Welcome to this sports playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today's guest is Sandhya Manjunath joining us from Bangalore, India. Sandhya is the founder of ATSI and other sports ventures in India. Today we're going to discuss basketball in India. All right, welcome Sandhya. Hi Catherine, how are you? Fantastic. Okay, so tell us about ATSI. I would start with the name ATSI. Each letter of the name stands for a whole sentence and that is awaken the sportsman in you. So that's a company I founded in 2016. I saw the necessity for a company like that in India and then just we went from there with the flow. All right, so you are a young entrepreneur. How old were you when you started your company? Okay, before I started ATSI, I had a couple of multiple pilot projects. So if you go back to the very first one that I started, I think I was 17 years old and then I kept moving up the ladder from there, working, reworking, deleting some ideas and just putting this whole ATSI together. When I had a solid business outline for ATSI, I think I was 23. Okay, so what does ATSI do? So ATSI is a unique company for the Indian market where we go into schools and provide physical education but for professional development, which means in India how things work is we get about an hour to two in an entire week for kids to play. And this is at the school level, right? So what ATSI does is we work with the schools and in that one or two hours, we send more than just one physical education teacher. We replace that physical education teacher with multiple coaches. So the student is actually getting professional sports training in those one or two hours and then once the student experiences multiple sports, they have a chance to pick which one they want to prioritize and then they take it forward from there. So we are an external vendor, service vendor I would call, who goes into public and private schools and provide professional coaching events and other activities for kids same time but extra education in terms of sports. So what sports do you cover? I know you cover basketball. Are there other sports that you cover as well? Yes, we've done in the past, it depends on what infrastructure the existing school has, which means our client, which is the schools, it depends on what infrastructure they have. But so far we've coached these many, we've coached basketball, football, cricket, badminton, archery, fencing, swimming, and we've also worked a little bit with cross-country running. So when you say football, you're talking about soccer? Yeah, there you go. I think we have to make that distinction for our American audience. Yeah. Okay, so have you run into any challenges in terms of safety or risk management challenges in having those instructors go into the schools? Well, absolutely yes. More than just a little bit of challenges, I would say, because like I stated earlier, ASEE is a unique sport management platform for the market itself. So when we initially started, people did not see what we were doing because especially in sports, it takes time for any results, right? So they were like, what are you doing? This is just too much, blah, blah, blah. So it started off like that. But the real challenges stepped in a couple of years later, where the weather was taking a huge hit. I don't know if you know this, but basketball in India is still an outdoor sport. So all these sports that I just mentioned are pretty much outdoor sports. So if you want to teach archery in an open space, you can imagine basketball on a cemented floor, you can imagine. So some of those simple challenges for the students side of it is their shoes get torn way earlier because they play on cemented floor versus and wooden flooring, right? And also that access to purchase of basketball shoes, they have to either get it imported or wait for somebody to travel down, who can bring them shoes from a country where basketball shoes are more common and or buy it online. Because if you walk into a shoe store in India, you're not going to find a pair of basketball shoes that easy. So these are some of the challenges that we as a company also have to address because if we are a professionally player development company, then we also have to facilitate these other drawbacks that we are facing because of absence of those products in the market. I just give you a small example of basketball shoe, but it also means finding the right basketball as simple as that or finding the right soccer shoes or finding the right badminton racket. So those were some of the teeny-meeny challenges that I was telling. But again, the huge challenges when COVID hit, schools closed, COVID hit and my coaches, like how do I had to train my coaches to teach sports online? Like this, like how we're talking, right? So imagine coaches sitting and looking into a computer trying to teach a kid how to dribble the basketball and we did it. And honestly speaking, we did it. My coaches picked up pretty fast and then we were able to train about three times more kids than we could do in person online because this time my market was across India. So I had students from multiple places log in on a computer and get those trainings from coaches. We had a 100-day record where we coached