And when I say Sanji gets treated like a female character in a battle shonen by the studios & audience I mean that!! I'm getting Sakura Haruno flashbacks here & I'm not happy.
This week’s cover story is a continuation of Yamato’s journey through Wano. I don’t blame y’all if you forgot what happened last time but the kids Yamato and Denjiro are having oden with were throwing stones at Yamato because they hated Kaido. Denjiro caught them and now they’re enjoying food together! This chapter seems to pretty definitively mark the end of Egghead and point us towards Elbaf but I wonder if there’ll be a reverie type of arc in the middle. All of the cutaways to the rest of the world in recent chapters makes me think we won’t, but Oda certainly could check in with storylines that we need to catch up on before touching down on Elbaf. I’ll go over some of the prominent storylines that could still pop-up but for now, catch this week’s discussion post below the cut!
Joyboy’s haki knocks out almost everyone and the giants talk about how it was a benevolent Haki that was greater than Shanks’, effectively setting up this Haki as the next big Power-Up Luffy has to secure. Alongside it I do recall a certain type of projected Haki that the Admirals used back in Marineford to protect against Whitebeard’s slash. That could be advanced Armament but I don’t know if there’s ever been a full confirmation around that. But setting up Haki as the final power-up is such a smart move because Luffy really gets to show off his resolve. As that’s pretty much all Haki is. I know everybody has differing opinions on haki but personally I think it’s such a genius addition to the story. Now I won’t get into debates of when it was added or thought of but think of it this way, Haki basically allows Oda to control the complexity of his fights. In a world where everyone has fantastical superpowers, some seemingly invincible such as many of the logias, the thing that can take them down is pure willpower. But willpower also isn’t the deciding factor, as we saw with Luffy’s fight with Katakuri and Luffy’s use of Snakeman. Oda uses the dial of Haki to simplify a fight while using Devil Fruits to complicate it or make it funner like with Gear 5. And Haki goes back to that shonen mainstay of willpower and the power of friendship. He basically turned that into a power system and made it complex through it’s relationship with the other power system. And now through storing technologies like knots, it gains another degree of complexity, albeit more trap-like instead of something active.
Another interesting thing is Luffy’s goodbye to Emeth. It carries with it a weight and I believe once we learn the full story behind the void century we’re gonna cry harder than Kuma’s backstory(you all cried too right? I’m not alone?). But alongside that we also see how big Emeth is and how small Luffy is in comparison. And I wonder if it’s not just Oda showing us their distance but also making a point about Joyboy being a giant. Because in the past Joyboy was small compared to Emeth but not as small as Luffy. So Joyboy could have potentially been a giant or maybe even a buccaneer.
And now finally, We’re off to Elbaf! But before we get to that and what other storylines we could see, I want to focus a bit on Vegapunk’s little flashback and the final mystery reveal of how everything went down. Oda loves a good mystery and as One Piece essentially is a big mystery, Oda cares so much about resolving them with the proper deference. First, let’s speak on the idea of death. How Vegapunk wonders what death will accomplish. And through this, Oda once again explores another facet born out of the theme of inherited will. How these pieces of us are left after our passing to carry on our legacy. In this case, through York and Lilith. Lilith, while supposedly being evil, is quite caring and more about appearing evil, perhaps showing that Vegapunk truly didn’t have much evil in him. Or what I think is more interesting is this commentary on what Evil really is. Between Shaka, who is supposedly good, and Lilith, who is supposedly Evil, and York, who is Greed, we witness a really interesting conversation on the nature of evil. Because Shaka is quite utilitarian and collectivist whilst Lilith is individualistic and “selfish” and yet not placed in a negative light. While York’s greed is. Shaka does things for the greater good of as many people as possible without thought to himself or those that have accepted their sacrifice, like the Stella. Lilith is concerned with keeping her and her’s safe and indulging in fun which we’ve seen through Luffy isn’t something that’s inherently bad, just an aspect of someone. Whereas time and time again we’ve seen the evil Greed brings. Even as far back as Skypiea with Calgara’s people dying to a greedy Kami that wanted their Vearth and Noland executed by a greedy King that wanted the Shandorians gold. So it’s through Lilith and York that we see how legacies live on. How “Inherited Will” works. How it can be passed on in the good and the evil. We can see it in other places, like Rosinante and Doflamingo or how many “Good” people carry the D initial but also people like Teach and Rocks D. Xebec as well.
One last thing I do want to touch upon in Vegapunk’s flashback is his insistence on saving his cloud creation technology. Pretty weird emphasis, huh? Just the insistence on it set my theory crafter brain into overdrive so let’s indulge in a little of that before we get to the end. I will admit, I had a completely unhinged set of theories here but I’ve pared it back into something a little bit more digestible.
Okay, so we know a few things. We know that there was possibly less sea and more land in the void century and prior. The world has become submerged in the meantime. We also have seen what increases the sea level. Or so we think. The Mother Flame and most likely Uranus can cut a whole through the planet and increase the sea level. However, so far we’ve only seen evidence of one other place like that, Enies Lobby. Now it could be that at the end of the grand line the sea is littered with these holes or something as unnatural as the red line displaced all that water. But, if we think back to Wano and how old Wano was submerged we can see that it wasn’t rising sea levels but excessive rain. Now, we’ve seen how rain can be induced through things like Dance Powder in Alabasta but what if it was also an unintended consequence. What if Joyboy was the first pirate but not one of the blue sea? What if he sailed the clouds? Clouds that he made to get to places he couldn’t otherwise as the world would’ve been covered mostly by land. And as an unintended consequence, we see a torrential rain that drowns the world. Personally to me, this piece of information really helps put in place some of the last few pieces in my personal theory of the void century. There’s still a few elements I’m not sure about but this does get me a lot closer.
Okay, with those thoughts out of the way, we can focus on Elbaf and beyond! As Ussop says, it’s his time to shine and we can expect a majority of the focus to be on him. But other than that, we’re also heading into the final parts of One Piece and we have a lot of things to wrap up. And with this arc directly inspired by Oda’s love of Vikings that also originally inspired One Piece in the form of the cartoon Vicky the Viking, we can expect Elbaf to be climactic and the conclusion of many storylines. So let’s go over it. While we won’t go over obvious players like Cross Guild and Shanks, we will take a look at some players that could be relevant that most people have forgotten about. Some things that I might expect quick resolutions to are what happened to Stussy. It’s my hope she becomes a nakama and we could see her pull a Robin and just join the crew on her own. It would set up quite nicely for a clash between Weevil and Bakkin too! And bring up questions of Stussy’s autonomy and humanity. We also have a prominent Giant we’ve only heard about that might make an appearance. Lola’s one time fiancee, Loki, the prince of giants. Alongside that we’ve also got some rookies and young pirates we haven’t seen in a while. Such as Urouge, who’s the last Supernova left without a significant story. We also have Bartalmeo who haven’t seen since he decided to burn Shank’s flag. If Kid’s punishment was anything to go by there’s a possibility that good ol Barto might be in trouble. Though there is a possibility that Shanks and barto bonded over Luffy. Finally, I’d love to see the return of the Whitebeard Remnants. Especially Vista as he seems to have a rivalry with Yassop. Other than that, Enel? This has been a very fun discussion post of slinging theories so thank you for reading if you got this far and I’ll see ya next time!
