- [Announcer] Hello, and welcome to the Grand Line Review
a source for everything one piece.
And today we have a discussion that I have been thinking
of doing for quite some time and it centers on
the structure of Wano work and what I think
we can comfortably expect for the future.
And this isn't an entirely new discussion at all.
I feel like I bring it up a fair bit in my chapter reviews,
but ever since we were introduced to one exact system,
the challenge has been on to decide
for exactly how many acts arc is going to be.
And in the very early days, there were thoughts
of a traditional Western three act story,
or perhaps even a more operatic four acts
and on the table was always the most daunting option,
a five acts story, which I've personally been rooting for.
And at this stage, I have very little doubt
that Wano will consist of five acts.
And that might sound a bit strange given
that we have currently in act three
and it looks like the climax stage of an arc.
But if I were you, I really would settle in
and prepare for the remainder of
the lengthy journey to come.
And one way of doing this is just by pressing
the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review,
which is scientifically proven to lower your stress levels,
make you more physically attractive
and even result in regular lumpys content uploaded straight
into your YouTube feed.
But back to Wano my thoughts of a five arc structure,
spawn almost entirely from one word,
and that word is Kabuki.
Wano is very obviously adopting the structure of
the Kabuki play, albeit in its own weird
and funky One Piece style.
And in case you're unaware of Kabuki,
it is a hyper stylized form of Japanese theater,
which is actually listed by UNESCO
as an intangible heritage,
allegedly possessing outstanding universal value.
Pretty big words the UNESCO, although fun fact,
One Piece itself has actually been adapted
into a Kabuki play or more accurately, a super Kabuki play,
which attempts to modernize
and make the art form relevant again to younger audiences,
kind of like what we do with Shakespeare in the West,
or at least kind of what we tried to do with Shakespeare.
In any case that One Piece Kabuki play
was an incredible hit and it focused on
the paramount war saga, which is ambitious to say the least,
but that is a lot of what Kabuki tends
to be taking on legendary historical accounts
with larger than life figures.
So I think it's quite cool that we're now experiencing
the inverse, seeing the Kabuki act form directly adapted
into One Piece, not the other way around.
And you can see this quite clearly everywhere on Wano.
Whether it be the traditional curtain opening
and closing with each act, the music used even in the manga
the music is very apparent.
And especially when you look at costumes,
many of the vassals in particular take direct
inspiration from famed Kabuki characters.
In fact, many of the vassals names come directly
from famous lines of Kabuki actors.
And this even extends to smaller character aspects
like Kiki, for example,
she's biologically male, but identifies as a woman,
which is very in keeping with the Kabuki style,
given that to this very day, all roles up,
performed exclusively by men.
And furthermore, the names of said famous characters
have even made their way onto Wano for example,
Arwin Songeez won her names come from
a famous play called Kotobuki Soga no Taimen
and it features two brothers named Juro and Goro.
Hence why we have Zoro Juro and So Goro.
And every step we take on Wano brings
a new Kabuki feature into the mix.
But why is all of this relevant?
Well that's because almost all Kabuki plays follow
a very common five acts structure
and to break things down slightly more or break things up,
these acts also follow a common flow known as Jo Ha Kyu
and this in a very, I mean, very simplistic sense.
I suppose you could consider it to be the equivalent
of the beginning, middle and an end, but also not really.
Basically the rundown goes a little, something like this,
we begin with Jo,
which in a Kabuki play encompasses act one.
The purpose of this is entirely to introduce
the characters in the plot, nothing more,
nothing less, maybe sometimes more actually in one
whose case is definitely more.
Then we moved to Ha, which is by far the longest part of
the story and spans acts two to four,
which vaguely characterized by big battles commonly
occurring in acts two and four whilst act three is
where a particularly tragic event or events happen.
It's the emotional low of the piece,
or I suppose emotional high, depending on how you view it.
And then finally we have Kyu by far the shortest aspect,
which is a swift conclusion with act five.
And I should say the Jo Ha Kyu was not
a formula exclusively applied to Kabuki plays,
or in fact theater in general,
Jo Ha Kyu was also applied to anything
and everything in Japan, such as music, martial arts,
yoga, painting, tea ceremony, anything give me anything
and you can Jo Ha Kyu it, it is incredibly versatile,
but also before we dive into laying out
the floor plan of the Wano arc,
I also think it's very important to note
that a five acts structure is nothing new to One Piece.