every day basketball online. So those are some of the things that I take pride in, but also when it came to decision-making wasn't that easy, especially when you're an entrepreneur of a unique company in a country that sees sports as just recreation and nothing professional. So you mentioned a challenge with weather. I would imagine that heat is a big issue. And then you would also have times that there was rain and wind. How do you deal with those issues? Well, a good example is today I had to call off class. So when I'm in India, I still go out there and be a part of the coaching programs and just be out there. So we had to call it off because it rained heavily here in the place. I live Bangalore, India. But some of the ways that we deal with it is we have a covered spacing, which is like a hall where people can sit and do yoga, meditation, a lot more stretching. And so we kind of use that space during our rainy days to improve our flexibility, our body control and all those things which we cannot pull out time for when we are actually on the field. So we use those. And also we do kind of work with weather prediction, but honestly speaking, it's not very accurate like how it's in this state. So it says it's going to rain. It doesn't. It says it won't rain and force. So the weather has always surprised me that way. So, okay, you have quite a social media presence to your athletes. Let's show some of your posts that now, and I noticed that a lot of them are about stretching. And tell us about why you focus on stretching and why you provide these social media posts that are like kind of inspirational to the kids. Yeah. So this goes back into my ACI employees being extra creative because there are times where you communicate with the kids a little too much in your 120-minute session. And how do you leave a mark in their brain about what you taught? So then my social media team came up with this idea saying, hey, we will use the picture of the person and then put out, put some quotes out. So the next day in practice, the coaches can question about what was the post talking about yesterday on social media. So this generation is more of social media people versus listening to their teachers or coaches or parents. And so we use that social media presence of our athletes to our advantage by teaching them what they really need to learn in a little bit creative way, I would say. All right. So now you are, I know you are an excellent basketball player and have a rich history in playing basketball. Tell us about that. Okay. So I initially started being an athlete. I was a long-distance runner, 1500 meters, 3000 meters runner back in school. And then I moved to being a swimmer for a little bit. And then at one of our school sports days, the chief guest, which is my first basketball coach, identified me at my speed, my flexibility. I don't know what he saw in me. He just said, hey, you should be a basketball player. You'll do good in it. And so I just gave it a shot and rest his history. So I started there. And then I was 13 years old. In the very first year, I represented my state at the national level, the very first year, like eight months into picking up a basketball, I was already wearing my state, which is Karnataka, Jersey. And I was representing my state at the national level. So that way, that was my small start. And then from there, I've played for this club called Beagle's for about 16 years now. And the last trophy I lifted was recently in 2017.  I'm hoping I get to play sometime this season as well while I'm here in India. So I've played at the national level at about 35 times, captain, the state team multiple times. So yeah, you're right. I have a little bit of a rich history back here when it comes to being a player. But eventually, I transitioned from being a player into being an events manager, because what I saw was the boys had more tournaments, the men had more opportunities versus the women. So I thought, okay, I will create my own events, I will put together some tournaments for women and men, just adding to the number of tournaments a women player can play in India. So I started there. And then I got recognized for my work. And the basketball Federation of India asked me to put together some volunteers and run the FIBA operations to a certain extent. And I took that up. The very first FIBA event I did, it hit me. Everybody I was working with lacked classroom knowledge. I don't think it's emphasized enough. Because if you go into anything untrained, then you do what you've seen, you don't do what is necessary, you just do what you've seen, right? So I realized that education, especially sport management education was the deeper role that I saw in the Indian sport industry. And then I realized I saw teams from New Zealand, teams from Australia, from like the southern part of Asia come together. And I saw that the people I was working with are good, extraordinarily good. But only thing that was lacking was they were not trained. And so they were not doing things right. They were doing things how they see fit. So, and then I started looking for sport management education in India where I can improve my knowledge. And to my surprise, we back then, four years ago, even today, have