#chapter 1107

[supernaturallyginger]

"Without you I can't become King of the Pirates!!"

[bobauthorman]

What is Blackbeard?

We've had hints across One Piece that something is Not Normal about Marshal D. "Blackbeard" Teach.

He has incredible stamina where it's said that he's NEVER SLEPT ONCE.

And being able to wield two Devil Fruits, which would normally kill someone.

But I think the answer could be found here, in Jaya...

This happens right after the Orange Town Trio get the Uplifting Speech from Blackbeard. We are initially led to believe that Luffy and Zoro have somehow sensed the connection between Teach and the other Blackbeards lurking around Mock Town.

But what if this is the Big Secret to Blackbeard's Power?

"Twice as much fun"

"Two Devil Fruit powers"

"More than one"

[strawhatdyke]

Sanji stocks through the roof but also Luffy laying out one of the Gorosei and then just bouncing around in front of Kizaru like -

!!!! No words just joy

[basedkikuenjoyer]

It's Just (ahh)...A Little Touch

Some rather massive implications of these new arrivals who get to work straight away smashing the ships. It's so nice and cuddly for me seeing Usopp geek out about the giants after all these years. I quite liked the lil recap panel too. Has a funky lil meta vibe with them looking up at the narration. The big guys are wrecking things, raises the question if we even need to get away so fast, but hey we're almost ready to do that anyways. Picking up where we left off last time though, there was something that stood out in terms of the quieter themes we've talked about.

Remember that we have something really interesting hanging over Usopp's long-awaited reunion with the honorable warriors of Elbaf after his biggest moment in Wano ends up being disillusionment with another culture of honor. It's a surprise for later.

We get an update on Zoro & Lucci. Which is fun enough, I'm more interested in Shark Daddy headed their way because it doesn't really seem like Marimo is struggling or anything. Specifically this line, this taunt from Lucci though. Someone cool pointed out it's a very interesting line to pair with this notion around Usopp and the Giants. It's somewhat of a subversion of the logic Usopp had around Kin & Kiku. They were begging him to do this with themselves, trying to one-up each other over being the sacrifice. Also see Vegapunk Prime for further entrenchment of the theme. I like how he leans on the plot of Enies Lobby and makes a callback in his taunting. Back to our main story though:

Okay this is funny. Firmly sets Bonney in "princess" territory but that's a moot point. Love reinforcing Luffy doesn't know or care much about this Nika element. Roasting a child though before bashing the powers that be? That's our lovable stretchy goof. Context is everything here though. Not just for Luffy, but for Sanji as well. He may be destroying the field of physics as we know it, but his swirly eyebrows reversed! DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNN!

Seriously though, it's doubling up on what happened with Luffy & Nika. Those are the two here, Vegapunk's saying he's done for and it's too late like a certain samurai that wasn't just trying to save his totally not surrogate daughter that Sanji's fight with Queen totally didn't lean on themes of or anything. And this was definitely, most assuredly not further reinforced by looping back in a power we noted was very interesting to reveal right after said samurai's spotlight in Act 1.

Tag! So it is Catarina and Augur actually though thanks to his fruit it's not really weird for him to be included and he potentially poofed Lafitte back or maybe he's still here. Either way the Blackbeard Pirates seemed to pull off a big coup here. If Catarina can clone Saturn now, that's scary. They can do a lot with that and it's cool we hint at a lil more of the mystery behind Teach himself.

Of course, Caribou coming full circle is interesting too. A lot of people saw this coming. He is a total Blackbeard simp and yeah that makes sense. He knows a lot about the anicent weapons. This could put Wano and/or Fishman Island at risk. Those are big possibilities. All in all, feels like Egghead is really escalating. Riding this line of moving to an apparent conclusion while hinting more and more something is amiss.

[moongothic]

Wait can u expand why this matters and what this means for crocodad?

For context, this is about a minor revelation in chapter 1107 that doesn't immidiately tie into Crocodile, but it is still spoilers, so under the cut this goes

Quick recap: So back on Fishman Island Caribou mentioned how he wanted to let "that person" know about Princess Shirahoshi being the Ancient Weapon Poseidon. After Wano Caribou once again was thinking about "that person" because now he could also let them know Pluton was in Wano For a long time, people were believing "that person" was Crocodile because we know he was interested in obtaining Pluton/had interest in Ancient Weapons, and some people believed the "X" on Caribou's shirt indicated he was like Mr 10 from Baroque Works or something. My personal argument against that had been that Crocodile should still believe that Pluton is somewhere in Alabasta, and made it explicitly clear he no longer had interest in that country. In other words, he should have given up on Pluton; so it's extremely unlikely he'd have people working for him looking for info on Ancient Weapons anymore, at this point. ADDITIONALLY only a few of the top Baroque Works agents KNEW about Pluton being Crocodile's ultimate goal, so even if Caribou had been a former BW member, he shouldn't know about Crocodile's interest in Ancient Weapons. There's also other shit but it's besides the point and doesn't matter anymore

But now, with this latest chapter, we know "that person" Caribou had always been wanting to go see was Blackbeard.

