- Mihawk is the kind of man, who will find any excuse
just to visit his bestie Shanks.
And the latest of said excuses,
was to present him with the subscribe button
for the Grand Line Review,
the pressing of which would give Shanks regular lumpys
content uploaded straight into his YouTube feed.
And luckily enough, Shank still
has one arm available to do just that.
Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review
your source for everything One Piece,
and today we are going to be taking a sliver
of time to give some focus
to one of the more legendary characters in the series,
the world's greatest swordsman Dracule Mihawk,
and it's primarily because the more I think about this man,
the stranger his existence in the series actually becomes.
Mihawk is one of those characters
who appeared extraordinarily early on,
in the Grand Scheme of things, way back in chapter 49,
actually, which you know,
when we're almost at the 1000 mark is pretty damn ancient.
But back in the days of Baratie,
Mihawk was an unrivaled presence.
He stood entirely in his own league in every respect,
be it strength, aesthetics or narrative role.
In many ways, it was like taking a character
from another more established series
and throwing him into early One Piece,
Just to decimate the main cast.
However, even to this day,
with all of the progress that we have made as readers
and watchers of the series, that impression of Mihawk,
still has not entirely disappeared, not at all.
And he's still very much seems like an entity
who exists separate to everything else that is One Piece.
And we're here to explore that idea today
as we dive into the purpose, connections
and even future, of the world's greatest swordsman.
And I really do need to begin with
that very first word purpose,
which can be divided into two separate streams of thought;
one of which is the narrative purpose of the character
a feature that I often dwell on in many of my discussions,
but the other in this case is
what I think is a much more important idea,
being the canonical purpose of Mihawk,
I.e, what this man believes in, fights for
and effectively dedicates his life to doing.
Now in the cases of most characters in One Piece,
this secondary factor is almost always viewed
with utmost clarity.
The obvious example being that Luffy's driving purpose
in this world is to become the pirate king.
While Zoro's is to become the world's greatest swordsman,
and so on and so forth.
That idea is not exclusive to our main protagonist,
because the great antagonists of One Piece,
also come with this purpose attached.
For example, Sakazuki's purpose
is to serve absolute justice,
Doflamingo's is to live life as if the world
is his play thing, you know his divine, right?
And in fact, many other antagonists
even share Luffy's drive to become the pirate King.
And you know what?
Even side characters have this feature attached like Archon,
his purposes is to live peacefully
and make delicious takoyaki,
which is always weird because you know he's an octopus
cooking other octopi, but whatever we'll get over it,
he sure did.
But then we turn our attention to Mihawk.
And he is one of the extremely rare characters in this world
whose driving force cannot be clearly identified.
I don't necessarily have any idea why Mihawk
does the things he does.
Like I have no idea why he accepted a position
as war lord of the sea,
I have no idea exactly why he stands on a moralistic scale,
however, we can certainly speculate and Oh, how, we will.
But before that,
I should also highlight Mihawk's position in One Piece,
because while there are characters out there
who are comparable in terms of power and mysterious purpose,
what makes Mihawk completely unique,
in this series of absurdly unique individuals,
is the fact that he operates exclusively alone.
Mihawk is a pirate without a pirate crew,
he floats around this world on his dinging of doom
and seems to cut down whatever he comes across,
should he feel like it.
In many ways, Mihawk could better be described
as a human calamity, yet another unstoppable risk
of embarking into the Grand Line,
comparable to that of extreme weather, sea Kings
and whatever other natural danger you could find
that will instantly wipe out most bolt and bar keys.
This is really strange though,
because nobody else at the top of this book
presents himself as such a solitary existence.
and obviously we can immediately point to the four emperors.
Each of whom is sky splittingly powerful in their own right.
But they also rely heavily on crews,
and no matter how strongly they are individually,
they would not stand in these positions without them.
That links back into purpose and driving force though,
each emperor of the sea has a crew in order to assist them
with achieving certain goals.