only seven programs across the country. We are the second largest populated country in the world. And we have only seven sport management programs. And these are just flavors, not like a full solid sport management program. So then I moved to the United States to get my masters and PhD. And I'm still thinking about how I can incorporate sport management education into India, either through Etsy or somewhere at some point where classroom education becomes a priority for any industry professional and to us the industry. So that's a long term goal. What I thought was really interesting about your story is that you had had to learn a number of languages. Is that right in order for you to succeed in what you do? Tell us about that. So, like I said, I've played 35 times at the national level, 13 years of playing basketball. I keep telling this to my friends back in the United States where how times all changes in the United States, like we have a different language being spoken every 100 miles. So, if you cannot learn multiple languages, communication becomes really, really hard, especially when you're a captain of some team with individuals speaking different languages, you better learn the language or teach them a common language. Otherwise, playing as a team becomes a challenge. So I can speak eight different languages and kind of learn it because of basketball. And then English is a common language, but not everybody can speak English while they play. A lot of women especially come from remote areas of the nation and where basketball is their only way of education. So it's very different when you play basketball in India because you have to learn different languages to be a basketball player. Not like they have to learn, but if you learn basketball, I mean, if you learn different languages, you can be a better basketball player. So that's another added skill that you have to learn to be outstanding. And, you know, that's so different than the United States because, you know, language is not even relevant in the U.S. basketball, but there's something else that's kind of interesting in the U.S. When you do anything sport wise, you have to sign a liability waiver to participate in whatever area. In India, does anyone sign a liability waiver? See, these are some things that classroom learning that I was talking about earlier bring to the picture. No, we don't. At least to the best of my knowledge, lately few of the event managers have made it a priority to sign the liability waivers or get it signed by the players who are participating or the players just being sensible about what these liability waivers are. Like if I walk into a college tournament that's being organized somewhere in my locality and ask, did you sign a liability waiver? They would be like, what is a liability waiver? Right. Right. So some places have installed this entire process of liability waiver just being cautious about everything that goes into the system and things like that. But I would say 90% is still on the no, no sign. They don't know what it means and things like that. And again, all this is taught to event managers when they go to school and learn from it. So yeah, no, it's very different in the States. It's way more organized, but in India, we have everything. It just needs to be organized. Sure. And you also have some other entities as well. I understand you have a sports event management staffing company. Is that right? Yes. So what we do is we identify people who are interested in sports, but since due to lack of opportunities, they pursue different careers. What we do is we create a platform. We create a platform where they can volunteer their time in different sporting events. So we act as a pipeline where people can sign up with us and then they can be volunteers at certain sporting events. So in this pipeline, I kind of make it my mission to give them the basic education that they need before they enter the industry. So that's a little form of my knowledge sharing. And then we staff a lot of people like that into the events. Do you have to vet those people who are volunteers or hired, especially if they're working with youth? Yes. So when I worked for the FIBA event and when ACI was approached to staff about 250 people, I went to different universities, different organizations to vet these people. But I had to interview multiple people just before picking. But at some point, people don't vet. They pick anybody who's available. And in terms of vetting people, the eligibility criteria, there's no eligibility criteria. Okay, you're interested. Come let's, let's take you in types. But I understand the need for vetting, especially when you work with the youth. In my case, what we did is we interviewed people, we asked for reference. So somebody had to refer them. They cannot be walking in and talking for themselves.  