- [Liam] Hello and welcome
to the Grand Line Review,
your source for everything "One Piece,"
and today, I am here to discuss
some, how shall we say, flaws of the series,
which, yes, gasp, do indeed exist in "One Piece,"
and they generally come to us
in the form of storytelling inconsistencies,
the first of which to address is the grand inconsistency
of you not being subscribed to the Grand Line Review,
which, if you were,
would grant you regular "One Piece" content
uploaded straight into your YouTube feed,
so let's rectify that little inconsistency
right here and now.
Push the button, I believe in you.
But onwards with some trickier things to fix.
I do need to say first and foremost
that "One Piece" is a pretty crazily tight piece of media,
especially for a series
that has been running as long as it has,
and I think a lot of that can be credited
to the fact that it does have a single author,
so it doesn't suffer from multiple writers
forgetting each others' established work,
as western comics are prone to.
But even in the world of manga with lone authors,
narrative inconsistencies do tend to appear quite commonly,
and yes, that does include "One Piece,"
although I will say
that I did have to travel pretty far
and wide to find them.
And I should also make clear
that this video is going to be focused exclusively
on inconsistencies generated by Eiichiro Oda himself,
which means that we will not be examining any
of the really weird stuff
that has resulted from the anime adaptation,
and some of that is (chuckles) it's pretty strange,
probably even worthy of its own video,
but for now, we have plenty to discuss
with just our core product.
And the final thing of note here,
before we jump into it,
is that this video will not be focusing
on the arguable inconsistencies
of Oda narratively resurrecting his characters
after giving them death scenes,
primarily because I already have a whole video
covering that topic, but also because,
apart from cases like Pell, for example,
there is almost always room for plausibility,
which, while admittedly still annoying,
does not an inconsistency make.
So what is inconsistent then?
Well, let's start with a very basic
and well-known example,
which would be Sanji's devil fruit knowledge,
and to explain this,
we first need to cast our minds back
all the way to Baratie to the moment
where Luffy gloriously defeated Don Krieg,
and then promptly fell into the sea
and almost drowned to death,
and while Zeff and Sanji
are having a semi-profound discussion about spirit
and all of that, Zeff casually drops in the line
that, hey, Luffy can't swim.
In fact, he actually details the lack of ability
by saying, "The sea hates those
"with the powers of the devil fruit.
"They sink like anchors."
To which Sanji, in absolute shock, yells
that the old geezer should have told him sooner,
and then promptly jumps into the water,
saves Luffy's life, and the rest is history.
A really great, touching moment,
and one of a very long list of reasons
why Baratie is such a heavily underrated arc.
However, what it also does
is establishes Sanji's overall lack of knowledge
regarding devil fruits in general,
which is pretty awkward
when we do eventually come to Thriller Bark,
and more specifically, Sanji's confrontation with Absalom,
which is very, very interesting,
because Sanji was almost immediately able
to dissect the fact
that Absalom was using the Suke Suke no Mi,
a Paramecia-type fruit
that allows its user to become invisible.
And I'm now going to read you Sanji's quote from the manga,
but I want you to keep in mind
that, back during Baratie,
he was unaware of the fact
that devil fruit users cannot swim.
And with that in mind, Sanji says here,
"That's right, you've stolen one of my dreams.
"I know about everything that you can do.
"When I was a kid,
"I read through the encyclopedia of devil fruits.
"I wasn't that interested in them
"because they didn't seem real,
"and each power comes with a curse,
"but there was still one entry
"that struck awe into my heart.
"If I were able some time in my life
"to gain this power, even if it cursed me,
"I'd still want to eat that fruit,"
of course referring to the Suke Suke no Mi.
But that, ladies and gentlemen,
is an example of inconsistency.
Here, Sanji quite blatantly says
that he knows everything about this particular fruit,
as well as the fact
that devil fruits in general come with a curse.
The only kind of plausible deniability at play
comes in two forms.
Either this extensive devil fruit encyclopedia
that was written with detailed powers in mind
did not mention that fruit users become unable to swim,
or that Sanji had such tunnel vision
that he simply did not read it,
both of which are a pretty huge leap of logic,
and while not impossible, I suppose,
this is almost certainly one of the very rare examples
of Oda being inconsistent.
