So, people were saying about Don Krieg being the major enemy in Sanji's debut arc is interesting because he has similarity to Judge (gold armour, wielding a spear, talking about military strength and winning, and so on).
But the difference is, Judge actually still values some kind of "honour". He said as much when crying about Big Mum's betrayal, but also actually shows it by repaying the debt to Sanji saving their lives:
Don Krieg doesn't do that. He's well known for his treachery, and shows directly that the rumours are not unfounded: he comes to Baratie begging for food, and then wants to rob them off their whole ship.
I honestly don't even think the "parallel" is on purpose to begin with, but there's still something fascinating about "evil army/kingdom Germa" still valuing honour to some degree.
I mean, before we ended up with Judge, one of Oda-sensei's design drafts for "Sanji's dad" is a flamboyant fruity dude with floppy hands and "girly" way of talking...
Non-evil Judge being a more extreme kind of parents who give kids iPad just to make them stop being annoying.
So he'd be the dad who would be like "What? You want a killer robot? Ok, whatever, just get out of my lab", and actually does give the kids whatever crazy thing they asked.
Sora having to confiscate the killer robot from Niji/Yonji (whoever asked for it) and send them on timeout.
After seeing what Garling did, it kind of further proves that Judge didn't just sees Sora as a tool? If all he wanted was any random woman to give him kids, he'd have remarried ages ago like how Garling just offed Magnolia, intending to replace her with Shakuyaku.
It's rock bottom standard, and it doesn't make him "good", but it also means he's not a complete soulless husk either.
Sora was hospitalised even after her sons were born, not abandoned or just left to die. Even if you want to think the worst of Judge, at least we can give that he values her enough to arrange for the kingdom's doctors to take care of her. You can't say it's just to keep up appearances because we saw that he could fake Sanji's death and nobody suspected anything was wrong.
You know I keep thinking of how in Japanese Buddhism the "Garuda flame" is the fire of purification.
Also in the statuary of Japanese Buddhism the big Garuda fire is usually being carried by another god (and usually are carved with a ton of curly designs). Garuda statues actually tend to not have fire except for a little halo behind their head.
Not sure if it means anything, but Oda-sensei sort of evaded confirming that Sanji's fire is part of the mods or not. I do think it leans more towards it being not, so like what if Sanji's fire is hereditary? Maybe it just kind of skips some generations.
Also, Lunarians in One Piece basically kinda look like Garuda, so all of this is weird to me and there's not enough info yet to be definitive about the guess. The lore of "borrowing fire" could be used as a scenario where Sanji's fire does have some connection to Lunarians, though through some indirect means.
In Eastern divination birds are associated with fire, and Oda-sensei has used this concept in giving Saint Mars a monster bird form (Mars = "fire star"). In which case he probably does know the Garuda thing too, so the question is whether he had chosen to do this or not.
Aside from the Asian angle, Germain l'Auxerrois is a saint whose legends are connected to fire. From what I read, there was something about summoning fire to condemn an evil king (so, "fire of judgement"), and being completely unharmed even after his whole house burned down.
Plus, Sanji's backstory involved a scenario that references The Man in the Iron Mask, who in the story was the twin brother of the king. In history, this masked prisoner was in custody of a man named Bénigne d'Auvergne de Saint-Mars. Birds, fire, Mars connection, see above.
I did say in a previous post that sometimes authors would purposely make someone be really vehement about something just to subvert it later on. That scenario would apply if the fire power is somehow revealed to be in the "Vinsmoke" bloodline specifically. Like, Sanji can hate the family and name all he wants, but the DNA is still inside him, what can he do? Especially because he's actively using the fire ability a lot. He can't just choose to not use it out of spite.
Oda-sensei for the love of everything that is good, please do not come out and say "I actually wasn't joking here" and make this a thing.
I am so worried that he would reveal that for whatever reason one of the ancestors was able to make the fruit powers hereditary and also removing the water weakness and that's what gave the lineage the curly eyebrows. Basically "Vinsmoke ancestors were that good in science, better than Saturn, better than Vegapunk".
I wish I can remember who it was, there was this one artist who drew fanart of Judge secretly being the manga artist who makes the Sora comics.
Also completely unrelated, there is a fanfic writer who wrote this AU/what-if that Sora was the one who made the Sora series (writer, someone else does the drawings) and Judge is a fan and Sora was this close to ragequitting her job but kept going because her ridiculous husband is reading it.