For example, Big Mom is one of the many beings
in this world, striving for the pirate King title,
but she also has a broad goal
of bringing every race together in her twisted paradise,
as well as a ton of short term goals,
like eating delicious numb things.
But even for the ones whose goals aren't quite as clear
like Shank for example,
we do know that he, at the very least that driving force
to go out of his way and form the red hair pirates.
And I suppose in this world,
he seems to act for the sake of stability and diplomacy.
And so the fact that Mihawk to our knowledge,
has never formed a crew of his own,
actually speaks volumes
in regards to his sheer lack of desire in this world.
He doesn't really seem to want anything
and so he does not form any effort
to go out and get anything.
Mihawk seems like a man whose problem in this world
is boredom, the epitome of first world problems
but here we are.
And that can actually be seen
in his introduction during Baratie,
because he quite literally stated that;
he only destroyed Don Krieg's entire Armada
for the sake of fun, and even then
he didn't look like he was having a whole lot of fun
whilst doing it, just a fleeting thrill
and then back to boredom.
Mihawk acts like an MMO character,
who has over leveled himself so much
that the game just isn't fun anymore.
There's no challenge and that is an important word.
Because if I was to speculate on Mihawks driving force,
and we're doing this video now so I shall,
then I would simply identify it as seeking a challenge.
And almost every interaction we have featuring Mihawk
does point towards this.
Such as the stories about his prior duels with shanks,
they were events that Mihawk
would have been driven to compete in,
And the fact that he stopped engaging Shanks
once he lost his ominous blue
also speaks to the idea of challenge.
As a swordsman, Shank simply may not
have been challenging enough
for Mihawk to take on at that point.
And another moment that I found very intriguing
was during the paramount war for most of the affair
Mihawk was his usual apathetic existence,
however, there was one instance
where he really mentally kicked into gear,
sending a flying slash towards Whitebeard.
He was then known as the strongest man in the world,
and he did So because,
"I just want to measure the distance
between that man and us."
And notice how Mihawk says, "Us" and not "I."
He recognizes the Whitebeard
is on an entirely different level to him,
but at the same time
he also includes everyone else present on Marine fit
in his assessment.
As if Whitebeard is the crown jewel
and Mihawk and everyone else are just the riffraff.
on this battlefield,
Whitebeard would appear to be the only individual
that Mihawk saw as a challenge,
one that he had actually resigned himself
to not being able to overcome actually,
but he still wanted to know exactly how far behind he was.
But of course the most paramount piece of evidence
for Mihawk's challenge seeking ways,
comes in the form of Al green head swordsman.
After recognizing the talent, potential
and honor Zoro had as a swordsman,
Mihawk vowed to wait at the top for him,
no matter how long it may take for Zoro to get there.
And that is a pretty grand statement.
One that shows Mihawk's sheer confidence,
that he will still be the top dog,
by the time Zoro is ready,
but also one that intrinsically thinks are his dream
to what we could maybe possibly identify
as a driving force for Mihawk.
It is entirely possible at this point
that Mihawk exists simply to be defeated,
that he is so utterly bored with this world,
that he is awaiting that moment of new power
springing up to overcome him.
However, it may also be to do more specifically
with swordsmanship because let's talk about
the whole world's greatest swordsman thing for a bit.
It's a really strange dream when we think about it,
because there are almost no other characters in this world
who actually strive for this position,
despite it being an alleged global standard.
We have Zoro, we have Queen and I think that's it.
No other swordsman has really shown an interest
in pursuing the sword for the sake of the sword,
and they generally wield it for another purpose in life.
Sword play is a tool for achieving something else,
not a path in and of itself.
It's completely different
from the goal of say becoming the pirate King,
which Mihawk himself has said,
would be even tougher than surpassing him.
However, that particular dream
is held by an extraordinary amount of characters,
which leaves Mihawk with very few playmates
in his area of niche interests,
and those that do arise are often delusional rookies,
with no concept of what it is to actually be a swordsman.
