(SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 1175)
Just for curiosity's sake, I've been trying to figure out Sabo's book cover. Does anyone else see a raised fist in front of a planet? If I'm seeing correctly then it matches the Revolutionary Army's vibes
As satisfying as it was to see Sommers get absolutely flattened, it feels too short a fight to be over already, doesn't it? Especially with this specific mention of the thorns being vulnerable to heat. You could argue that Luffy's lightning fist is technically also hot because electricity, but it still feels like something is missing, thematically
... or maybe I just want to see Sommers get hit more times, who can say
As a sidenote, it's a little poetic that Sommers and his thorns get destroyed by fire (Sanji's leg) and lightning (Luffy's fist) when those are two of Elbaf's stated vulnerabilities
He says that, but he went to the trouble of finding a village, landing and telling them to get off, instead of just shaking them off mid flight. We know what you are, your highness (tsundere)
Luffy's attack is written as 白い雷回転弾 with the furigana ドーントールライフル (doon tooru raifuru) or Dawn Thor Rifle. 白い (shiroi) means white, 雷 (kaminari) means thunder or lightning, 回転 (kaiten) means a rotation or spin, and 弾 (dan) is a counter for bullets, so 白い雷回転弾 can be read as White Lightning Revolving Bullet. Oh, and a 回転弾倉 (kaitendansou) is the name of the cylinder in a revolver, which matches Luffy's tendency to name his attacks with gun themes
I'm not going to lie, it took me a while to understand that this was Sommers' cut up body lol
Calling it a "bedtime tale" would be pretty ironic considering they're surrounded by the children's nightmares, but in Japanese he calls Nika a 子供ダマシの迷信 (kodomo damashi no meishin). 子供 (kodomo) means children, ダマシ (damashi) or 騙し means deceiving or fooling, and 迷信 (meishin) means superstition. So the translation isn't wrong, it's just that more literally what he said is that Nika is a superstition or a fairytale meant to fool children
Sommers doesn't believe that Nika was an actual person, and to be fair we still don't know if he was or not. Elbaf the island (and the story arc itself) has been all about the idea of fables, legends and superstitions. The Harley text talks about the gods as if they were alive, but as it's written like a myth or prophecy, it wouldn't be unusual if they had simply given human-like features to inanimate things, like blaming a natural catastrophe on a god's anger. The thing about myths is that they exist for a reason, and in the case of Nika, the Warrior of Liberation, it's probably to give people hope, which is exactly what Luffy tends to do. In that sense, it doesn't really matter if Nika was real or not, Luffy is real, he is the one who brings the dawn (or hope) to people and is a perfect symbol of liberation
First, I think it's interesting that Jarul calls it forbidden. By who? The government? It seems like most people didn't even know a Niddhoggr fruit was real, but for something to be forbidden you kind of need to know that it's something that exists. Forbidden by the Elbaf rulers, maybe? Since it would be extremely hard to hide if someone ever transformed into the largest dragon in the world, though Loki seems to have hidden it well for all these years
It's a mythical dragon fruit, like Killingham's. The smallest size possible for this fruit is still bigger than any other dragon, but the bigger the size of the person who eats it, the bigger the dragon and therefore the more powerful the fruit is. If Rocks knew that Elbaf's fruit was Niddhoggr, then it makes sense why he insisted so much that Harald needed to be the one to eat it
Sadly the dragon does seem to be black (I was hoping for pink, like Loki's hair), since Jarul calls it 漆黒 (shikkoku), which jisho translates as jet black, pitch dark, raven black, etc. Kotobank defines it as a black with a certain shine to it, like a lacquer or varnish
The fact that it's said to turn day into night makes it seem like a counter for Luffy and the Sun God imagery. Maybe I'm still too deep in my "Loki is also Nika" mindset, but to me it could be seen as like two sides of the same coin, you know? Nika the Warrior of Liberation who ends the night and brings the dawn vs Nika the Destroyer who ends the day and brings the night
People have been pointing out this connection between the warrior god that Jarul mentions and the god of war that Dorry talked about in Little Garden. I don't know if Oda has scrapped the idea of the god being named Elbaf or not, but Dorry called Elbaf 戦いの神 (tatakai no kami) or god of war, and Jarul talks about a 戦神 (ikusagami) or war god. The meaning seems to be about the same and it's very possible that they're talking about the same god
The legend says that this war god faced off against the sun god. The word Jarul used is 対立 (tairitsu), which means confrontation or antagonism. There is of course a chance that they were enemies and I've seen speculations about Niddhoggr being on the side of the world government during the Void Century war against Joyboy, but let's not forget that there is a chance that this is about something older than that, since the Void Century wasn't that long ago by giant standards. If they live three times as long as humans, then 800 years ago was only a few generations for them, not enough to become a legend, at least. There's also the possibility that their confrontation is like Dorry and Brogy's century-long fight in Little Garden, like a clash between warrior comrades
So Loki has access to three different powers. There is Ratatoskr the 氷リス (koori risu) or ice squirrel, Ragnir the hammer, written as 鉄雷 or iron lightning, and his devil fruit Niddhoggr, written as 雷竜 (rairyuu) or lightning dragon. I'm assuming that as long as Ratatoskr is in the form of Ragnir, Loki can use it with both ice and lightning powers, and he can shoot lightning out of his mouth in his zoan form
Also, Ratatoskr inhabiting a weapon reminds me of Vegapunk learning how to infuse devil fruits onto inanimate objects. I wonder if he's aware of that legend and if that's how he got the idea of feeding devil fruits to objects
Loki's attack name is 雷界 with the furigana トールヘイム (tooruheimu), with 雷 (kaminari) meaning lightning and 界 (kai) meaning world, boundary or domain, so you can read the attack name as Lightning Realm. Given that Thor is associated with thunder and a quick etymology search tells me that heim means home basically everywhere, Thorheim can also be understood as being the realm of the (god of) thunder
This framing of Imu seemingly looking at the three of them together - Ratatskr, Niddhoggr and "Nika" - makes it seem like the combination itself is familar to them, not just Niddhoggr's form
Given that Jarul has mentioned that Elbaf had a great enemy in the past, I tend to assume that Elbaf as a whole was on the opposite side of the 20 nations in the war during the Void Century, but there is always the chance that the previous user of the Niddhoggr fruit was on the side of the 20 nations. Maybe it wasn't even a giant, though everyone's insistence that the giants are the key to winning the war makes that unlikely. It doesn't look like Imu knew the fruit was there, though. Or maybe they're surprised that someone already ate it, since Loki managed to keep it hidden while he was out at sea
This part of the Holy Land seems fine and not on fire like Imu said when they possessed Gunko, but it's possible other parts aren't as ok. Especially given that Imu stays hidden away in the innermost parts of the castle. Or maybe Shamrock already took care of things already, though that feels like too short and rushed for something as thematically important as the Holy Land burning
