 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything on peace, and today we have a review of chapter 952, Hiyori, and Kawamatsu. And this week we have a bit of what I would call a tricky chapter, because it was one of those weeks where quite a bit of the story actually progressed, but overall it felt like it lacked any sort of centerpiece moment to really make it stand out amongst the varsity of 1-0 chapters we have thus far. I actually think that it's quite telling that I sat down to start writing this review and I wasn't even sure where to begin because nothing really stood out to grab my attention, which isn't to say that this chapter was bad, definitely not, but I do think that overall it was a bit of an average experience. Which for one piece is still great, but a lot of this might be due to how we left the last chapter on that incredible moment of Kaido and Big Mom beginning to face off. And I can't lie, it's a bit disappointing for me personally that we've skipped an entire night of combat on Onigashima, and this is odd for me because I'm usually a huge defender of Oda off-paneling fights. Like when the whole Sanji vs. Page 1 thing happened I really could not care less, and I am generally in favor of continuing the story and letting the anime handle that kind of crap, but this is a very different scenario. And that's because it is just so difficult to ignore that two of the four emperors are fighting as we speak, and a huge ask from Oda for us to give any sort of deserved attention to characters like the like the regional Yakuza bosses or Kinomon, Raizo and Yuki Maru. My mind just is not there right now and it really doesn't want to be, especially when during this chapter just to rub some salt in the wounds a little bit, we do see a brief flash of the fight happening on Onigashima, although we don't actually see anything just their faces. I don't know, I just feel like if Oda wanted to take this direction of not showing the fight for very understandable reasons, then he should have gone all out with that choice and not shown anything at all, so that the other characters in this chapter can have a decent go at telling their story, because there is some very interesting stuff this week, especially in regards to Shusui. I'm really intrigued by the thought of its left coinciding with a series of events that saw the takeover of Wano, and it makes me wonder how Gekko Moria fits into that, because he does have a strong and tragic history with Kaido. It puts questions in my mind, like did Moria's defeat occur just before Kaido's takeover of Wano, and was thieving Rima's corpse an act of anger and desperation to begin building his zombie army. And I really do hope that Moria makes even a brief appearance in some sort of Wano flashback, and I believe he will given the sheer ridiculous amount of importance based on Shusui, but it would be really cool because young Moria is a character that I would be super keen to explore. But getting back into stuff that's actually, you know, in the chapter, the titular moment does occur with a reunion of Hiyori and Kamamatsu, and it was relatively touching. I mean about as touching as a reunion of two characters who we aren't really all that familiar with could be, anyway. I really liked Kamamatsu's line about Hiyori being kind-hearted and him putting on quite a lot of weight. It was a nice shift in tone from the tears in the action involving Yukimaru, and speaking of, apart from the whole Kaido vs Big Mom thing, I would say that the ending of this chapter with Yukimaru is one of the bigger contributors to how not so memorable this chapter will be. It's just not a strong ending at all, which is very rare for one piece actually. Even the more mundane chapters in the series will generally end on a high, whether it's some sort of story or character reveal, or characters preparing for action or whatever. In this case, the intention was clearly for this chapter to end on that aforementioned reveal style scenario, in this case being Yukimaru's relationship to Kamamatsu. But there is an issue in that it carries no weight, at least not for me. Because once again, the two characters involved in this dramatic ending aren't particularly well known to us. I mean, I love everything I've seen of Kamamatsu so far, but I wouldn't call myself invested in his particular story. And as for Yukimaru, right now, as far as I'm concerned, he's just a big ol' obstacle, giving Zoro something to do. So for the chapter to end with a moment between them just didn't hit me in the way I think it was expected to. With that said, I am quite excited about the idea of Zoro potentially teaming up with Kamamatsu for a bit. Oh, and this week, Zoro said the thing that we've all been thinking, and posed the idea of Kamamatsu being a fisherman, which I think is a reasonable assumption and really ties the world of one piece together nicely with Japanese mythology. Still, at this point, there is every chance that it could be something else. Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to seeing how Kamamatsu interacts with Zoro concerning Shusui, given that he is Yukimaru's master. Because even after his experience with Luffy, I doubt that he'll simply just hand it over to Zoro. Although maybe he'll give Zoro the right to duel him for it or something along those lines, or perhaps Kamamatsu will recognize the Sandakitezu and put Zoro on the path of wielding the Nidakitezu along with it, wherever that ended up. Meanwhile, something else I really enjoyed in this chapter is the explanation for how we're going to get away with conquering Udon without Queen coming back. And it was a surprisingly simple ordeal, with Tama using her ridiculously Zoengrippling powers to turn Babanuki into her subordinate. This girl is an absolute MVP of Wano so far, and this is really starting to make me wonder exactly how far her powers can go. Like I highly doubt that it would work on Kaido or the Calamities, but we're hitting some pretty damn strong members of the beast pirates here, so surely someone has come up with the thought of just turning them all one by one and crafting an army that way. There are also a lot of nice check-in moments this week, like we got to see Karabo, some Kinamon stuff, and it was really solid. A sort of, this is what's happening right now, chapter. Sadly, overall, I just don't think it's a chance of living up to the previous chapter, and combined with the lesson-steller ending, it feels a bit meh. But it actually provides some intriguing ideas and continues to lay the extensive groundwork for the eventual gigantic conflict that is Wano. So still highly enjoyable, but I am really looking forward to hopefully getting just a little bit more next week. But that pretty much does it for chapter 952. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general, then please do consider donating to the Grand Line Review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, but apply to other anime and manga series, then please do check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. 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