And next up, let's take a more recent example,
well, relatively recent, anyway,
and still devil fruit-related, actually,
because we now move all the way to Whole Cake Island,
and we land on a certain Charlotte Katakuri,
a man who has one of the most curious devil fruits
in the series, being the Mochi Mochi no Mi,
an existence that so greatly confuses more casual fans
to this day, and to be perfectly frank,
that confusion is Oda's fault,
and this is because, in the original release
of chapter 863 in weekly Shonen Jump,
when Jinbei is explaining the Mochi Mochi no Mi,
he refers to it as a Logia type,
which, when reading it weekly,
yeah, that was fine.
I mean, no, Mochi was not an element
in the way that the other Logias are,
but Katakuri's abilities to this point
were consistent with that of any other Logia user.
However, this definition would go on
to drastically, drastically change
with the Japanese release of volume 86,
which contained the chapter in question.
Now, volume releases are considered
to be the final product of the manga,
and they get used to fix up various mistakes,
which are usually minor artistic mishaps,
you know, stuff like putting Zoro's scar on the wrong side
of his face and all that,
nothing big, usually, anyway.
This is an exception,
because, in this volume release,
Jinbei's description of the Mochi Mochi no Mi went
from being a Logia to a special Paramecia.
Now, we can speculate as to why this change was made,
but it is a fairly blatant inconsistency,
especially if you were reading weekly at the time,
but even in retrospect,
it still seems a bit weird,
and this is because, if you do look back on early Katakuri,
he was portrayed as a real Logia user
even with Jinbei's edited classification in mind,
and that's because that was more than likely
what he was intended to be.
So it's hard to blame fans who get confused by this,
because his demonstrated power evokes that
of a Logia in every way.
And as for why it was changed,
one possibility is that Oda realized his inconsistency
with the idea of Logias being elements,
but the more interesting thought
is that Oda changed his mind halfway through,
because the Katakuri character went on to evolve somewhat,
and as Oda delved more and more
into the future sight aspect of Katakuri,
he may simply have thought,
you know, wouldn't it be cool
if Katakuri could use this power
to make himself seem like a Logia user?
Either way, there was still a problem though,
because, even with future sight in mind,
the Mochi Mochi no Mi was inconsistent
with established Paramecias, and that's because
the Mochi Mochi no Mi inhabits multiple characteristics
of this class, whereas standard Paramecias
are restricted to one, and so, as a result,
we have landed on the classification
of special Paramecia, a type of devil fruit
which still has yet to be officially defined,
as well as a type that we can say
with all certainty spawned entirely
from narrative inconsistency.
Third up now, and let's get into one
that I mention a fair bit in my videos,
and I'm sorry for going over it again
for all of you longtime viewers,
but it is really difficult to do a topic like this
without mentioning the infamous five flying types,
and this one spawns from the Alabasta arc,
when Pell came to the rescue of Princess Vivi,
and proudly declared to his miscellaneous enemies
that, quote, "You are lucky to see this.
"Only five flying devil fruits are known to exist."
And he was, of course, referring to his own devil fruit
as part of that five,
which the VIZ translation has rather adorably called
the Tweet-Tweet Fruit, Model: Falcon,
although it may be
the least intimidating name I've ever heard,
especially when trying to make bold statements like this,
but hey, that's not the point.
The point is that Pell,
and, by association, Oda,
are trying to make a statement here
regarding the existence of devil fruits
that grant their user the ability to fly,
a statement which, in retrospect,
looks slightly ridiculous
because there are so many devil fruits
that grant flight at this state
that I usually actually forget
a whole ton of them when trying to prove this point,
but we're gonna give it another go.
So, in addition to Pell's Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Falcon,
we also have Marco's Mythical Phoenix Fruit,
King's Ancient Pteranodon Fruit,
also Big News Morgan's,
who was confirmed in the Vivre Card Databook
to be the user of a mythical Zoan
that turns him into an albatross,
the two bug Zoans amongst the Tontatta Tribe,
both of whom could access natural flight,
as well as Kaido's currently unnamed devil fruit,
which, unless Kaido's true form is a dragon,
is also a flight-granter.
So that's seven fruits already,
and we've only really explored the Zoan class.
If we dip into Paramecias,
we can also identify Shiki's Fuwa Fuwa no Mi,
the primary benefit of which is generally floaty flight,
Buffalo's Guru Guru no Mi,
which is 100% focused on flight, given that
it literally turns its user's body into propellors,
Perona's Horo Horo no Mi,
because, for unexplained reason,
she can also use that to fly
in a similar manner to what Shiki can,
and then you hit the Logia class,
and things go pretty berserk
because almost every Logia in the series is capable
of achieving flight through the basic mechanism
of elemental propulsion, not all of them, but most of them.
