gets into a serious fight he would have to peel a banana and wear it to terrify his enemies. Which would at the very least work on Kaku, due to his crippling banana phobia. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review or source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and I actually own two, count him two of Zoro's swords although sadly they're the ones he doesn't use anymore so you know what good are they? What they're not, they're not any good at all, get out of my sight. But today we are here to talk about swords that Zoro does use and more specifically what he may or may not be using them for. Because I recently made a video detailing the hilarious history of the One Piece Croco Mom Theory, however within that video I made reference to a prominent thought of the modern day. Being the concept of Zoro kills Kaido, which gets abbreviated as ZKK for short. Yes it is Z, not Z. Even Canada agrees with Z and Canada usually doesn't agree with British English on anything else so that's how you know this is pretty serious business. Now if you're a person, a person who doesn't spend a lot of time online you may hear the phrase Zoro kills Kaido and look at it like some sort of perplexed Border Collie. Because you know all of these words and yes some of them even excite you. However together they form a confusing mush and you're just not really sure what's going on anymore but you hope it's kind of tasty. Never fear dearest Grand Fleet members because that's why my mouth exists. To explain things. To explain things to you. And we'll get right on that after a quick round of crazed Kaido, a very simple minigame the rules of which are as follows. Kaido has been sent in for a psychiatric evaluation from the Beast Pirate's HR department and it is going to be your job to guess whether he is deemed an ordinary dragon dictator or a crazy koi fish. Should you guessing correctly then your doctor's orders will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review resulting in consistent injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. And if you are correct then you will be awarded with an honorary doctorate of dragon psychology. But what will it be? Ordinary dragon boy or crazy koi fish. Make your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in 3, 2, 1 and bam it's a koi fish. Oh no. So if you guessed incorrectly then you know the thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. But onwards with like the actual topic thing. Now if you type Zoro kills Kaido into YouTube you will be bombarded with all sorts of thumbnails that all kind of look the same because there's no shortage of them as this is a super-risingly popular thought. And the one that really does take my eye is this one from a YouTuber called Fiji like the island. And I mean usually I would scan right past something like this however you see this video happens to be a One Piece mega theory which is like a whole new genre of video and I'm now seriously considering adding the word mega to all of my future titles. I love it. And honestly Fiji does a pretty decent job of laying out the thought process behind Zoro kills Kaido and if you want to check it out I'll throw a link in the old description. And it is compelling but what you need to remember with One Piece theories in general is that more often than not it's not so much about people delving down this rabbit hole crafted by Oda and just waiting to be discovered. Because a lot of the time it's more about people digging their own holes and then claiming that the hole that they've dug is infrastructure that was planned by Oda all along. And Zoro killing Kaido is the latest of these idea things which if you look at in isolation makes an awful lot of sense. So TLDR a major theme of Kaido's character is death. His introduction was a failed attempt to kill himself and he believes profoundly in achieving a glorious end in this world. This leads to the reasonable thought that Kaido's character arc will end in death. Meanwhile happening in tandem with this Zoro has things. Firstly he has a confirmed connection to Wano through the Shimotsuki village and he has also inherited Enma and along with that potentially the will of Kozuki Oden as a result. So what happens when these two threads meet? Well that means that Kaido is destined to die and Zoro is destined to be relevant. So clearly that means Zoro is going to kill Kaido because that would be a neat way to kill two birds with one stone or Bediette one dragon with three swords. There's a lot more to it than that though which we will get to but this is the very basic gist of things and it already shows the power of digging your own hole which naturally results in a bit of tunnel vision. The mathematical equation goes as follows. These two things may be possible. Therefore they will combine and result in this particular outcome. Potentially ignoring that maybe other things are also possible. Like as much as I am on board with the idea maybe Kaido doesn't die. Because that's what he wants and since when do we give the villain what they want? Never. If anything as punishment we should make him live a long satisfying and happy life. Yeah that'll teach him. Or if Kaido does get killed why is it at the hands of Zoro as opposed to the litany of other characters who have a claim to that right or if Kaido does die once again. Could it be finally successfully via committing suicide that would bring his arc full circle as well? Or will Kaido's fight with Luffy change his entire philosophy like he did with Kartakuri or crush his ambition for spectacular death and world war? Just as Luffy has crushed the ambition of every pleb defeated thus far. The further we dive into any particular thought the more peripheral vision we lose. Which to be fair that is the entire fun of theories. To see how far certain ideas can be pushed and in the case of Zoro kills Kaido there is a very major thought that I have not stated until now. The prime evidence rests in a very intriguing P word known as parallels. Now parallels are also very dangerous and we will get to that but the big one here is Zoro's parallels to the legendary samurai Rima. First up you may or may not know this but Rima and Zoro look pretty much exactly alike. In one piece no it's not quite noticeable because Rima he sort of forgot to put his skin on that day but when you look back on the monsters one shot Rima is basically blackhead Zoro and he has further parallels that fans can highlight including the following. Both were accused as murderers and blamed for crimes they did not commit. Both met a girl traumatized by a dragon Rima goes on to slay that dragon. Both are capable of producing a seemingly demonic aura and both of them have the ambition to become the world's best sword guy. And stuff like that is pretty compelling to hear because yeah it seems like Ota is very purposely replicating Rima's path just for Zoro. Until we realize the parallels are pretty dangerous and they can be used to prove just about any argument in a series as long running as one piece. And to demonstrate this instead of Zoro let's use Luffy. Luffy and Rima both meet a girl traumatized by a dragon. This girl feeds Luffy and Rima and they feel the great sense of debt as a result of the meal. Furthermore both