(SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 1163)
The title for this chapter is 約束 (yakusoku), or promise(s). There are a lot of promises made in One Piece, but to me the idea that always comes to mind are unfulfilled promises, like Zoro's promise to Kuina and Brook's promise to Laboon. In fact, chapter 104 is called 約束の岬 (yakusoku no misaki) or cape of promise(s), where both Brook and Luffy promised Laboon they would return one day. But there are three examples in particular I think make even more sense in this context, and they are Joyboy's promise to Fishman Island, Noland and Kalgara's promise in Skypiea, and Oden' speech to the Roger Pirates
Both in Fishman Island and Skypiea, there was a promise made hundreds of years ago, and while we still don't know the specifics of Joyboy's promise, it's safe to assume it involves the people of Ryugu Kingdom being taken to the surface on the Noah arc. And the Shandians have been fighting for 400 years to ring the Golden Bell of Shandora in order to signal to Noland and his descendants that they were still there, waiting for them
Chapter 958 is called 約束の港 (yakusoku no minato) or port of promise(s), and it's about the place where the rebellion's allies were supposed to converge before the raid on Onigashima. But that chapter actually begins with a flashback of Oden talking about going back to Wano and why the country needed to keep its borders closed, with a promise to open the land of Wano in the future
[Sidenote, that's an interesting timeframe he gave, isn't it? This is approximately 25 years before the present time and 5 years before Oden's death and Toki's prophecy, so why did he say 20 years in the future, specifically? We know Roger said they were too early, but I don't think he said how long exactly]
These three cases are all about promises made and left unfulfilled, and they all in a way involve people trying to connect and being unable to (Fishman Island with the surface world, Kalgara with Noland, Wano with the rest of the world), kind of like Vegapunk's message about people being isolated and the last lines in the Harley text about how "they will never meet". And all of the promises were/will be fulfilled by the inheritors of the original people's Wills. The Shandians rang the bell (thanks to Luffy), Momo will one day open the borders (to help Luffy, probably) and the promise at Fishman Island wouldn't have been mentioned if it wasn't going to be fulfilled too (by/for Luffy, the inheritor of Joyboy's fruit)
When Rocks says that "promises are meant to be kept", it could be he's talking about when he invaded Marijoa and told Imu he would be back, "right here". Now, "here" could mean Marijoa, as he claimed he wanted to show his crew the peak of the world, or it could mean facing off against Imu. Either way, as Rocks called Imu "the world" last chapter, it seems that both meanings can apply now
Imu says that because of this, you (plural, so supposedly the Davy Clan) must be erased from history. Which is kind of sad, because it did happen. In the present, Davy Jones is just a legend and a game, and almost nobody has ever even heard of Rocks or the Davy Clan
It's also possible that Rocks is talking about a different promise, between Davy Jones and Imu, which would be an interesting parallel with Joyboy's promise to Fishman Island, both made 800 years ago. If it's a promise passed down to Davy Jones' descendants, it would also resemble Noland and Kalgara's promise, carried on by each new generation. Of course, in both of those the connotations were positive, which isn't the case here
I can see it being either interpretation, or even both. Imu could be angry at Rocks' presumption to threaten him in Marijoa, and/or at an 800 year long fight against Davy Jones and his clan
The pirate says that Imu is 無差別 (musabetsu), which means indiscriminate. To Imu and the Five Elders, everyone who lives on the surface is the same, small and insignificant, the only distinction being that some of them (like the Marines) are useful to them on occasion
That guy says that being attacked by Imu/Saturn is 興味深い (kyoumibukai), or very interesting. I'll be honest, I have no idea what he means by that. Is the pain different? Saturn by himself appears to have poisonous legs, but does that extend to this case too? Could it be the poison's effects that are interesting? Or could Imu now Domi Reversi these people too? I had thought before that they needed to flip that pentagram in order to do that, but apparently just impaling Rocks is enough, so who knows
Also Gaban saying "not again" seems to imply that Roger has a habit of going off on his own and causing trouble for everyone, which is very Luffy coded
In Egghead it's established that low ranking Marines can't even look at one of the Five Elders, but there are too many Marines present in God Valley to all be rear and vice admirals, and they all saw not only Saturn but also Imu, so I guess not one of these men are expected to leave this island alive, which makes it even more interesting that Dragon, a rookie, manages to survive. Did he smuggle away without getting caught? Did Garp bargain for his son's life in exchange for his silence and cooperation? (I can see it, but there is the fact that I can't see this happening and Garp still trying to get his grandsons to join the Marines in the future, if the reason he stayed was to protect Dragon). Maybe they didn't kill the Marines who were there but didn't see anything, since Bogard is also there and still alive in the present. Also, Garp is technically in some hot water himself, actively attacking what he thinks is one of the Five Elders, so I'm not sure he's in a good enough place to bargain for other people
If this is Garp's first time seeing one of the Five Elders, then there's no reason for him to think that anything is different about Saturn, which is probably also true for most of the others there with the exception of Rocks, who has actually met Imu and recognized them
I'm not the first person to say this, but Imu sprouting from Saturn's head looks very much like a cordyceps fungus, those parasitic fungi that inspired The Last of Us, which mainly infects insects (like those zombie ants) and other arthropods like spiders. So it's very funny that Garp says
ウジ虫共のトップは相応の姿してんだな
a suitable form for being at the top of maggot-like insects
[If Imu looks like a fungus, can I make a joke about how when Rocks calls them rat king he's getting the wrong kingdom (like animal kingdom and fungi kingdom)? Sorry.]
