- [Narrator] Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review,
your source for everything One piece!
And today we are here to dwell again on Mr. Zehaha himself,
the sickeningly charismatic Blackbeard.
And most specifically the ever curious topic
of how powerful is Marshall D. Teach.
And this is a very difficult subject to tackle
in a series filled with a slew
of inconsistent pieces of evidence regarding Blackbeard.
And as such in the fan base,
you can encounter those who believe
that Blackbeard is on par with the original four emperors
or those who will claim that he is quite probably weaker
than our modern-day Luffy.
Oh and also everything in between,
lots of things in between.
And that's because Blackbeard is just
so challenging to pin down.
Right now he does more or less function
a bit like Schrodinger's emperor,
both insanely powerful and ridiculously weak
at the exact same time.
And we won't really know which it is
until we eventually open the box
and we're going to attempt to peek into said box here today.
But before we do it is Zehaha quiz time.
Here is how it works.
I'm going to give you a question about Blackbeard
followed by one multiple-choice answer
for every missing tooth Blackbeard has,
which is usually three,
sometimes more, sometimes less when Oda forgets.
And you will be charged with picking the right answer.
And if you don't,
then your punishment will be
to subscribe to the Grand Line Review
for regular One Piece content
uploaded straight into your YouTube feed.
I don't really consider it a punishment myself,
some of you too,
so we'll go with that.
And here is your question.
Which of these is not officially listed
as one of Blackbeard's hobbies.
Is it A, gambling,
B, researching history,
or C, playing board games?
Hmm, it's a pretty tough one actually.
And I was quite surprised to discover this myself.
But please do comment with your choice below
and we shall reveal the answer shortly.
But to begin with Blackbeard's power discussion,
we need to dive into the incredibly inconsistent manner
in which he's been portrayed.
Almost certainly purposely mind you.
But one of the pieces of evidence
you will hear cited most often
from the Blackbeard is sky splitter.
A little cap would be the fact that he is responsible
for giving Shanks His iconic scar.
In addition to this,
you'll also hear Blackbeard being credited
as having defeated Marco, the Phoenix,
during the Payback War.
And of course, Blackbeard defeated Ace on Banaro Island.
And actually, why not?
Let's throw a Thatch in there as well.
Blackbeard killed Thatch,
another the commander of the Whitebeard Pirates.
Meaning that Blackbeard actually has
quite an impressive win streak against this particular crew.
And all of those fates are pretty damn impressive.
However, on the Blackbeard,
it's scrubbed his side of the argument.
We have situations such as pre-timeskip, pre-hockey,
Luffy delivering a solid shot of pain,
Blackbeard's wagering impelled down.
The fact that Blackbeard then proceeded
to be effectively one shot by Magellan's powers,
as well as the idea that he and his entire crew fled
at the mere mention of the name, Sakazuki,
during the post-war events.
It's a very scary named to be fair.
But let's also not get too far ahead of ourselves
because Blackbeard also proved incapable
of defeating an old man on the verge of death
with his brains quite literally spilling out of his head.
Meaning it was Whitebeard,
but still Blackbeard proved woefully inefficient there.
And if not for his crew stepping in
and Whitebeard's general sense of mercy,
we wouldn't even be talking about Teach right now.
That's how far he was from emperotic power pre-timeskip.
Or was he?
Because Shanks's skull was well
and truly delivered pre-timeskip.
In fact, it was done pre pre-timeskip
because there was a timeskip
at the end of chapter one technically.
So that's why that works.
But there is a mighty disconnect of facts
to reckon with here,
which we are now going to attempt to make some sense of.
And speaking of sense,
prepare for very little of that
as we reveal the answer to the coveted Zehaha quiz.
So which of these was not officially listed
as one of Blackbeard's hobbies?
The answer is C, playing board games.
And if you did not select C,
then you know the go.
Hit the amazing red button and welcome to the Grand fleet.
And just as a fun fact,
playing board games is actually the hobby
of Capone "Gang" Bege.
But I was fascinated
to discover the Blackbeard research's history as a hobby.
It's something that I suppose
he and Robin could probably bond over.
And it makes me wonder if he might have some ability
to read the ancient language himself
from his various researchment.
Hmm, intriguing.
But here's another interesting
and relevant to this video point.
Shanks's scar, Thatch's murder and Marco's defeat.
Three of Blackbeard's greatest achievements
all occurred off-screen.
