#doctor vegapunk

[shoespam]

Who daymn fat baby is this? MY FAT BABY THATS WHO.

Today is the day...April 13th...and at 11:15am (CST) I get to see my beautiful husband...for the last time (until later)

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

all of the vegapunks speak quite distinctly, and from what i’ve seen, they all use different personal pronouns with different levels of formality! going in order from what we’ve seen so far:

1: shaka speaks quite formally (for a man, which i’m loosely assuming he is)- he uses watashi as his personal pronoun, which places him in a neutral/formal spot, and uses kimi to address the strawhats (which is somewhat diminuitive/maybe a little condescending) but omae to address dragon (conclusion: ???).

2: lilith speaks like a stereotypical old man- she uses washi as her personal pronoun and the masculine omae as her ‘you’ pronoun, and tends to use ja as her sentence-ending copula instead of da.

3: edison speaks kansai-ben (though i don’t know enough to say if it’s a specific subdialect)- he self-references with wai, which is a dialectal variant of the washi pronoun that lilith uses, and ends his sentences with ya in place of the regular da.

4: pythagoras is, from what we’ve seen so far, the most polite of the satellites- he’s the only one to consistently use polite verb forms.

5: atlas speaks probably the most aggressively, which suits her general demeanor but is very incongruous with her actual appearance- she uses the masculine ore for her first-person pronoun and omae for ‘you.’

6: haven’t really seen york speak yet besides, like, noises.

[frankencanon]

One Piece Theory Regarding the Vinsmokes' Genetic Modifications — Specifically Their Eyebrows

(Hopefully this hasn't been done already...)

Hypothesis:

Vinsmoke Judge's research into Human Modification involved Devil Fruits. Specifically, he was trying to give his children Devil Fruit abilities without drawbacks such as a weakness to water and Seastone/Kairōseki.

Evidence:

Please take note of the image above. Notice any common denominators...? That's right, you guessed it — swirls! Every single fruit has swirls on it, whether on the body of the fruit itself or on the stem. And you know what else has swirls? The Vinsmoke siblings' eyebrows. In fact, if you look at certain fruits (such as the Gomu, Hana, Awa, Mochi, Bijo, and Ope fruits) you will notice that the stems look literally identical to the siblings' eyebrows. Coincidence? I think not!

Most of the siblings seem to each possess a unique ability that their fellow siblings do not share, almost as if they'd each eaten different Devil Fruits; Reiju has "Poison Pink" (poison fruit?), Ichiji has "Sparking Red" (spark fruit?), and Yonji has "Winch Green" (winch fruit???).

Thanks to Caesar Clown and his SMILE fruits, we know that it's canonically possible for a person to artificially replicate the effects of a Devil Fruit.

Caesar's faulty fruits lacked the distinct swirls present on actual Devil Fruits; Thus, there is likely a connection between the lack of swirls, and the fact that the SMILE fruits are faulty.

[Spoiler Alert for Chapters 698 and 840] Both Judge and Caesar based their scientific experiments on the "Lineage Factor" (referred to as the "blueprint of life itself, present in all living organisms") that was discovered by both Vegapunk and Judge working together — without it, neither the Vinsmokes' genetic modifications nor Caesar's SMILEs would have been possible. In other words, their experiments are intrinsically linked with one another.

[Spoiler Alert for Chapters 1077-1078] Vinsmoke Judge and Caesar Clown, both previously members of MADS — an illegal scientific research institute headed by Vegapunk himself — have recently joined forces to create their own organization which they have dubbed NEO MADS. Why is this relevant? Because if you consider the previous points of evidence... Caesar Clown has succeeded in creating faulty, mock Devil Fruits that are lacking the swirls characteristic of real Devil Fruits. Vinsmoke Judge has succeeded in creating genetically modified humans with superhuman abilities who possess swirly eyebrows reminiscent of Devil Fruits. Caesar has the fruits, Judge has the swirls... Combine them, and you just might get a fully functional artificial Devil Fruit.

...Okay, that got a bit away from there.

But what I was trying to say is that I believe the swirly eyebrows to be related to Devil Fruits since (1) they both have similar swirls, and (2) because I know that Judge and Caesar have recently teamed up, and the only thing that was missing from Caesar's SMILEs (visually, at least) was the swirls.

Creator of Non-Swirly Fruit + Creator of Swirly Eyebrows = Creation of Swirly Fruit. Yes?

Yes.

Also relevant: [Spoiler Alert for Chapter 1007] Apparently Dr. Vegapunk was able to create a mostly-but-not-totally-successful replica of a Devil Fruit — the Uo Uo no Mi, Model: Seiryu — that was unintentionally eaten by Momonosuke.