Originally she has been self-inserting as Sora the warrior and the "Germa Leader" was just a random enemy she made up, but after she got married that leader character becomes sort of based on Judge, so the ending she made for the series kind was that they all die. But "warrior Sora" is a man, so the way the author describes it just makes it sound like a weird tragic BL.
Either one of these scenario would make Law just die on the spot if he finds out, like what?!?!
Am I the only person who thinks that Judge is currently experiencing his bad timeline and he would've looked different if he hadn't lost the plot? I'm sure someone else had thought of it too, right? After seeing that "bad timeline Sanji" picture, and then seeing what young Judge actually looks like?
I'm going to imagine that the old scrapped draft is what Judge would've looked like in a "good timeline":
Like it still looks fairly similar to the current design, just a bit better-looking, you know?
(also not gonna lie this old draft vaguely looks like Sanji's 40 year old appearance, just bigger and more buff)
Where can one discuss Judge with other people without there being constantly someone saying "He is horrible and I wish he would die"?
Like I do get why people say that, whatever, but sometimes I just want to discuss the character in detail and in a serious manner without those kinds of comments thrown in. I know he's bad, and I know a lot of people wish he dies. No need to repeat it a million times.
I'm not even some kinda hardcore Judge fan. I don't really care if he dies or goes to jail or whatever. Just... I get it the first ten times. Can we talk about the other things?
So, I always thought that Germa's main "science" seems to originally be "tech/engineering" (the giant snails carrying the castles, Judge's weapon, raid suit), plus even in the MADS scenes he was shown building his mechanical spear. When fighting Sanji too, he was talking about science while showcasing "tech-based" attacks.
In practice though, it kind of feels like he's just doing the clones. There's no visible engineering upgrades. Like, why not equip the snails with mech or laser eyes and whatever? Make robots? Even when Yonji talked about the power of Germa science it's also the clones, and not advanced weaponry. Something just doesn't feel right about this.
Judge also said "The Germa [Sanji] knew is a relic of the past". The raw says 過去の軍隊, which more specifically says "an army (軍隊) of the past". What changed with the troops? If presently the army are mostly (or all) clones, does this mean that the old army are not clones? Are they actually people?
Maybe they were originally just human troops, and the kids weren't allowed in the clone lab because the clones were not ready/still in research at the time. I had been wondering about these random soldiers who were crying during Sanji's fake funeral. Based on Vegapunk's analysis on S-Snake, it did seem like clones actually can have normal feelings, but still.
On a meta level it's all for Sanji lore, I guess, but still. I can't help wondering if it's on purpose somehow.
According to Scien he did say that he wanted to make supersoldiers, but it could have been later on, after he became king, after he started to sort of lose "his original dream", whatever that may be.
Like all that above, the way it's phrased in raw sounds more like "I want to/I will give...". It's very minor difference. Either way, I still don't get why he didn't just do this on the clones. Why risk messing things up and giving these mods to his own kids? If the reason is just to win wars, it can just be the clones, no?
And plus in the SBS Oda-sensei said the modifications were specifically made to match the suits. Why? Was it personal?
The wild guess theory I had is that Germa was hit by something while Judge was still in MADS, everyone in his family died, and he had to be the king. This then maybe forced him to change the direction of his research.
I feel that it would make sense if the previous suit users were maybe always the royal family through the generations. Then something happened, the previous king and the others all die despite having the suits, so he thought to add the exoskeleton and healing/regeneration so his kids won't immediately get offed if something did happen again.
Judge seemingly wearing his raid suit (which we know to be as strong as an armour) and protective helmet 24/7 is possibly indicative of paranoia, I would say. I also have seen people speculate that Judge might have experimented a bit on himself too. I don't think he did, but you know, it seems plausible.
And also about the lack of tech updates. All the Germa soldiers just carry normal swords and basic guns. Like is it so hard to mass-produce that electric spear for the troops?
Possibility 1: Vegapunk repeatedly said that all the science stuff cost too much, and the black market missions probably only get them so much money. In a choice between clones and tech, having more replaceable troops might be seen as the more "safe" option. Also this could be why they didn't just make all the clones into Pacifista style cyborgs. Cost too much, better just bulk up more clones.
Possibility 2: Germa was actually a warrior kingdom like Elbaph. They just happen to be high-tech, but they have more pride in their strength over their tech. That's why even with the upgrades they prioritise manpower rather than the technology.