And in One Piece,
that should always give you pause for thought,
especially with a character like Blackbeard.
If there was any singular person in this world
who really embodied piracy in the classical sense,
it is Blackbeard.
He will lie,
he will cheat, he will trap,
he will wait,
and he is the epitome of opportunistic.
And we've seen this in the series on multiple occasions.
In fact, pretty much every occasion he appears.
Going back to the Marine for example,
imagine that you heard Blackbeard and his crew
were the ones responsible for killing Whitebeard.
You don't get any further context of the situation,
just that one line summary.
Which would give you the impression
that this band of misfits
took down the strongest man in the world.
And it would be a highly inaccurate representation
of Blackbeard and his abilities.
Now apply that to one of the aforementioned situations
like say the Payback War.
All we know about this event is the result.
We don't know
how the Whitebeard Pirate remnants were defeated
and we can't even say for a fact
that it was Blackbeard who beat Marco.
There's even a very intriguing line
in the official translation
where Robin gives us the TL;DR breakdown of the Payback War
where she states,
"It was quite a large battle
"with each side bringing in plenty of help.
"In the end, Marco's group was obliterated.
"It was only after this major confrontation
"that Blackbeard was first included
"among the list of the four emperors."
And the greater emphasis here is on the scale of the battle
and the fact that
both sides amassed a huge slew of great forces.
This wasn't Blackbeard himself.
This was an event
where the tides of greater power and fate went in his favor.
Now, as for Shanks's scar,
something that is often neglected with this bit of evidence
is that it was delivered
at least 12 years before the current timeline,
because Shanks did have it in chapter one,
which was seen prior to becoming an emperor of the sea,
but also after the time of his great rivalry with Mihawk.
So it's hard to pin down Shanks here,
harder than it is Blackbeard actually.
But in regards to Blackbeard,
what we do have to go on are Shanks's words to Whitebeard,
"I've fought countless battles and received countless scars.
"But the only one that aches right now is this one."
He then proceeds to state that he did not receive the scar
because he was being careless either.
And I think the image concocted from that line
paints the picture of some sort of epic one-on-one battle
between Shanks and Blackbeard.
I do have to pull the same card though.
We didn't see it,
so we don't know.
We have no idea how Blackbeard managed to pull this off
or how many people were fighting at the time,
what kind of situation Shanks was in
or how powerful Shanks was himself back then
over 12 years ago.
So I do think it's a mistake
to try and judge Blackbeard based on this.
And of course, I'll say the same for Thatch.
He is a commander who's power is a complete unknown
and probably irrelevant
because Blackbeard appears to have murdered him
without a fight even having taken place.
It looks like it was just a stab in the back from someone.
Thatch let his gun, turned around,
and then, bam!
Gone.
And with all of that in mind,
I really do want to underscore the theme of Blackbeard.
Basically every time we hear about Blackbeard,
it is some sort of great world-shaking feet.
Meanwhile, every time we actually see Blackbeard in action,
it's more of a great world-shaking disappointment.
The evidence of his actions
do not live up to the tales told of off-screen events.
However, there does exist one exception to this formula,
which is the fight against Ace.
This is probably the only battle we can say
with a degree of certainty that Blackbeard won legitimately
because he did tell his crew to stay out of it.
Or at least he told Augur to hold off.
And while it's not impossible to see a situation
where the Blackbeard pirates stepped in to overwhelm Ace,
it's a lot less likely with the physical evidence presented,
which shows Ace and Blackbeard clashing
on more or less equal footing.
And that is currently
our only something close to solid metric.
However powerful you believe Ace was pre-timeskip,
Blackbeard was probably around there.
Maybe slightly more powerful,
maybe even slightly less.
And that it was just a bad devil fruit matchup for Ace
because the Yamu Yamu no Mi is a hard counter
to those who rely heavily on Logia powers
or even devil fruits in general.
And actually having said that,
I'm now just sort of convincing myself
that Blackbeard could have been much, much weaker,
but the Yamu Yamu is what made the difference.
So once again,
it's so hard to place Blackbeard himself.
But I will say that his broad swath of accomplishments
do not currently add up to our personal experiences of him.
And whilst that might sound strange,
there is actually strong precedence for this
in the Luffy situation.
This rubber lad is a creature capable
of doing the impossible but not through standard means.
He requires all of the right conditions concerning fate
to go his way.