And to look at this we can go back to dress Rosa, act one.
We arrive on the island of love, passion and toys.
We're introduced to all of the major characters,
such as the Dan Kuroto family, Fujitora
and the strange citizens of Dressrosa.
We're also given the general premise and call to action
with the ultimate goal of beating Doflamingo.
But we're also introducing stuff like ace's devil fruit
to entice Luffy and act one essentially ends
with Luffy deciding to compete in the Coliseum.
And that set up paves the way for act two,
which is characterized in the traditional manner
via battles, the most obvious being in
the Coliseum tournament.
But this is also where the rest of our protagonists
kick into gear,
such as the wall facing off against Fujitora and Doflamingo.
And it ultimately ends with Aesop's quote
and quote defeat of sugar,
which reverts all of the toys to their regular forms,
which gives us act three beginning
with an uprising on Dressrosa,
as all of our key characters come together
in a combined effort to take down Doflamingo,
which sees an all-out wall begin in the country
and leads into Trafalgar flashback.
The tragic conclusion of which triggers the end
of act three. Then moving into act four.
This is where all the serious action plays out.
The members of the Don Kuruto family fall one by one.
And we have the climactic battle between Luffy
and Doflamingo,
along with all of the bird cage related drama.
And act four rather predictably ends
with Doflamingo's defeat that proclaiming that Luffy was
the winner and a wave of rejoicing spreading
across Dressrosa, which leaves us with act five,
where we have a swift conclusion to the acts.
Stuff like Rebecca reuniting with Kiros,
Fujitora's apology to King Riku,
the formation of the straw hat grant fleet,
and just every threat in the arc is tying together.
It's all concluded here in a nice snappy way.
And that is a five acts story.
It's not as clear to identify as Wano.
And to be honest, it is arguable where
the acts specifically break down.
I just went by the major bits, but it is all there.
And you can do the same thing to whole cake Island as well.
But I won't because I really want to talk about Wano.
But you can because that's how to writes these mega rocks.
So let's go ahead and do the same thing
with Wano only slightly tricky
because obviously it isn't finished yet,
but we have act one.
The Jo, this introduces us to the summary ask landscape
of Wano, the premise behind the plight of the nation,
as well as most of our major players.
Definitely not all, but we end on a profoundly dramatic note
with Luffy's defeat and subsequent imprisonment,
which sets up back to in much the same way
that Luffy entering the car to Coliseum sets up act two
of Dressrosa.
Very similar situation, actually with Luffy
being sequestered to a combat.
And that's one of one I took 16 chapters to complete,
which is quite a lot for order,
in comparison you could argue that act one
of Dressrosa was complete within three to five chapters,
but then again, Wano is a much longer story,
quite reflective of Kabuki plays,
which generally take a whole day to complete the program.
Although with that said rather fittingly,
that is more true for the core fabric of Dressrosa since
the whole lot essentially took place over
the course of a single day.
In any case after act one, we are then introduced to
the concept of interludes,
which I personally believe are the most brilliant idea
that Arda has incorporated into this Kabuki place game.
During those day long features,
the audience does take a break to digest
and reconnect with the outside world briefly.
And I think that this have been a much needed feature
of Wano because it almost makes every act,
feel like an entirely new arc.
Whereas with Dressrosa and Whole Cake Island,
for example, the acts blend together
and the feeling of fatigue becomes very, very problematic.
It's sort of like trying to sit through
the entire five acts worth of a day long Kabuki play
without a break at all.
And here's the fun thing we've been on Wano
for over two years now.
This arc began in July of 2018.
So actually it's getting close to the two
and a half year mark, and it really doesn't feel
like it's been that long, at least not to me.
Whereas approaching the two year mark
with Dressrossa and whole cake Island,
I was feeling very, very tired with the general setting
and I was quite anxious to move on.
And speaking of moving on, let's begin act two of Wano,
which actually appears to have been signified during
the chapter that ended act one,
which was 924 and titled Ha.
And if you've been paying attention,
you will know that this is incredibly significant,
considering that it paves the way for the beginning of
the Ha portion of the Jo Ha Kyu model.
I will say that the official English chapter is titled Huh,
as in H U H, which is reference of the noises
the straw hats make after seeing the news
of Luffy's capture.
And in Japanese, this Ha likely has a double meaning
referring to both the straw hat reactions
and the metal structure of Wano being Jo Ha Kyu.
