- [Narrator] Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review,
your source for everything One Piece
and today I'd like to get into a bit of a tricky topic
which is ryuo, our latest exploration
of the very, very slowly expanding world of haki.
Oh, well, sort of.
Look, it's complicated and there are some misconceptions
attached to ryuo that I'd like to go over
in addition to explaining what we know
of how it works and the surprising amount of times
we've seen used in the series.
Particularly pre-timeskip.
There was a lot of advanced armament haki
used pre-timeskip, fairly weird enough.
Before we do that though, I'm going to need you
to channel your willpower into a tangible
pressing of the subscribe for the Grand Line Review,
which will not only teach you ryuo
but would also grant you regular One Piece content
uploaded straight into your YouTube feed.
Which of the two is more beneficial?
I don't know but you also don't have to choose.
Press the red button,
take both and welcome to the Grand Fleet.
Now to begin this whole ryuo discussion,
I have to start with what is rapidly
becoming one of the biggest current misconceptions
in One Piece which is that ryuo
is not what you think it is.
And I do have to apologize
because I'm quite guilty of falling
into this bad naming habit
but as we currently know it,
ryuo is basically just another way of saying
the broad term armament haki.
And we learnt this from Hyogoro
during the whole sumo inferno thing
where he figured out what Luffy
was attempting to do and he stated,
"What you call haki is known as ryuo here in Wano.
And it means flowing cherry blossom,"
which is delightful.
And that's not even the only time he literally equates
the two as seven chapters later
he went on to say the following,
"All I can teach you of ryuo,
or what you call haki, is that which covers the outside."
Here, specifically referring to the armament usage
so we already know about being the invisible armor
and the black coating.
So with this, it would seem that ryuo
is just the native term that has developed
on an isolated nation, meaning armament haki.
It's effectively the same thing
that occurred on Skypiea where they used the term mantra
to refer to observation haki.
However, due to reasons, within the One Piece fanbase
ryuo has been a term adopted to mean
the advanced application of armament haki
which focuses on emission and striking opponents
or objects from the inside,
which is a very uncomfortable thought.
But it is something I see get confused a lot,
particularly in my YouTube comments.
Because at its core,
it would seem the ryuo and armament haki are the same thing.
Ryuo is not the advanced technique,
or I guess it is but you would call it advanced ryuo
perhaps or not because no one's going to do that.
The thing about the term ryuo
is that I can see why it's taken off, though.
As humans we have a desire to name things
and when those names become a bit too long,
we have a subdesire to shorten the names,
which we see demonstrated all the time with Luffy.
I mean, Don Quixote Doflamingo?
Nah-uh, it's Doffy now.
And that's the same with this particular next level
application of armament haki
because no matter which name you use,
be it advanced armament haki,
advanced color of arms or even advanced busoshoki haki,
it is just far, far, far, far, far too long.
And it's just ever so much easier
to just say ryuo, especially because that's the term
we learned when focusing on this advanced application.
But I will say it also doesn't help
that Hyogoro uses both the terms,
haki and ryuo, in an attempt to translate
to Luffy so I can see how it's given the impression
that they might be two different things.
And as per usual, reading scanlations
obviously does not help with this at all,
because they almost always muddle up technical explanations.
And like I said, even I'm guilty of muddling this up.
In fact, I referred to Zoro needing ryuo
in a recent chapter review,
but I will endeavor to be accurate in the future.
But also, because I like to be somewhat
balanced on this channel,
stay tuned for an explanation of why everything
I just said might be wrong,
which I'll go into later in the video.
Because despite its simplistic nature,
haki is incredibly vaguely defined
and not at all clear to digest.
However, if what I've said is wrong though,
I place the blame solely
on Hyogoro's tiny tattooed shoulders.
But accepting my definitions for a second,
let's get into an explanation
for this advanced use of armament haki,
which was what the video was kind of meant
to be about before I got semantically distracted.
And once again, I think we can go back to the words
of Hyogoro to give us some insight into this field
because he goes through the stages of ryuo.
"It can be used for defense, like invisible armor.
Or it can be converted to offensive use to great effect.
But when you go one level beyond that the haki
you wield can penetrate the enemy's interior
and destroy them from the inside."