That was a very basic step of background check, but that is the least we could do here. But now things are moving the corporate way where people are getting background check done before they work with youth. But again, 90% is still not there yet. And I understand you've been doing some coaching in the US. Let's show the pictures and why don't you, as we show them, tell us about it. Sure. So this is my voice team in the United States, where I work with Coach Kia Whitley. This is the Lessema organization. And this is my eighth grader team, one of the best teams in Harrisonburg, Virginia areas. Till today, there's no single tournament that we haven't reached the finals. So I'm trying to implement some of the Indian coaching methodologies in the United States and it's working wonders for me. So yeah, I think I'll keep that going.  And this is my girls team. My first team that I coached in the United States, proudly the strict champions of the 2022-23 season, Thomas Harrison Middle School, again in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area in the United States, where I've been working with them for a few months now and we've accomplished quite a bit. And what tricks do you have or techniques you use in India that are helpful in the US? Well, here's the thing. I am very, very friendly as a coach, but I don't become their friend instantly. So I have a certain line drawn between me and my players and when I speak, they listen. I make them listen because these kids get distracted easily and there has to be someone who has to be bossy with them but also their best threat. So finding that balance as a coach in between I think is my drum card skill as a coach. All right. Tell us about this picture. So the beauty about James Madison is that they create an outside classroom teaching methodology and this is our experiential learning trip to the final four, women's final four in Dallas that happened in the month of March where I, along with another professor, Dr. Hallman, we both put together a program where we took students to Dallas to work as volunteers. So I believe and I'm sure most of the professors in my industry understand this that one event like this can teach a student what we teach an entire semester. So they get hands-on experience with multiple professionals and they really see what goes into an event. So as much as I can teach out of a textbook, I can only talk to them, but experiential learnings like this teach them a lot like in 24 hours or this particular event was for about a week but the students did get to learn a lot. So this is an experiential learning trip to Dallas and I think I enjoy teaching students like this versus just in the classroom. So as a professor at James Madison University in Virginia, what do you teach? I teach event and facility management. That's my favorite to teach and I think since I have that kind of experience in the industry, I can talk to experience and teach better but I also teach a lot of practical classes introduction to sport management back in Texas Women's University where I got my MSPHDF taught a little bit of sports law but a lot of sports governance, international sports. I've also taught women health. Those are some of the areas that I go when I teach. Okay and so we recently went to the World Association of Sports Management conference in Doha, Qatar. What was your poster presentation shown in this picture? So this is about sport management research in India and the need for it, the absence of it and how I was one of the very, very few Indian research scholars who are presenting at the World Association of Sports Management for the very first time. So I was just trying to put India on the world map there. Fantastic and then let's show some of the other pictures there. That's you at the Olympic Center posing in front of the wasm and let's show we went all around the country to see FIFA World Cup Stadium and so here is our group, three professors at James Madison University and myself and do you remember what stadium that was? I can't remember. It was one of the first ones that we went to. We went about eight stadiums that day so if you ask me which one was which I need to do my research on that. I can't remember either and so let's show the pictures on the Cornish with, oh that was one of the stadiums. That one looked like cheese, that stadium. We had our own names for those stadiums remember? Right exactly and then there's that one on the Cornish with you and the sign as well. This is in Doha and yeah there we go. I love this moment. Yeah yeah we really enjoyed that but anyway Sandhya thank you so much for being my guest today. I hope everyone learned a little bit more about sports in India and basketball in India. I hope so too and thank you for having me. It's an honor and I hope this reaches many people and I can be a little bit informative to anybody who sees this show and good luck for y'all and thank you for being great. All right anyway Sandhya is such an inspirational person but thank you to our viewers for joining us today Mahalo and Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Ace has a lot to answer for in One Piece. I mean, I'm not saying he's responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened in the series, but it's more like, you know, 94%. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review your source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and the weirdest piece of One Piece merch I own is probably this Dress Rosa Monopoly set. I don't even like Monopoly. I don't know why I have this. But we are here today to essentially examine how one individual character is almost single-handedly responsible for the events of pre-timeskip One Piece. As well as for how and why the world radically reshaped afterwards. And that man, surprisingly enough, is not Blackbeard. I mean, he certainly does get a lot of credit. In fact, at this point, he has more credit than he does teeth. However, there is no one more responsible for the way we see the world today than one podcaste Ace. Within his once fiery fist was the power to radically change the course of this story.  Were it not for three horrendous lapses in judgment from Ace, I'm gonna go ahead and say that Whitebeard would still be alive or at least dead from natural causes. In addition to that, Ace himself would still be alive and the planet would not have fallen into complete chaos. You know, it's little things like that that could have been prevented at any stage during these three mistakes. And we are going to begin this exploration with a quick round of Ace, but in space. A very simple minigame, the rules of which are as follows. Fort Gastiae has somehow found himself in outer space. Fear not though, because someone is on their way to rescue him and it is going to be your job to guess who that is going to be. Now, should you guess incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, also resulting in consistent injections of one piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. Meanwhile, if you are correct, then you too will be shot into space. So another high stakes game here. But who is on their way to rescue Ace? Is it Space God and El, First Lieutenant Spacey, or Marco the Space Phoenix? Please do select your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one. And bam, it was First Lieutenant Spacey and his wonderful moustache. So if you guessed incorrectly, then you know a thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. So Ace and his three mistakes. I want to immediately state that what we're about to go through is not a critique of one piece or how Ace was written as a character. Nothing will be detailing constitute something scandalous, like a plot hole or some kind of manga sin. Everything makes perfect sense in the context of Ace. He is a deliberately flawed character, like very, very flawed, which is a very, very good thing. Perfect characters tend to be quite boring. But the key to Ace's downfall is actually best summarized by of all people, Captain Blue Jam. In chapter 587, when Ace comes face to face with this disgrace, Blue Jam actually offers an intriguing mcnugget of wisdom being, only two types of people survive on the battlefield, the strong and the cowardly. The brave always die first. That's how it's always been. And sure, Blue Jam is a despicable villain thing with these weird, like, crenellating teeth. Actually, I've never understood if he, like, if he ripped out half of his teeth just to achieve that effect, but he isn't wrong. And I don't think that young Ace disagreed with this sentiment either. He did, however, heavily misjudge which of these roles he fell into. From Ace's perspective, he clearly viewed himself as the strong, which he was rewarded for on this, as well as many other occasions going on to defeat Blue Jam with the assistance of Dodan. And that was a hit of positive reinforcement that would go on to eventually doom Ace. Because the thing is, unless your name is Edward Nugget, Charlotte Linlin, or Kaido, uh, Kaido Dragonman, unless your name is one of those three, you are not always necessarily going to be the strongest in any given battle. And when you misjudge your role on someone else turns out to be the strong, then that makes you the brave, which is unfortunate because as we now know, they are the first to die. A prophecy that Ace would indeed go on to fulfill. However, before that, this transitions rather smoothly into Ace's first grand mistake, which is electing to pursue Blackbeard. After the murder of Thatch, Ace was understandably quite emotional and decided to take vengeance all on his own. In doing so, he ignored the advice and wishes of his fellow crewmates slash brothers and even ignored the orders of his father figure Whitebeard. This was a mistake for two reasons. One being that in this case, Ace heavily misjudged what his role on this future battlefield would be. When he set out to deal with Blackbeard, Ace no doubt saw himself as the strong. Ace significantly underestimated Blackbeard's true capabilities and had next to no information regarding his devil fruit or even his newfound crew. Ace essentially chose to run head first into a big old question mark, confident in his allegedly supreme power. I don't know if I'd go so far as to use the word arrogant, but it was certainly youthful ignorance. Youthful ignorance. That's like the most old man thing I've ever said. The second part of this mistake is that Ace's actions were completely unnecessary because remember he embarked on this quest for almost entirely selfish reasons. He wanted to take vengeance for thatch and even worse, Ace wanted to do this for Whitebeard's honor. His exact line is, I won't let anyone dishonor your name. I am gonna set things right. Which is selfish because Whitebeard himself had no concern for honor. He just wanted to keep the rest of his son safe. So Ace very