Possibility 3: Something happened and made Judge crazy paranoid and then for whatever reason this made him think having physical strength is better than tech.
Theory subject to change when new info comes, either in the series or the cards. Like during Vegapunk's speech Oda-sensei depicted Neo MADS in a way that's different from the rest of the cameos, so I think they're coming back. See this part:
We know Water 7's Galley-La team are important. It's very likely they will play an important role in the future. The Weatheria "wizards" are also probably coming back because the rest of the satellites are meeting up with them to do stuff. So... Neo MADS???
I mean they do have a lab... Vegapunk-clone and Lilith might want to borrow it if the Elbaph ancient lab isn't operational or something.
I kinda briefly mentioned this in an old post, but after my recent post about Scien being weirdly obsessed with Germa I was thinking too. Of the trio MADS dumbasses only Caesar kinda doesn't change appearance-wise? And that somehow coincides with how it seems like he's the only one who stuck to his guns the whole time.
Like I know Oda-sensei sometimes seems like he just wants to draw funny faces for the hell of it, but you know...
Scien's name is "Queen the Plague" and his specialty had seemed to be more drugs/virology even in the MADS cover story. For some reason he turned to cyborg/machine engineering, which kinda had felt more like Germa specialty. And who knows what he's been doing the whole time with Kaidou?
Judge too, with the whole conquering North Blue.
But Caesar stuck to being a scientist and still trying to beat Vegapunk. He still kept doing Devil Fruit research too, and while he added the poison gas research that's still in relation to his own devil fruit powers.
Kinda reminds me of the "bad end" future where Sanji ends up like Judge in the messed up timeline, but remains more or less the same in the "normal" timeline.
Like, maybe it's really just unfortunate genetics, but honestly... Both Scien and Judge looks like they started deteriorating in that one cover where they were fighting to be the "number 2".
I speculated that around this time Judge became the king, and you can also see that Scien had also started his cyborg experiments, as seen by his robotic arm. So maybe it really was because they completely lost the plot and went down the wrong way.
the repeating pattern of "if vinsmokes gain emotions or empathy they would be joyuos and cry" and just haha so funny no they wont they would not
first of all, tumblr, they aren't emotionless, if you think so, you are gullible, tumblr. (i hope most of you dont) i would think they know very basic set of emotion that dont complex any further. (goddamnit im not saying their stupid)
which would bring the status of their "empathy" in question
most of the aus think that their fully developed empathy is just locked away in their little vault that with just a little rewiring they would unlock it (which like huh???? idk if thats how that works)
you are born with basic good bad empathy, which is like this feeling good and this feeling bad.(but with genetic modification, who knows) but through development socially (which they lack(ill talk about this more)) this would transform into situational empathy: consoling, comfort etc.. but for people like them they might not have a clear understanding of what emotions they're feeling causing them to not apply it to other people, which will tie into the situational aspect of empathy which they will deemed your reaction is irrational and/or will understand their own emotions but not others (which like they might have basic empathy for each other because they can understand each other)
also, oh how funny they suddenly think their father actions and how their so wrong (from experience-) they wouldn't notice, they lived to fight and serve him for YEARS. its not that quick and easy to just.. accept?? Like ohh yeahhh let's take away you foundation your family the person you fucking live for and expect you be ok wit it!!!
Now I'm not saying he's a good father no no why would I do that
Im saying that THEY would think he's a good father and like yeah can you blame them
Because how isolated they been for their entire life AND the rest of their life "Oh but Lu they aren't in their house all the timmmme they get out into the world lu!!!" Which like yeah they aren't isolated physically (even I can argue that they are bc their house moves with them but whatever) but they sure as hell socially and emotionally
they're so out of touch because of their status BUT put in a normal social situation with a group of regular guys it would be just as isolated as if they weren't there at all. Also their higher status, genetic enhancements, paired with their self centered personality, they probably won't even try to understand; but ig when they're "saved" it's important for them to but not immediately
but its fine or whatever its not that serious
the concept is cool ig and ig that would happened in one piece if it did happen or what ever im not doggin on yall i just see no one take about it
also the empthy shi was reserched by my COOL AND AWESOME SUPER PSYCOPATHOLAGIST BROTHA >>>> @rabidasxce i hoped i worded it right (●'◡'●)
btw i can elaborate on some points more or you can critizise me n stuff cuz this thought was formed yesterday at 2am