But stuff like that is impossible to convey
in an English translation.
However, act two follows traditional Kabuki standards
being characterized by battles.
In one skim, we have Luffy at the center of all of
the action in the Impel Down Prison, but outside old,
the straw hats are also engaged in action
like services killer, versus page one,
both them coming together to protect Toko.
And of course, all of the Big Mom related incident,
it's incredibly similar to act two of Dressrosa
in that regard, lots of minor skirmishes building up
to a revelation and preparation for an all-out assault
in act three, which speaking of from here on out,
we will be dealing with spoilers for Wano.
So if you're in and may only watch her just not caught up
and don't want spoilers then, sorry,
but it does need to be done.
So act three of Wano commences, startlingly,
similar to act three of Dressrosa without forces uniting
to launch one key attack.
However, it would appear to flip the Kabuki model
by having the three moments of tragedy,
right at the beginning of the piece, rather than at the end.
So in this case that profound tragedy would be
on its flashback, which does satisfy the Kabuki criteria.
However, I must stress that generally
the events of act three are meant to lead up to
and culminate in great tragedy.
And the door is well and truly still open for exactly
that to happen with our current vassals versus
cutis situation.
And in this stage, I think we've already seen
the beginnings of it, but I suspect that act three
is going to end with their complete defeat
and potentially even a death.
And that's going to happen probably very soon,
bringing the curtain down on the darkest chapter
of this Wano play.
And that would then pave the way
for act four, which is going to be where all of
the traditional battles take place,
basically doing the standard thing of going from
our lowest moments then the momentum shifting
and the tides well, and truly beginning to turn seeing
the defeat of the beast pirates one by one
and culminating in however Kaido himself gets taken down.
And this could take quite a while going
by previous examples, I mean,
act four of Whole Cake Island was the whole running away
from Big Mom deal. And that was like 30 chapters long.
So this will probably be quite an impressive chunk
of action, but that doesn't mean it's all it would be.
For example, you might even see a kind
of flashback thrown in there.
So we have the full scope of his character prior
to his defeat, but that is most assuredly how act four ends
with an emperor of the seal even to being taken down.
And then we moved to act five,
which will be wrapping up all the loose story threads
on Wano, such as reinstalling, the Kirra Zuko family
and resolving relationships and parts forward for
the West generation members, having Aponte for gin Bay,
joining the crew and so on and so forth.
There is quite a lot to resolve on Wano,
but it will be done in a swift manner worthy of the queue.
And I imagine it would be by far the shortest of
the five acts.
And with all of that in mind,
at the time of recording this video, I can't help,
but feel like we still have at least one whole year left
on Wano In modern times,
we tend to average around 40 chapters
of One Piece per year usually
just below actually like 39 or 38.
And even with act three's imminent ending,
it is so hard to see act four
and five being told in less than 30 chapters,
especially when you consider that things
like Luffy versus Katakuri took almost 20 chapters
to play out.
And I don't think that Kata will be given
a lesser treatment than that.
But that is our path forward with water.
Right now, we are Smack Bang in the darkest hour
and I would prepare for some grand tragedy,
but followed by Glorious Victory with act four.
Although one interesting thought I do have as well,
is this whole Kabuki model being taken a step further,
or sort of Kabuki section, if you will.
And this is unlikely to happen during this act,
but just a thought for the future.
I have this incredible inkling that at some stage,
whether it be during a cover story about Wano or near
the end of the series that this whole conflict
was seeing play out right now is going to be turned
into an in world Kabuki play.
And we'll see actors on stage
and exaggerated makeup representing Luffy the straw hats,
kind of the vassals, the West generation, et cetera.
And even if it's only a single panel of a cover story,
I would bet quite a bit that this inbuilt historical event
is going to be turned into a Kabuki play.
Furthermore, in the real world.
I think there's also a very strong chance
of the Wano Arc becoming another super Kabuki performance.
I mean, they tackled Marine foot in Kabuki play
form already.
And the Wano Arc is perfectly catered to the format.
So really I don't see why not, but yeah,
just like the patient audience of any good piece
of Kabuki theater, I suggest that we all sit back,
relax and enjoy the rest of the program
because we still have a long day ahead of us.
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
or even subscribe to the channel
for more glorious One Piece business uploaded straight
into your YouTube feeds.
But for now this has been the Grand Line Review,
and I'll see you next time.