much ignored the wishes of all of those around him in favor of a personal mission. And motivation is important because a lot of people will make the argument that, hey, Ace went after Blackbeard, stop him doing future evil thingos, which, well, it's just not the case. Ace did this for vengeance and honor. And in doing so, he unwillingly assisted and even accelerated Blackbeard's plans, all of which happened completely unnecessarily. But that's very much who Ace is, a 20-year-old emotion-filled and logear-fuelled powerhouse of the Grand Lion. And it's just very unfortunate that he ended up being the center of this particular storm. That's not it though because Ace does have another fatal flaw as revealed in his flashback. Not only does he perpetually consider himself to be the strong in any given situation, but he also developed a powerful philosophy of never running away. In fact, this was first revealed to us in chapter 587, which is even titled, I Will Never Run Away. However, these two attributes are generally a terrible combination which will further lead to Ace's classification as the brave. Ace II, and I would argue most costly mistake, was not running away during his fight with Blackbeard. There was a point during their clash on Benara Island where it became clear that he would not emerge victorious and staring defeat right in its misshapen martial-de-teach-shaped face, Ace simply said, if I bow down to power, what's the point in living? I'll never live my life with regrets, which is an incredibly strong statement. And I would give him a lot of credit for that, were it not for the fact that he immediately came to regret his actions. Because the reason why this is Ace's most costly mistake is because it sparked the entire paramount war, which we should remember is something that would not have happened without Ace's intervention. Originally, Blackbeard's plan was to become a warlord of the sea by capturing Luffy, which, if successful, would not have prompted the world government to stage such a theatrical execution, and even more, it would not have prompted Whitebeard to invade Marineford. It's only because Ace was defeated here that any of that happened. And to anyone who may want to say that Ace could not have predicted Blackbeard's plans to become a warlord, I mean, no, maybe not as precisely as it happened, but Blackbeard did tell Ace almost exactly what he was planning to do with Luffy, so a more level-headed person likely would have understood the stakes slightly better. But the biggest of problems here is less that Ace underestimated his own strength, but more that he underestimated how much other characters loved him.  Whitebeard drinks, Luffy punches things, and Marco has birdie snacks. But instead of any of that, Ace was captured, and everyone who had ever known him showed up at Marineford to risk their lives just for him. It was the complete inverse of everything Ace believed, which you see a bit of during his final moments where he thanks everyone for loving him, because that just wasn't a thought that had occurred to him prior to that moment.  But this is where his deep regrets start to seep in. Not seep in actually, it's more like a bursting dam of regret that showers Ace in regretful liquid. There's this beautiful scene in chapter 552 where Ace can't understand why Whitebeard just hasn't given up and left Ace to the fate that he crafted for himself, to which Whitebeard stunningly responds with, no, I sent you on that mission, my son, which is so gut-wrenching and just very classically one piece. This series has a well-defined motif of parental figures willingly and even lovingly paying for the mistakes of their children. Another example that comes to mind is Tom and Frankie, but even Shanks and Luffy is a solid thought. Luffy confronted Higginman the Bear because he dishonored Shanks, or actually from Luffy's perspective, Shanks dishonored himself. Either way, he went after the bandits, Luffy was taken captive and Shanks had to sacrifice an arm to keep Luffy alive. He paid for the mistakes of the child and he did so willingly and lovingly. It's actually not too dissimilar from Ace's situation with Whitebeard actually, except that Luffy and Shanks did have a much happier ending. Marine for Ace is a very interesting character though because it's probably the biggest moment of growth for him. It's the first time that Ace had really had to deal with the consequences of his actions, which were now quite literally threatening to destroy the balance of the planet. And because he recognized his choices so far, I led to this. Ace went on to adopt a completely neutral perspective for most of the war saying, I don't care what the future holds for me, I accept it. I reach out to the hand that offers me help and I accept the blade that would execute me. I won't fight anymore. I'm sorry, everyone. And look, this lesson, it came a bit late and in the most dramatic of circumstances as he watched both his father and all of his brothers risking their lives to save him, but better late than never, eh?  