 Boa Hancock is a seemingly quirky and emotionally complex character who does look down on people out of a sense of sheer entitlement, or at least that is what you would think. Because in reality, she is looking down on them for not subscribing to the Grand Line Review and thus not receiving regular One Piece content uploaded straight into their YouTube feed. What simps? Hello and welcome to One Piece 101, the series that breaks down everyone and everything in the One Piece world. And today, we are going to be taking a look at the infamous pirate empress and leader of the Kuja clan, Boa Hancock. Boa Hancock is a tall and regal presence whose ascetic qualities precede her, as she is often referred to as the most beautiful woman in the world, even by those who have never seen her, which is interesting, so she has that bit of Cleopatra flair going on here. But in regards to her personality, Hancock is well aware of this and will not hesitate to use said beauty as a weapon or asset in any given situation. However, the much greater effect that this worldly recognition has brought on Hancock is a sense of arrogance, to put it quite lightly, and a sense of extreme pompous selfishness that comes close to rivaling the world nobles at worst. And the comparison here is that Hancock truly believes that she can get away with anything and everything, and the world will simply forgive her because of how smitten everyone and everything seems to be with her. Which is important to point out, I guess, Hancock's presence does not discriminate through any factor. And if you are a human being, in fact, you probably don't even need to be human. If you are a living creature of any persuasion or denomination, chances are you are going to be charmed by Boa Hancock, if not straight up just full in love with her on the spot. I say chances are though, because it wouldn't be until a certain Monkey D. Luffy came along that Boa Hancock's view on this matter would change. But we'll get to that in a bit, because as spoiled as I've made her sound, Hancock actually spawns from pretty rough beginnings in life. She and her sisters, Boa Marigold and Sandersonia, became pirates at the age of 12, or possibly even earlier, and that's not even the rough part, it was actually considered quite an honor to be sailing with the Kujapirates and all female crew. However, on one fateful voyage, the Kujapirates encountered a band of slavers who managed to overwhelm the crew and capture Hancock as well as her two sisters. They then proceeded to sell them as slaves to the world nobles. And what happened next are horrors so unimaginable that I doubt Oda will ever speak of them, much less put them to page. But despite me comparing Hancock's future attitude to that of the world nobles, we must remember that this is the most despicable group of beings ever featured in One Piece and quite possibly literature in general, who have no regard for any form of life other than for their fellow nobles. And even then, it's debatable. And so Hancock was tortured and humiliated for approximately four years, and to be perfectly honest, it is kind of astonishing that she and her sisters remained alive after four years, because the world nobles have very high turnaround in regards to their slaves. So the Boa sisters must have held some minor value to them. And during this time, each of the sisters were also force fed a devil fruit for the purposes of entertaining the nobles, which in Hancock's case ended up being the Merimerunomee, an ability that would go on to work extraordinarily well with her natural gifts. Because essentially the Merimerunomee is a Paramecia-type fruit that gives its user access to a variety of attacks and manipulative abilities, which work in direct correlation to feelings of lust towards its user. And so given that Hancock would go on to become such a revered global presence, it makes her devil fruit one of the more powerful within the series, but only under her specific control. And one of the most simple actions of this we see is the Merimerubeme, which has Hancock form a heart with her hands, fire a beam, and then anybody who gets hit by it, who you know feels any kind of sense of lust towards Hancock, is instantly turned into stone. A pretty incredibly overpowered ability that very, very few people are safe from in this world. And in fact, Hancock has been shown capable of even bringing vice admirals to their knees, which we saw with Memonga who avoided the attack by stabbing himself in the hand, and thus taking his mind away from his mini-Memonga. Even then though, to show that this is the length that even a vice admiral needs to go to in order to simply avoid being turned into stone, goes to show how much of a force Hancock can be. And the Merimerubeme also granted Hancock a range of other abilities, but play with firing tangible things like kisses and a variety of differing methods of turning parts of people into stone. And exactly how the world nobles use this to entertain themselves is unknown, but we won't have to think about it for much longer, because after four long and painful years of enslavement, Hancock and her sisters would eventually be freed by the actions of Fisher Tiger, a fisherman and former slave who climbed the red line and launched an attack on the Holy Land of Marijua, freeing as many fellow slaves as he could in the process, allowing Hancock, Sandersonia and Marigold to flee and eventually find sanctuary with Eldonion. And then with some added help from Silver's Rayleigh and Shacky, they were brought back to the island of Amazon Lily at last. However, there was a slight problem here in that there was no way the sisters could tell the rest of the tribe that they had been slaves. So Hancock made the decision to hide their markings, as well as tell the Cougar inhabitants that the devil fruit powers they received came as a result of slaying a Gorgon. And so the three of them from then on would be referred to as the Gorgon sisters. From here Hancock would go on to become not only the captain of the Cougar pirates, but also the empress of the entire tribe by the mere age of 18, although the years had developed her into a deeply misanthropic person as a result of her experiences as a slave. So for example, Hancock found herself completely unable to trust men in general, but she even showed a sense of disdain and apathy for the members of her own tribe. However, deep, deep, and I mean deep down she did still care for her people, and after her potential was recognized by the world government, Hancock also took up a position as one of the seven warlords of the sea in order to secure protection for the people of Amazon Lily. And so Hancock would achieve a state of normality or I suppose what passes for normality for quite some time, until everything would be turned upside down by a man on her island, Gasp, that man being the aforementioned Monkey D. Luffy, who had been sent to Amazon Lily against his will by the powers of Bartholomew Kuma. And as part of a series of comical shounen interactions, Luffy ended up walking in on Hancock in the bath, as well as noticing the mark of slavery on her back, not that Luffy realized what it was though. However, this infuriated Hancock to no