And this would basically detail three stages
of armament haki use.
The first being the often forgotten about invisible armor,
which is where you apply a thin layer of haki
and let's be real, the only reason why this opening stage
exists is to avoid questions
about why we've never visibly seen armament haki
prior to it's official introduction.
But it does exist and going one step further
is the more iconic armament haki being hardening,
which involves gathering a much more potent force of haki,
resulting in a now visible effect of blackening
of the area in question.
Which can be either a body part or a held object,
like a say sword, which is how ryuo is most commonly applied
by the samurai of Wano.
And now we have the third stage of armament,
which Hyogoro describes as penetrating an enemy's defense,
basically emitting or projecting haki
into an opponent or object to strike them from the inside.
And if you're familiar with "Hunter X Hunter"
this whole armament haki idea
is very similar to basic nen usage.
And if you're not a fan of "Hunter X Hunter"
then well, stick with me anyway
because it's a decent way to explain it.
Combat in "Hunter X Hunter" is all about aura control
and there are six main branches of aura usage,
two of which are enhancement and emission.
Enhancement focuses on strengthening
the properties of your body or objects,
however if you go one step to the left on the nen ring,
you hit emission which is purely about projecting aura.
That is armament haki.
The basic form is enhancement
and the advanced application would be emission.
Except very, very importantly, in One Piece,
the advanced armament haki does not seem to involve
a separation of haki from the body
like "Hunter X Hunter" would with aura.
According to visualization,
advanced armament haki seems to be more akin
to expanding your field of haki
so that it strikes an opponent
before your fist or sword would.
Which is why learning this technique would,
in theory, allow Luffy to break through Kaido's scales.
It's less about breaking through them actually
and more about bypassing them entirely
in order to strike the more fleshy, vulnerable dragon flesh.
And we've seen a rather surprising
amount of this application
in the pre-timeskip portion of One Piece.
The example that most immediately comes to mind
being of course Rayleigh's tutorial on Rusukaina.
Which are depicted very differently
in the anime and the manga by the way.
The manga version sticks more cleanly
to the whole concept as it looks like Rayleigh
has expanded his field of haki
in order to prevent the elephant thing stamping on him.
Meanwhile in the anime it looked more like a burst
of Dragonball-esque style energy,
which was cool but retrospectively kind of inaccurate.
Then we also have Sentomaru,
who is undoubtedly one of the finest armament haki users
we've seen in the series.
Although he might be kind of forgettable
because he hasn't appeared in like a decade
but he did rather boldly claim
to be the most defensive man in the world.
Assumedly in a literal sense.
I mean maybe he just gets emotionally defensive.
Then again he's demonstrated a level of advanced armament
on par with that of Rayleigh.
So as much as he looks like one, Sentomaru is no joke.
However, probably the greatest display
of advanced armament in the series thus far
comes from the pre-timeskip era with admirals
who appear to have being capable of emitting
their haki at an incredible distance
containing the area of the at least execution
platform at marine hood.
And yes, it was a combined effort from all three of them,
but knowing what we do now about how this is performed,
this is still an incredible feat to have achieved
and it really does make me wonder just how three admirals
might stack up against any given emperor of the sea.
And also I suppose I should mention
the often forgotten about example being Boa Marigold
who used advanced armament on Luffy during Amazon Lily
which makes a lot of sense because the Kuja Tribe
are basically born into learning armament haki.
But not quite done with the pre-timeskip yet,
there is even some thoughts that our humble
Straw Hat swordsman could have made use
of advanced armament all the way back in the Alabasta Arc
which is, of course, where he discovered
the iconic ability to cut steel,
which for the longest time we had known
as being the ability to sense the breath of all things.
Which honestly, isn't all that different
from Rayleigh's explanation of haki in chapter 597
where he describes haki as an ability
to sense spiritual energy.
And then, of course, old mate Hyogoro
originally describes Ryou as the following,
"In Wano there's an invisible power
that stems from the body and can be infused with the blade.
A good katana will cut steel when you want it to,
and it will not break a sheet of paper
if you do not wish it so.
It is all according to the desire of the swordsman."
Which is almost word for a word,
Koshiro's explanation to Zoro,
so it is effectively confirmed at this point
that Zoro was actually using armament haki
long before any of the Straw Hats,
albeit in a very specific manner.