And that's all before we delve into grand speculation
like, say, Laffitte, for example,
who would appear to be a potential Zoan user that can fly.
So, by this stage, look, I've honestly lost count,
but I think we're looking at a couple more than five,
and, look, there is the boring
in-world explanation for this,
which is simply that, at the time Pell said this,
there were only five recorded flying devil fruits
in the world, which I have to guess
would obviously be his, Marco's,
Big News Morgan's, Kaido, and King,
just based on the sheer prominence of these individuals.
But we also do need to be real here
and look at this from a more meta perspective.
"One Piece" is a story, after all,
not a reality show or a documentary,
and the purpose of this scene was clearly
to convey this information to the audience,
not the miscellaneous characters of the world
who we never saw again.
This is Oda saying to us,
through the vessel of Pell,
that, at this stage in the story, he intended
for there only to be five devil fruits that allowed flight.
Now, whether he intended that to be constrained
to the Zoan class is a different discussion,
but it doesn't matter, because,
even if that were the case, as "One Piece" continued,
Oda has changed his mind
about this very boldly declared fact
in the days of Alabasta,
and as such, the five flying types have become one
of the greater inconsistencies within the series.
And the next element I'd like to explore
in this video is the general inconsistency
that Haki rather unfortunately introduced into "One Piece."
So, despite this idea being retrospectively introduced
in chapter one with Shanks's interaction
with the Lord of the Coast,
Haki was a very late game addition to "One Piece,"
with its features being more consciously implemented,
beginning with the initial Sabaody arc,
bu actually not being explained
until almost 600 chapters into the series
by Rayleigh just prior to the time skip.
And look, when you're introducing a new feature like this
after close to 600 chapters
and claiming that it had always been a part of this world,
then you are bound to run into a few inconsistencies
with said implementation.
I mean, yes, to some degree,
Haki is fine and clearly planned.
Like, we have another example
when Shanks confronted Whitebeard,
and a whole host of pirates fainted at his very presence,
clearly growing the seed that is Conqueror's Haki.
It's more when things get to Observation
and Armament that things get a bit more questionable,
and in reality, it brings up an awful lot
of retrospective discrepancies
that can't really be helped, honestly,
because Oda never quite intended "One Piece"
to run this long, but characters
like Crocodile would be a good example.
In his position as a Warlord of the Sea,
it is very difficult to swallow either the idea
that he did not possess Haki himself,
or chose not to use it during his battle
with Luffy on Alabasta.
It's just one of those things
where, given how extraordinarily important Haki is,
the idea of Crocodile not having it
becomes incredibly questionable,
although an even better example would be Rob Lucci
and, in fact, the rest of CP9.
These guys were the superhuman agency
of the World Government
who had spent their lives mastering the Rokushiki,
but to think that the World Government did not offer them
any instruction on the art of Haki is pretty absurd,
especially when you consider
that Haki isn't exactly a hidden aspect
amongst the World Government or the Marines.
I mean, anybody in a vice admiral position needs to know it
by default, and many
of the lower ranking soldiers acquire it as well.
So it would seem that not teaching CP9 Haki
would be criminal negligence on the part
of the World Government,
because knowing even one grand Observation, Armament,
or, if you're lucky enough, Conqueror's,
take your pick, whatever,
but it would provide you
with infinitely more powerful and resourceful agents
to do your bidding.
And stuff like this can be found everywhere
in the pre-Haki era,
which I want to emphasize is not a mistake made by Oda,
but it is the reality
of having an unintentionally long-running series
like "One Piece."
Eventually, new ideas are going to contradict previous ones,
and less well thought out ideas
implemented very early on in the series
can become skewed and complicated,
leading us to the wonderful land
of inconsistency later on.
With that said, I will completely own up
to the idea that this entire video is quite nitpicky,
which I think only speaks
to how great of a series "One Piece" is.
The fact that we can go this long
and only end up with a mere handful
of inconsistencies, none of which are story-breaking,
by the way, is simply amazing.
Oda has done pretty damn well in this regard,
and it is one of the many, many, many,
many, many, many reasons
why "One Piece" has been as absurdly successful as it is.
But what do you guys think?
Please do leave your thoughts down in the comments below,
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then please do go
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But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review,
and I'll see you next time.