end, who ordered that Luffy be captured and taken into their combat arena, where assumedly she was looking forward to the pleasure of watching him die, ideally brutally. Now, given that this is one piece that clearly did not happen and in fact in a bizarre turn of events, Luffy even used his own body as a covering to prevent the crowd from seeing Sandersonia's slave mark, which Luffy had realized that the sisters would rather die than reveal. And in addition to some other selfless actions committed by Luffy, Hancock was left in an unusual position, having encountered a man unlike any she had ever met before and went on to reveal her true persona, which was a deeply pained human being. And as part of this onslaught of emotion brought forth by the destruction of the dam of her facade, which is probably one of my favorite metaphors I've ever written, Hancock came down with a case of literal love sickness and she fell head over heels for Luffy. Now, whether because he, as stated before, was unlike any other man she had ever met, Luffy did not and is highly unlikely to ever return those feelings. But of course, that did not stop Hancock's admiration of him and upon learning that his brother, pork Astiasse, was scheduled to be executed, Hancock volunteered to use her status as a warlord of the sea to allow Luffy to sneak into Impel down in order to rescue him. But as a consequence of sneaking Luffy into the facility, Hancock now had to respond to a summoning by the world government to assemble at Marineford in order to fight the white beard pirates in an event that would become known as the Paramount War. And during this conflict, Hancock's utter domination was clearly demonstrated on the battlefield capable of dispatching mass quantities of pirates and Marines alike, you know, whatever she felt like at the time. And her most volatile nature would be shown when Luffy arrived on the battlefield after being unsuccessful in Impel down, after which point Hancock swiftly switched allegiances purely to that of Luffy. And in doing so, she even engaged in combat with Smoker as well as went on to destroy a series of world government-controlled cyborg weapons known as the Pasifista. And when asked why Hancock, a warlord of the sea, was doing such a thing, her only response was that love always comes in like a hurricane. Which, you know, is very cryptic and confusing to anybody who wasn't Hancock herself. But even with a warlord, in fact, several warlords on his side, to say that this event went well for Luffy would be an outright lie, as his brother Ace was killed on the battlefield and Luffy himself incurred severe injuries. And as such, he was brought back to Amazon Lily by Trafalgar Law, with Hancock lamenting that there was not more she could do for herself profess love. And during this time, Hancock actually went through her own form of grief, as during the two weeks it took for Luffy to recover, she allegedly barely ate anything and spent most of her time thinking about what to do for Luffy when he had recovered. Which did manifest itself in organizing and overseeing a grand feast for him, because if Hancock had learned anything by now, it was that food was the key to Luffy. Now interestingly enough, an old acquaintance would then show up on the island in the form of Silver's Ray Lee, who had helped Hancock return to Amazon Lily after escaping Marijua. And while Hancock certainly did not show him anywhere near Luffy levels of respect, there was clear affection and gratitude towards yet another man in this world, which made Hancock, let's say, tolerant of his presence, as well as his plan to train Luffy on the nearby island of Rusukaina for the next two years. Although after being told that Luffy would need to spend two years without seeing her, well that was not something that Hancock was initially pleased with. But after realizing that all of this was for his sake, she facilitated this training, and after waiting those two long years, Hancock arrived on the island to escort Luffy back to Sabady Archipelago in order to reunite with his crew. In doing so, Hancock, of course, provided him with an exceptional amount of food as well as a surprisingly successful disguise so as to avoid not being recognized. And when parting ways this time around, Hancock wistfully asked Luffy not to say goodbye, to which he replied that he never does and that he hopes to see her again. Which after some mental gymnastics, Hancock took as a marriage proposal. Although by this time she had mistaken a lot of Luffy's words for a proposal, so yeah, this was nothing new. However after this event, we have sadly not seen a whole lot from Bola Hancock. She mostly appears on cover stories reacting to Luffy's new bounty developments and such. However I do need to put up a very brief spoiler warning for events in between Acts 2 and 3 of Wano. If you have not read up to or watched up to and be on this point, then please do skip to this time, I promise I won't be long, but this spoiler is not insignificant. So I look forward to seeing you on the other side, but for everyone else, here we go. During the events of the Reverie, assumedly as a result of the combined efforts of Marine Admiral Fuji Tora, as well as a coalition of kings including Cobra of Alabaster and Riku of Jephosa, both of whom had been impacted by the warlord system in the past, it was officially announced that the bulk government would be dissolving the warlord program. Thus immediately revoking Hancock's status and dispatching a large force of Marines to capture her as a now-wanted fugitive. After hearing the news though, Hancock rather smugly mused that the entire reason why she had been offered the position in the first place is because of how strong she was and assumedly made preparations to engage in combat with the Marines. Some more fun facts about Bola Hancock. I didn't get the time to mention this in the main section, but very importantly, Bola Hancock is one of the extremely rare characters in the series who has access to all three brands of Haki. Being observation, armament, and the all important conqueror Haki, making her that much more of a formidable opponent. Ever since her introduction, Hancock has skyrocketed to becoming one of the most popular characters in the series, or at least with the Japanese audience, as she ranked in 10th place for both the 5th and 6th officially conducted popularity polls, which is rock solid consistency worthy of a Gorgon sister. Interestingly enough, a prototype outfit for Hancock's design can be seen all the way back in chapter 97, where Nami has a brief montage of clothing changes, which is pretty crazy because Hancock herself would not make her first appearance in the series until almost nine years of real-time later in chapter 516. And finally, a truly useless fact. According to Etchira Oda, the most difficult human character to draw in the series is Bola Hancock. Primarily because he always has to keep in mind that he has labelled her as the most beautiful woman in the world, and as such, he needs to make sure that that remains true in each and every single panel that she features in. And that pretty much does it for Bola Hancock. 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.