Imu says that their world is still 未完成 (mikansei), which means incomplete, unfinished, or imperfect, suggesting that there they do have a plan and an end goal here. It's possible this goal is related to the original war between the 20 nations and the Ancient Kingdom, and I'd guess it involves flooding the rest of the world, leaving only the people living in high places (like the top of the Red Line). It would also explain those megastructures that are being built around the world for the past 700 years, where at least one of them, Tequila Wolf, is a gigantic bridge that could also survive a mass flood
So Dragon still has faith that the Marines are the good guys here, or at least that they were misguided and misinformed, like he was. It makes sense, he's mostly seen the Celestial Dragons killing people, he didn't see the Navy ships opening fire on the civillians asking for help, and he hasn't really had any time to stop and think about what it means that the Marines are there to serve those same Celestial Dragons
Regardless, no good could have really come from it if he had managed to reach the ship. Either they would recognize Shanks and give him back to Garling, or they would assume he was just another civillian and kill him or put him back on shore, or they would take him, and we already know how much Cipher Pol likes orphans, especially one who would grow to be as strong as Shanks. Ironically, Shanks owes his life and freedom to Captain John and Kid's future Jiki Jiki Fruit
So many attack names! I'm going to take an absurdly long detour here, be warned
Ganzui having what appears to be Mr. 5's Bomb Bomb Fruit from all the way back in Whiskey Peak looks like such a random choice of fruit, though if you think about it, Whiskey Peak was also about a bunch of colleagues all fighting and stabbing each other in the back. His attack name is a pretty literal translation of both the kanji and the furigana
Captain John's Big Eater, though, has both layers and a pun. The furigana reads ビッグイーター (biggu iitaa), or Big Eater, with the kanji 暴贖握磁気. 暴 (bou) means violence, 贖い (aganai) means redemption or atonement, 握る (nigiru) means to grasp or clutch, and 磁気 (jiki) means magnetism, so something like Violent Redemption Magnetism Clutch. However, 暴贖 can also be read as boushoku, and 暴食 (boushoku), which sounds the same but is written differently, means gluttony or overeating. And 握磁気 can also be read as akujiki, and 悪食 (akujiki) means eating strange food, so Overeating Strange Food, aka Big Eater
I like that, while there are some similarities, the naming conventions of past and current devil fruit users are mostly unique to each one. Captain John, for example, doesn't have Kid's punk aesthetics, so his attack doesn't have the punk themed name we see with Kid's moves
I've already talked about Galaxy Impact and Divine Departure before on the post for chapter 1156 (both celestial themed, one astronomical and one religious)
We've seen it already, but Linlin's attack is 威国 (ikoku), with 威 (i) meaning power, authority or majesty, and 国 (koku) meaning country, so something like Sovereign Nation, maybe? It's translated as Ikoku Sovereignty because it seems to be based on Dorry and Brogy's Hakoku Sovereignty, written as 覇国 (hakoku), with 覇 (ha) meaning supremacy or hegemony. Also, written as 異国, ikoku can also mean foreign country, which makes sense since the giants won't allow her in their country
I think it's hilarious that Kaido just yells 龍 (ryuu), which means dragon. To be fair, he had literally just eaten his fruit like five minutes ago, so he gets a pass on not coming up with names and puns yet
Rocks' attack is 深淵の呪い, with the furigana パンデモニウム (pandemoniumu), or Pandemonium. 深淵 (shin'en) means ravine or abyss, but not like the Abyss that the Five Elders and the God's Knights travel through, which is read like "abyss" but written like "pentagram"; 呪い (noroi) means curse, so literally Curse of the Abyss. Pandemonium is the capital of Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost, and an abyss is a bottomless pit that leads to the bottom of the sea, or the underworld, or to hell, so I take it his attack means "I curse you to the big hole that leads directly to hell" lol