The question remaining is,
was this an advanced application of armament haki?
Because in many ways, it would make sense
because advanced armament would allow Zoro
to effectively bypass the steely exterior,
thus slicing and dicing Daz Bones
or even Bartholomew Kuma from the inside,
much like what Luffy plans to do with Kaido.
Just with the fist instead of sharp things.
Although this is another tricky thought
because it would mean Zoro basically skipping
the first two steps of armament,
which, I suppose there's nothing to say
that you need to follow those three phases in order
because haki is still quite vaguely defined in nature.
But it also may not necessarily be advanced.
Which brings us to the point I alluded
to earlier on in the video
about why my initial explanation might be wrong.
This is because things complicate further
because the people of Wano have no term
for what we know of as the other two brands of haki,
observation and conquerors.
And as such, there is an idea the term ryuo
is actually referring to what we know as a combination
of observation and armament.
The logic being applied as that observation
is invoked to sense the breath of all things
and then basic armament is applied
in the invisible state to strike effectively.
So as much as I went to great lengths
to define ryuo at the beginning of the video
according to what we know from Hyogoro,
there could still be a lot more to it
and perhaps it does warrant it's own term
if it is indeed a combination effect.
Something which would be very difficult
for the Wano samurai to recognize,
but you would think that someone like Luffy
might pick up on the idea, maybe, maybe not.
Then again talking about haki
and swords is tough because swordsmen tend to use
armament in a very different manner
to that of hand to hand fighters.
Swordsmen focus on imbuement rather than hardening,
of course, and there's also the currently unexplained
Black Blade Phenomenon, whereby a sword appears
to be permanently imbued with haki
such as Shusui which was achieved
by the legendary figure of Ryuma.
It's hard to know exactly what to call this,
but it would seem to be some sort of higher level armament,
perhaps even higher than what we're currently know of,
or just a different application of the same level.
I don't know, haki is weird.
So are swords by the way,
swords are very weird.
As all throughout the series they're very much been shown
to have their own distinct personalities and quirks,
in almost magical like manner.
And here I'll throw up a spoiler warning
for anime only watchers or for those of you
not quite caught up with Act 3 of Wano.
I have some quick relevant stuff to go over
and if you don't wanna be spoiled,
then skip to this time.
Otherwise, well, here we go.
So obviously with the whole sword thing
I was mainly referring to Enma there,
which appears to have some sort of life
or at least trigger of its own,
whereby it draws out the armament haki of it's wielder,
involuntarily, I might add.
And this, in and of itself,
might even force an advanced armament application
by forcibly projecting Zoro's haki field
much more so than he naturally would.
But at this point that's fairly wild speculation.
What is less speculative though
is the clash between Roger and Whitebeard,
who both appear to be making use of the advanced application
in a very rare way because in this case
we can visibly see the point
at which their haki projections make contact.
As well as their temporarily coated black blades.
And very recently in the manga
we've also seen many of the vassals
make use of advanced armament to hurt Kaido in battle,
which is quite the achievement
but it also adds quite a bit of confusion
because Kaido himself refers to this ability as ryuo,
which doesn't make the greatest of sense
because he's a global figure
and should be well aware of how to correctly refer to haki.
So this does add some potential evidence
to the thought that ryuo is something more
than a vague term that translates
directly into armament.
But look, in the end we may come out of this video
with maybe a couple more questions
than we went into it with.
But the basic take away, however,
is that ryuo as referred to be Hyogoro
who's specifically mentioned covering the outside,
is a direct reference to armament haki.
Whether or not ryuo encompasses a form
of observation as well is arguable.
And it's a fun argument.
However, regardless of what the clear definition ends
up being, ryuo is still not what people think it is.
Ryuo is either a direct and literal translation
of basic armament haki, and not a specific term
designed to define the emission effect.
Or ryuo is a completely new subbranch of haki,
formed from a combination of observation and armament
in which case it still is not a term designed
for the emission effect
because that is one of many potential uses for it,
alongside with the breath of all things and et cetera.
So then, ryuo means haki.
And haki means haki.
And that concludes our intensive three week course.
But what do you guys think?
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But for now this has been the Grand Line Review
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