characters actively encourage food as payment for any good deeds committed. Both have the ambition to sit atop the world in their respective areas. Rima's epithet is the king whilst Luffy is striving to become a king. Rima and Luffy are both incredibly goofy and often straight up moronic and as a bit of a bonus they both share this key character trait of often picking their noses in public. So weirdly enough I could probably make the argument that Rima shares more parallels with Luffy than he does with Zoro. And as a result surely that means Luffy is being set up as the dragon slayer as opposed to Zoro. And I'm not saying I believe that it's just that patterns and parallels all they kind of suck. And anyone with even mildly decent media or analysis skills can use them to make a convincing argument about anything really. And this often occurs in what I would refer to as reverse engineered theories where a theorist starts out a conclusion and then very selectively sources and presents evidence to support that particular conclusion. And they do sound pretty great and amazing when you just tunnel in and state only what supports the idea. But once again by doing so you omit that important peripheral vision. So for example if I really wanted to hard sell you on how ridiculous the Zoro kills Kaido idea is then I would not state this next piece of information. I would omit it from the video entirely and just pretend it doesn't exist because it honestly does not support my argument. However it does exist and so it must be said. And it is an article from Volume 5 of the illustrious One Piece Magazine. This article is all about dragons really. You got your vagapunk dragon, celestial dragons, daddy dragons, all the dragons and as such this article does touch on Rima as well. Because fun fact the events of monsters are canon in the One Piece world, which I love. But now let's read some fun words. The opponent that Zoro defeated in Thriller Bark, Rima, is said by legend to have cut down a western dragon with his sword. A sword that is now in Zoro's hands. In Punk Hazard, Zoro already killed a western dragon as well. And now you see that's a very fun parallel. Zoro's actions on Punk Hazard were a nice subtle nod to monsters. However these words go on to become even more profounder. Now Zoro and the straw hats are in Rima's homeland, Wano, to take down the Yonko Kaido. Now that Zoro has obtained Shusui from Rima after their duel, the possibility might arise that a new legend of slaying an eastern dragon might be born. Which is an awful lot of words basically meaning maybe in a single sentence. But it's still pretty wow. And to be honest at face value this would appear to be almost a spoiler for the future of One Piece given that it was printed in an official magazine and all until you remember that it was not written by Ichiro Oda. One Piece magazine is, look, it's fun. It's really fun. I quite like it. There's lots of funky details get released in it like people's ages or food preferences or even early One Piece sketches. But we do have to be real. Here it is a bit of a cash grab by using the One Piece name to just sell more things. Things that admittedly we buy because we like things. But as such the articles written here should be taken with an extraordinarily healthy maybe even an unhealthy dose of skepticism. You know, except for this one. This one's pretty cool. It's sort of like a little maze where you need to guide Luffy to Nico Robin without encountering any CP9 members. I love it. And just look how happy Robin is at the end here. It's very delightful. However, when it comes to, you know, actual information, I would not trust this because it is basically an officially sanctioned fan theory. Because the most hilarious thing is that what this article is is just someone pointing out parallels and then stating some fun ideas that you may not have specifically thought about. This article is basically a Reddit thread printed on glossy paper. The writer even specifically mentions this possibility because they're a wheelchair swee which he no longer has. Although I still have it. So look, there are even parallels between Rium and myself. So maybe if we're going down that road, perhaps I will be the one to slay the Kido. Although probably not because he's fictional and I hope I'm not. So instead of relying on this sort of shaky, shady information, how about we ask someone with a bit more credibility like say, oh, I don't know, the Microsoft Store Twitter account. Because that did happen. Twitter, Denizen Geo decided to shake the magic eight ball and cut straight to the chase by asking Microsoft whether it thinks Zorro will kill Kido. To which Microsoft responded with, we hope not, and then further elaborated with, we still want Zorro to win, but nobody dies in One Piece except in Flashbacks or if you're the son of the pirate king. Hmm, Microsoft still getting in a pretty brutal hit on Ace there, but that aside, Microsoft does have a very, very good point. I guess the biggest issue I have with the whole idea of Zorro killing Kido is that it goes against so many core principles of One Piece. Firstly being that death is extraordinarily rare, even in the case of primary antagonists. In fact, even if we're not including flashbacks, more primary protagonists have died in this series than antagonists. And sure, Kido could be the exception to that given themes and things, but our overwhelming historical data on this matter, it's not great. Secondly, Zorro killing Kido seems very out of place for his role in the series as the second in command of the straw-hattered pirates. In fact, even Luffy killing Kido seems, it seems really off to me. Luffy just doesn't do that sort of thing to anyone. So we'd need a situation where Luffy defeats Kido and then he's finished off by Zorro, in which case he's not really fulfilling the realm of parallel of slaying a dragon and saving a country. At that point, it would be more like Zorro putting down a wounded animal. And in the end, there may be an even more fundamental flaw to the theory in the whole killing idea, because maybe there is a universe where Zorro delivers the final finishing blow, and maybe that happens in full view of the one who citizens, thus leading to a similar legend developing, but without Kido necessarily doing the death. Admittedly, that would be a lot less catchy because that would change the Zorro kills Kido abbreviation to something like, Zorro defeats Kido in full view of one who citizens, thus resulting in legend, or ZDKFEWCTRL for short. Now, with all of that said, I'm not saying it's an impossible thought because this is one piece and technically everything is possible. Maybe it just goes against the grain in such a radical way, and there really is no evidence that makes me sit up and pay attention because it mostly relies on parallels, which as we've explored, are generally just a little less than great. But who cares what I think? I'm some lunatic on the internet. What do you guys think? Will Zorro be killing Kido? Let me know somewhere convenient like some sort of section dedicated to use the comments, and then allow me to take you on another adventure examining the idea of the lurking legend in one piece. A pretty perpetually hot topic, so I look forward to seeing you there.