And just so we're clear; this doesn't prove Crocodad not one bit. But the reason I joked about it making Crocodad like "10% more real" is that... for Crocodad as I believe in it to become real, the story needs to develop in certain directions, and this turn of events is putting us on the right path for Crocodad. There's still plenty of time for the story divert away from that path, but it's the first step in the right direction

And I have vaguely discussed this before so I'll try to keep this vaguely short and simple but

If Crocodad Real (again, the way I've been suggesting it could be real), then to some degree Oda might need to make Crocodile 1) A slightly more sympathetic character, and 2) Not put him into a role where he'd be going up against Luffy and the Strawhats directly

Now needless to say, if Crocodile's goal with Cross Guild had been to obtain Ancient Weapons, create an evil military force and ruin people's lives, this would mean he's still just as much of an asshole as he was back in Alabasta (=not particularly sympathetic), and if he was going to head to Wano to try to take over the country to obtain Pluton... Yeah, he'd be making Luffy and co his direct enemies. Again. Of course, you could still do Crocodad in that scenario too, but it would definitely be in a much more Darth Vader-y kinda way. Except Crocodile would be both Vader AND Palpatine at the same time, and thus stopping him would not end in a heartfelt father-son reunion probably

BUT. Because we now know for sure that Caribou didn't want to gain Crocodile's favor with the info on Ancient Weapons, the chances the story would go down that route are far lower than before. It's not impossible mind you (like Catarina could refuse to take Caribou with them and with nowhere else to go Caribou could try Cross Guild, but what'd be the point in Caribou trying to join the Blackbeard pirates then), but it's more unlikely now

And if that story path has been essentially eliminated, that means the other story paths, including the ones that could lead to Crocodad, have become more viable options.

Of course, we still don't know what Crocodile's true goal is entirely, and we don't know how Buggy's mutiny is going to pan out. Like Buggy could potentially be forcing Cross Guild to join the race for One Piece, and if they legitimately did join the race, then yes, they'd be going up against the Strawhats. And there are people speculating if Buggy's "emotional speech" would "reignite Crocodile's dreams" and "make him legit want to become the Pirate King again". And yeah, if that was like spot-on, then that would make Luffy and Crocodile rivals. And as I mentioned, that wouldn't be great for Crocodad As I See It.

But if Crocodile's trying to mess with the World Government and doesn't want to join the race for One Piece or mess with Luffy... Then he wouldn't be in a rival/enemy role in the story, if anything he could be an ally, even. If his goal was to take down the corrupt WG, then that goal would be sympathetic. And this story path could be ideal for Crocodad. Telling a heartfelt story about a broken, traumatized man and letting him heal by reuniting with his estranged son will be much easier to do if the two characters aren't going up against each other and if we the readers don't completely hate the other character and want to see him get his teeth kicked in from the get-go.

And that's what I meant with the "Crocodad is 10% more real"

It's just a slightly more viable as an option and a path for the story to go down, but also far from confirmed yet

But hey, next time we see Cross Guild, I'm sure that'll also help us figure out how if we're heading in the right direction or not. And I'm sure that's coming within the next 13 chapters (Egghead's going to wrap up soon, I'm sure), get ready my dudes lmao

[supernaturallyginger]

jealous Bepo ready to beat a leopard with a bat

[moongothic]

Took a quick 👀 looksie 👀 at the spoilers for this week's One Piece chapter and oooooooooohhhh I feel vindicated my dudes ohohohoho

Okay so I didn't fully read the spoilers, I just kinda opened the spoilers, blinked and closed the tab. I saw what I saw and it was a breadcrumb

So "that person" Caribou's been wanting to offer the info on Pluton and Poseidon to has been Blackbeard this whole time. NOT Crocodile

I'm so

'Cause that just means a lot of my speculation about whatever direction the Cross Guild sideplot might go could be fucking accurate, and that's hype as fucking hell (for me specifically) (everything's coming up Milhouse)

Like Crocodile isn't actively trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, and Caribou wasn't working for him anyways (TOLD YOU SO), and so whatever the fuck Croc's planning, it's not Pluton

I'm just. Oooohhh Crocodad just got like 10% more Real, I'm so excited, let's go boys

[brave-symphonia]

That answers that.

I know there were a few theories as to who Caribou was going to reveal his secrets to, but I'm glad it turned out to be Blackbeard.

The Ancient Weapons and everything with them feels very much like an endgame development, so if he had ended up telling Kaidou or some other pirate, it likely wouldn't have ended up having as massive an impact as it could.

Plus, Blackbeard is really the only option left of all the big pirates out there.