But as a result,
the world knows him as the man who destroyed Enies Lobby
inside of the first mass breakout of Impel Down,
casually strolled into whole Cake Island,
destroyed Big Mom Chateau,
and then casually strolled on out.
And so, so much more.
So my question would be
why can't Blackbeard's achievements
have been performed in the exact same manner.
There is a very clear parallel between Luffy and Blackbeard,
which has been present ever since Jaya.
They are shockingly similar characters.
You essentially just need to flip their preferences
and you'll end up with the other one.
They both believe profoundly in dreams.
They both seem to possess
the inherited will of their previous generational rivals.
They're both these
and as such both heavily subject to fate.
I personally do not believe that Blackbeard
is as powerful as many will give him credit for.
I also don't believe he's as weak
as many will also try to claim.
I think Blackbeard is smack bang
in the same situation as Luffy.
He has enough power to make his way in the world,
but he mostly relies on that extra super special ability
that nobody else possesses in order to rise to prominence.
You know, in Luffy's case,
that would be his charisma to draw others to him,
which makes up for his grand impatience.
Meanwhile, Blackbeard very unsurprisingly
is very much the opposite.
He has the patience to wait for the stars to align
and carry him to victory.
And whilst we do know annoyingly little
about Blackbeard's journey,
we do have an example of him being saved by fate,
very Luffy ask.
Which is of course in impelled
that Blackbeard and his crew should have died off
to being doused with poisoned by Magellan.
However the grand hand of fate stepped in
to save their lives
just as it does in each and every single luck with Luffy.
However there is one or I guess two important differences
that Blackbeard needs to be granted,
which are his double fruit abilities.
I already touched on the Yamu Yamu previously,
but the utility of this fruit has the potential
to bring supremely powerful enemies down to Teach's level
because it nullifies fruit abilities
in an even greater way
than almond Tokyo cstone is capable of.
It doesn't so much make Blackbeard himself powerful.
In fact, it makes him a little weaker
than a standard Logia user,
but it reduces the power of devil fruit based opponents.
The Gura Gura no Mi however is completely inarguable.
This adds an absurd level of raw force to Blackbeard,
given that it is considered the strongest
of the paramecia class.
And this is something that Marco very much stated
in chapter 909 when he was referring to the Payback War.
"But with Pops's his power at his command,
"we couldn't overcome Teech anymore.
"He took everything.
"Oh, how I wanted to make that ingrate pay."
Which I another one of those lines
which appears to focus on an external factor.
It's not so much that Blackbeard himself as powerful,
it's the devil fruit that made all the difference.
With the Gura Gura no Mi under his command,
Marco and the remnants could not overcome Teach any more.
Implying that without this fruit,
that would certainly not be the case.
I think that's very telling
and a super-strong reason
as to why we should never even come close
to equating Blackbeard to the pinnacle of One Piece power
in regards to characters like the Whitebeards' Kaidos
and big mothers of the world,
each of whom could have the devil fruit stripped
and still retain their status as emperors
through raw strength alone.
And I don't think there's anyone
who could reasonably make the same argument with Blackbeard.
And one other issue to address
is that of final boss syndrome.
That being the idea that Blackbeard is set up
to be the ultimate foe of the One Piece series.
And because of that,
that automatically means that he will need
to be the strongest of all of the enemies as well,
which he really doesn't
and he'll most certainly won't be.
He and Luffy have very special roles
in the history of this planet,
ones that don't require either of them
to force their way through this landscape with power alone.
They both have a very handy ally in fate.
And the two are no doubt destined to clash in a battle
that will decide the future for centuries to come.
And when that time comes,
they're both going to be incredibly strong in their own.
Right?
But the final enemy
does not necessarily mean the most powerful one.
And I personally think it would be a very, very tall ask
to make Blackbeard's abilities triumph that of Kaido
and then expecting Luffy to bring him down one-on-one.
You'd be getting into incredibly crazy
and lazy showing and power jumping there.
And One Piece has more or less being able to avoid that
for 23 years now.
So I don't see it falling into that trap at the very end.
It's more likely that Luffy will bring down Kaido
as part of some sort of team effort
and then meet a final opponent
closer to his level of strength and Blackbeard
for a more even and satisfying one-on-one clash.
That's my thinking anyway.
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
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But for now this has been the Grand Line Review,
and I'll see you next time.