He was only able to do this thanks to his knowledge of the Lineage Factor, and access to Kaidou's own.

In other words!

TL;DR:

The creation of artificial Devil Fruits and the genetic modification of the Vinsmoke siblings are intrinsically linked via the Lineage Factor.

Because of this, I believe that Judge's genetic modifications and experiments on his children involved Devil Fruits in some way, shape, or form — and that is why their eyebrows swirl like the stems of Devil Fruits.

[eclemon]

Some people: One Piece is not political! One Piece: The government wants to kill the scientist who wants to find an energy source accessible to everyone and prevent future wars.

[paragonslegend02]

two done, four to go

[farsight-the-char]

Thinking about Kunishige Rokuhira and Doctor Vegapunk, both scientists who enabled great evil despite some noble intentions.

I need more info on the Seitei War and the general How of it before doing like, an essay, but there is much to think.

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Conspicuous Absence

Do I get to have this moment? The Two-Week Void. Right as we're pulling away. I just want to take a moment to really break down the structure of what we're seeing here. First, I'll just get it out of the way by pointing out if it bleeds into two weeks ago specifically for the Straw Hats...that would be roughly around when they're playing with armor in the grove and such. This is not a new concept to us with Egghead & Wano, it was the same with York's POV on all this. How it lined up well with the existing confluence of the Samurai's and Straw Hats's timeline. We're also doing this at the end of an arc that opens with rewriting a scene from Wano.

When these scattered threads start to make sense, time will be rewoven. I still have that vibe that line in "Us" is a promise. Remember I was looking at the arc this way before we saw the anime theme. Our first flurry of scenes that cleared misconceptions about known events ended and gave way to the revelation we skipped last night. Our mid-arc massive flashback that showed off the structure gave way to a reminder of that through showing Vega/Bonney apart from it. Now? Vegapunk's broadcast has concluded and we are seemingly getting away but taking the bulk of the chapter to go backwards. Fill in the gaps to re-contextualize the events of Egghead Island. It's my time to shine. Yay.

How much more will we see this style of storytelling going forward? Who knows, this could be the only chapter. If you've been following along with me though, you probably know what I'll say here. There's a lot of sides to Egghead you could do this with to great effect...and if you wanted to actually moonshot this shit into crazy twist territory Wano sorta left us with the perfect character to play these games around in Okiku. This is why I care about Drake so much, because he's a bridge too. And one that is well suited to have a chapter just like this right now. Stussy's kinda the same way; we got a great taste at the start of the broadcast that has been left hanging.

Last time we talked a bit about the connections to Whitebeard and by extension Oden/Izo in Emeth's sacrifice. Did anyone else get a tone of Yasuie out of Vegapunk's decision here? I could have done the "If I must die, I'll sell my life dearly" panel to really nail that. But it was the overall tone around that I couldn't unsee. How much it hammers the sides of Oden I've always compared Vegapunk to. We undercut some of the very serious element to all this and that type of storytelling invites comparison to another big Wano face who you can find on the cover.

This moment right here was where it all really hit what I was seeing. First off, that bit in the letter is ironically very amusing. Between that and Vega Coffee...Vegapunk is a man of the highest highs and lowest lows. This shit is soooo funny to me. The latter side though is on display too.

Anyone else get really annoyed at how quick he was to assume Lilith? That was scummy and it felt like the scene was highlighting that. Vega Prime was aggressive about accusing Lilith. That, undercutting the death speech, only a little self-reflection when you learned it was York, and even this letter like, contradicting somewhat the point of wiping your memory. In the exact same way your message whipped people up. It feels like the theme of this chapter is showing Vegapunk's flawed side very clearly. Seeing this after Oden by the way reminds me of a very iconic Brook line, death isn't an apology. It's not this panel by the way that does it, but the end of this letter does get cut off. A concept we've looked at a lot here and is also used...

It's subtle and could be a dead end, but this bit about preserving the cloud loft last minute was interesting because it is doing something special. Introducing a goal that was always there but we're only now learning about it.

I'll be watching Lilith and potentially Stussy closely going forward, but this chapter really did put us squarely in the territory I wanted to see right as we're finally coming out of the transmission.

[mingot-studios]

Lilith: I know over two hundred ways to kill a man. Aster: You could glue an open jar of rats to his face then blowtorch the other side of the jar so the rats have to eat their way out through his face.

Lilith:

Shaka:

Atlas:

York:

Edison:

Pythagoras:

Sentomaru:

Vegapunk:

Lilith:

Lilith: .........Two hundred and one.