And perhaps that's why Mihawk is so disinterested
in actually pursuing any sort of sword relate to challenge.
He doesn't go out of his way to seek stronger opponents,
because nobody who has any interest in taking him on,
is worth his time, so what do you do in that case?
Well, you obviously take up gardening,
horticulture is a fine hobby after all.
But at this point I'd like to highlight an image
that we have of Mihawk as child,
One of the few pieces of background knowledge
we have regarding him and just how different is this image
from the Mihawk we know now.
This kid here almost evokes a Zoro style of appeal.
I don't know about you, but I look at this image
and it has an aura of pure drive around it,
You know, he's injured and his clothes are tattered,
but he has the only thing he clearly values in the world,
which is his sword and the desire to pursue that craft
to its absolute heights.
Little did this driven young lad know,
however, that achieving that desire
would bring him a feeling of such emptiness in this world.
And look, this is another massively first world problem,
but that really is the issue
with actually achieving your grandest dreams.
If you do live your life for that one profound purpose,
and against all odds succeed,
then you will be left with very, very little to do,
and that is Dracule Mihawk,
man, quite literally suffering from success.
That isn't the only thing
that makes him unique in this world though,
because Mihawk also holds a very solitary personality,
in fact, within this entire planet,
I can really only think of three people
that he has commonly associated himself with.
Being; Shanks, Perona, and Zoro.
And in the case of the later two,
that's because they crashed his Island paradise,
courtesy of battle of Akuma,
although he did go on to form a very interesting connection
with the two of them.
And I'll dwell on Zoro here a bit more
because what Zoro presented in this moment,
was an evolution of his dream.
As much as Zoro wanted to surpass Mihawk,
and become the world's greatest Swordsman,
he had a stronger desire
which was to live and become stronger for the sake of Luffy.
Which is certainly the reason why Mihawk
agreed to train him.
Here Mihawk saw that Zoro was living for something
beyond the most simplistic desire to become the greatest.
A goal that Mihawk himself knows
as a particularly hollow existence once achieved,
because what is the point in living for the challenge
when the challenge no longer exists?
Of course there could also be
a secondary motive behind this,
should Mihawk still have the embers of challenge within him,
which is this really bizarre sense of training someone
for the purpose of defeating you.
Maybe he's just become so frustrated
with the lack of a worthy opponent
that he just said, "Eff it I'll craft my own opponent then."
And whether or not that's actually
what was going on in his mind,
that is more than likely going to be the inevitable outcome.
And so we come back to one of the original questions.
Why does Mihawk exist in this story?
And narratively it would be to be defeated,
or to provide a driving force in regards to Zoro.
Although perhaps Mihawk's connection to Shanks
will also very much play a part in it
if said emperor is ever brought into key focus.
Although in terms of the actual character,
his purpose is very similar.
It would seem that Mihawk's ultimate desire in this world,
is to either be defeated or at the very least
to have that thrill of a challenge once more.
Something that he clearly has not experienced
since gaining the title of the world's greatest swordsman.
But even then it is nice to take a step back,
and really recognize what an extremely unique existence
Mihawk is in One Piece,
he is one of the very, very few characters
who has achieved seemingly everything he ever wanted to,
in this vast and brutal world.
For all intents and purposes,
he has conquered everything this planet has to throw at him,
which earns him an exceptional amount of respect from me,
because even characters like the four emperors,
have not reached the same destination that Mihawk has.
Each and every one of them still struggle daily
to implement and attain their desires.
Meanwhile, Mihawk is just chilling on his Gothic Island
with a glass of wine and his ghost waifu.
And yeah, maybe outside of the world of sword play
he is not the strongest character
and he's not the pirate King or anything,
but none of that really matters.
Mihawk took this world by the balls and castrated it,
And he now stands at its ultimate peak, looking down,
watching the squabbles of every other force on this planet,
with at best mild interest.
That is Dracule Mihawk,
an unparalleled existence in all of One Piece.
But what do you guys think?
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But for now this has been the Grand Line Review,
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