Because after having accomplished the impossible and finally becoming a free man once more, Ace repeated mistake number two, which makes this mistake number three, only this time against a much more deadly opponent. Ace's third and final mistake is that he did not run away when being confronted by Marine Admiral Arcaino. And I'd like to point out that at this stage, Whitebeard's death was set in stone. Nothing was preventing that. Mistake number two had ensured it, but as such, Whitebeard issued a final command. These are my final orders as your captain. Listen carefully, Whitebeard Pirates. It's time for us to part ways. You must all survive and return to the new world, which is like an honorable way of telling everyone to run away. Something which Ace has a well-established version to and all it took to tap into that were some playground insults from one Arcaino. The Whitebeard Pirates are a pack of cowards, but considering who your leader is, that's no surprise.  I mean, a playground kid probably doesn't use the word bygone, but the rest of the insult is something you would expect to hear from a five-year-old. But this was actually a piece of strategic brilliance on the part of Arcaino, knowing exactly how to trigger Ace, who immediately turned around and said, hey, you take that back. Which, no, is not the strongest of comebacks, but by this point, we all know that Ace is not the strong, he is the brave. And he would be the brave all the way to the grave. The key factor here being that when Ace stopped running to send back his childish comeback, Luffy also stopped running. And during Ace's spat with Arcaino, Luffy reached his physical limits and became defenseless in the worst possible spot on the entire battlefield. And look, I'll admit, it's hard to tell exactly how things would have worked out if Ace had kept running because Luffy, assumedly, would have collapsed at some stage anyway. But what I will say is that Ace stopping to pick a fight with the strong was the worst possible course of action in this situation because it further endangered his brother, it directly disobeyed Whitebeard's final order and it actively negated everything that the Whitebeard parents had sacrificed just to ensure Ace's safety.  And I just find it very interesting that after having the epiphany about how his irrational actions had sparked a global war on the execution platform, Ace fell back on his fatal character flaw right at the last second, which once again is not a critique of One Piece or Ace. I think it's quite morbidly beautiful that Ace was simply doomed by who he was. And in the end, he took responsibility for that by sacrificing himself for Luffy. It's a very almost Shakespearean tragedy. But with that said, if Ace had not made three arguably simple and unnecessary mistakes, we would be looking at a very different series. Pursuing Blackbeard was a pursuit of hubris, not even attempting to retreat from Benara Island was shockingly poor judgment and confronting Akayunu in the worst possible moment during Marineford confirms that Ace didn't actually learn from his first two mistakes. And there's only so many you can make in this world before the consequences become rather deadly. Even more so than Blackbeard, Ace is responsible for the series as we see it to this very day, which is what I love about the character because Ace shows how small flaws and decisions can result in these gigantic world-shaking ripples, which is also something that we consistently see and love from Luffy. And speaking of Luffy, he isn't all that different from Ace, if at all. Luffy is also someone who I would consider to fit the role of the brave, rather than being the strong or the coward. The difference being that Luffy has fate on his side. Without all of the inherited Welsh Nanagan remake, no mistake, Luffy likely would have ended up dead or permanently imprisoned long, long ago. His mistakes are supported and even encouraged by fate, whereas Ace was subject to a, well, a more human existence. And unfortunately, there are only so many mistakes that us average people can make. And it would be a great mistake if you want to check out more videos on this channel such as this one examining the real-life figures who inspired one-piece characters. Lots of fun to be had, so I look forward to seeing you there.


Yamileh and I met 11 years ago through mutual friends. She proposed, I said yes, of course. We got married in Canada, that was 10 years ago. We face a country where for decades nobody talked about some human rights. The situation is complex because we still face any recognition under the law. Black, gay, woman. I'm checking a lot of boxes here. I'm encountering a lot of denials and complexities. We'd like to see everyone be able to pursue employment and be a part of what makes Panama great. Panama is a country that has changed dramatically towards recognizing the rights of LGBT rights and minorities. We challenge all the political candidates to put on their agendas where they stand on human rights. The Office of the High Commission for Human Rights, we have been accompanying civil society organizations, national institutions, people affected to demand their rights. And we're very helpful that there's going to be a point a time soon where the Supreme Court is going to say you are allowed to be married. Panama should carry that legacy of a country who supports human rights not only here but in the world.