I think this is the first time we see Whitebeard name an attack, and I found it kind of an odd name, or at least difficult to translate. It's 破空阿 with the furigana ハクア (hakua). 破 (ha) means break, rip or tear, and is possibly related to 序破急 (johakyuu) which, according to Wikipedia, is a "concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts" and means roughly "begin, break, hurry". 空 (sora, but can also be read as kuu) means sky, empty air or void. I'm not really sure about 阿 (a), it could be from 阿字 (aji), the first sanskrit alphabet letter (that अ symbol that some people visualize to meditate? I'm very much not an expert) that can be associated with emptiness or blankness, but is also considered like a seed, a primordial letter, the essence of all mantras. Something like Primordial Void Breaking is my best guess. The funny thing is that 白亜, also read as hakua, means chalk. I assume the kanji meanings are based on how his power looks (ripping or tearing at empty space) and the chalk thing is because it looks like his moustache? Also it has the kanji for white (白), like in Whitebeard. TCB chose Shattering Void, which kind of works, and the official translation chose to go the Ikoku Sovereignty route and called it Chalk Hakua, which is just a mix of the original name with one of the readings, but makes absolutely no sense without context lol
All of the people who attacked Imu had Conqueror's Haki, though maybe they didn't know to use Advanced Conqueror's on them? Either that, or that approach doesn't work on Imu and/or the Five Elders, just the God's Knights
The only people seen being knocked out by the haki blast are the Marines, I wonder if it's because they were closer, while the Roger Pirates, Dragon and Shanks are all trying to get away from where the fight is happening (or they're all immune to it, which is always a possibility, though I'm more inclined to believe that even insane-haki-wielding Shanks must have had a hard time resisting as a literal baby). When Imu used a haki blast in Elbaf it didn't affect everyone, but I saw it as them being selective (like Luffy in Fishman Island), and Luffy and company felt it even in the Underworld, but it wouldn't make much sense for Imu to just want to affect the Marines right now
So, is this a Naruto reference? More importantly, is it just a Naruto reference? Because we can see Dragon hitting the ground with Shanks in his arms. The next time we see him, there are little movement dashes on his back suggesting he's rolling over, and there's still dust everywhere from things falling down, so it doesn't seem like too much time has passed since he fell, but there's already a piece of wood in his arms instead of the baby. If Shanks fell out from the impact, wouldn't he have cried? They seem to have literally just finished falling down, exactly how fast is that crawling baby to have gotten out of sight already? Is this just a little ninja joke that I'm not supposed to take seriously? Was it fate???
The fact that Shanks apparently went into the treasure chest by himself really does make him seem like a child of fate
After the attack, Imu switches their focus to Teach and Eris, and immediately clocks them as being from the Davy Clan, but how? Maybe this is another indication that there's something biologically different about the descendants of Davy Jones. On that bottom left speech bubble they say
解き放ってはならぬ有害な命
harmful life(lives) that must not be released
Now, it sounds mostly like they're saying that Eris and Teach cannot be unleashed onto the rest of the world and bring harm to Imu and their domination of the world, but we could also relate it to the theory of Davy Clan members having multiple souls that must not be released/unleashed/woken in baby Teach
I wonder why all that Reversi game imagery in the present if Imu can just impale people in order to Domi Reversi them. Maybe because they were possessing Gunko, and not in their original body? Maybe cordyceps Imu has different abilities? But yeah, a Domi Reversi'd Rocks attacking his family would probably lead to Roger and Garp having to team up to stop him (maybe with Rocks asking them to kill him, for maximum angst)
I also wonder where Kaido, Linlin and Whitebeard fall in all of this, and if this is where Kaido's talk about pirates eventually betraying you comes from, if he is the one who ended up seeing Rocks like that and abandoning him. From what we know of his character, I can't really see Whitebeard being the type to cut and run because things got tough, otherwise he would've probably done that already. Linlin is just incidentally there and Kaido wanted to test out his powers, but Whitebeard deliberatly chose to stay and help out, and yet he's not mentioned as being on either side of the Garp+Roger vs Rocks fight that Sengoku talks about in the future
