#opmeta

he was created at least seven years ago, as that's when we see the hooded red-haired figure speak to the gorosei. whether you believe that was shanks or shamrock (and i'm still of two minds about that myself) i doubt that scene would have been included if oda didn't already know about shanks' history and family. + this means shamrock is first shown/hinted at in an arc that is all about introducing deeper lore and endgame characters of the series.

he was (almost definitely) included in the panel at the end of 1121. i mean it hasn't been confirmed but who the hell else could it be lol. while theories differ on what the intention is behind showing these twelve characters, it feels pretty clear to me that they're going to be the twelve biggest players in the endgame. and damn, oda's gotta believe a character's going to be important if he decided he needed to feature them here despite not having even properly introduced them yet.

3. shanks is important. like, really important. do we know why yet? no! has he been all that present for like 99% of the story? no! but there's a reason he's lurking in the character page of every single volume, including all the ones he's not in. he's the character who kick-started the series and luffy's entire journey. he's been referred to as a "child of fate" for some unknown reason. so another character being as closely related to him as to be his identical twin brother means they pretty inevitably have a major role to play.

4. whatever tf this means

yes!! it addresses a lot of idle questions i had about luffy's powers for quite some time (while also raising a ton more, of course, but that's the nature of one piece).

(all of my thoughts here and on gear 5 in general owe some credit to @grainjew, who has been my main discussion partner on this topic)

luffy's fruit has always been, from what we've seen, kind of weird for a paramecia? obviously since the categorization of 'paramecia' is sort of a grab bag and a lot less well-defined than logias or zoans, that's kind of a hard claim to make, but generally speaking, most of the paramecia users we see throughout the series do not have their powers always on. (the strongest counter-example i could think of to this trend is brook, and even that is one i think you can argue.) luffy's power is way more passive, in the sense that he doesn't have to activate it- it's just there, always. even seastone and seawater do not make luffy not rubber, they just sap his energy and stop him from stretching himself, as we see as early as arlong park.

that is weird! what we see of most other paramecias is that they have to use their powers intentionally, even when those powers do involve transforming their body in some way, like with mr. 1 or alvida. there's a whole plot in dressrosa about knocking a specific paramecia user unconscious so she'll lose her grip on her power and it'll disappear. luffy will stretch when he is asleep, when he is underwater, and without knowing he's doing it. he's always rubber.

so luffy is weird for a paramecia, though not completely unprecedented. his power has always seemed to me to be... almost logia adjacent, in the sense that he's made from a specific material and all his powers are based on being that material, but that doesn't quite track either. aside from the fact that the thing he's composed of is tangible and, again, he can't turn it off, he clearly has access to a greater level of complexity in his transformations than logias do (whose devil fruit powers seem to be basically a binary system).

which actually leads me to compare him to chopper, who is the zoan we know the best, and who, conveniently, also ate a version of the hito hito no mi.

i think the way luffy and chopper interact with their powers is actually very similar. much like luffy, chopper was fundamentally altered by his consumption of a devil fruit in a way he cannot return from. he can still look like a normal reindeer, but he can never actually be one, because the most important trait his devil fruit gave him was human sentience. and he would still have that if you put him in seastone, he just wouldn't be able to transform. similarly, luffy had his body fundamentally altered by his fruit in a manner he does not seem to be capable of even temporarily reversing. he can't make himself not rubber any more than chopper can return himself to being a normal reindeer.

like chopper, luffy's power progression has been based around finding new ways to transform his body and force it into new and more powerful forms. his gears are roughly comparable to chopper's points. that is zoan stuff! chopper is the main other person we see interact with his fruit in that specific way. so, yeah, i actually do think it does make sense for luffy's power to have actually always been a zoan. at the very least, it makes more sense than him being a paramecia, to me.

however, having said that, i also don't think it's as straightforward as luffy just being a zoan instead of a paramecia. we see that the awakening of his fruit definitely has both paramecia and zoan qualities, since he's transforming both himself and the environment around him, as well as other people. (the wiki puts this down to him being a mythical zoan but i just don't think that's true. kaidou is also a mythical zoan and he is completely baffled by what he's seeing.)

Ok lets get things straight its analysis time. I have a hill I'm willing to die on.

This fucker doesn't actually look like that ^ Why? Well. First off, the shillouette doesn't match up. And yes, I know, Oda's original shilouettes are often misleading compared to the final character designs, but thats not whats going on here. For Loki and Kaido, those shilouettes were both presented hundreds of chapters before their debut, and they were people imagining what the characters looked like. For Imu, his (their?) debut was physical. They were shadowed, but that was their actual real body. Second, look at Imu's shilouette body even from the chapter this design dropped.

The shoulders aren't NEARLY broad enough. And look at that wrist! It's skinny! There's no way in hell this could physically be the same built guy we see only panels later. And obviously, Oda knew what the design was going to be at this point.

Second! We know that Imu already has at least some control over his appearance. When he fights Loki, he grows to the size of a giant. He seems to be able to summon and disappear his massive wings at will. And when he first arrives at Elbaf, he seems to undergo some kind of painful physical transformation.

Not to mention when he seems to turn into this giant, horrifying thing when facing down Sabo???

It seems to go a bit beyond a normal Zoan transformation. Maybe he just has more control, like Luffy or Chopper. Not neccesarilly full-on shape shifting, but certainly enough to change his appearance to a degree.

Third, hey Imu, we know what you look like so why are you still a shillouette in this flashback?

This is the first of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

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The Nika Cult is a Crypto-Religion

Terminology note: I will be using cult in these posts in the sense of “cult of worship,” rather than in the modern pejorative sense. Additionally, I tend to use “tradition” rather than “religion” as a general term, because “religion” is a messy and difficult to define concept, while “tradition” is much more inclusive of traditional practices, folk beliefs, and cults of worship that may not be considered religions by Western scholarship.

Raise your hand if you saw Kuma’s church and Bible, concluded “oh, the Nika stuff is basically One Piece Christianity,” and moved on with your life.

It’s an easy assumption to make, and for all I know authorial intent may well stop there. I’m not Oda. I’ll never be able to guess what goes on behind those fish eyes of his. But a second look at the worldbuilding around both Nika and Christianity in One Piece brought me to a very different conclusion: that the Nika cult is a crypto-religion and is, in Kuma’s case, using the outward appearance of Christianity as camouflage.

It feels very intentional that Zoro ends up paired with Usopp and Brook in the Ryugu palace.

In Sabaody, Luffy, Zoro and Sanji split so they could protect everyone. Of course Zoro couldn't do that then.

i think lilith and york are going to be the only remaining vegapunks.

which would be fascinating if that happens, since they’re the most “evil” personalities. vegapunk the original was seen as such a force for good, and he’s leaving behind evil and greed. it fits well with how morally ambiguous vegapunk actually was, with all the bad and good he accomplished.

and those personalities are splitting between the world government (greed) and pirates (evil), which is just already so ripe for commentary, i’m excited to see what oda does with that.

(and how york and lilith reflect how vegapunk views those concepts, particularly in himself, and what the story says abt evil joining the freedom loving pirates and greed joining the world government with the explicit goal of become a ruler/oppressor and what that says abt evil and greed within the story and how it’s perceived. ach, there’s just so much there to think abt!!)

it’ll also be interesting to see how the two satellites adjust to “being” vegapunk., or rather, being their own person (@kaizokuou-ni-naru also wrote a good meta abt this that y’all should read). they’re no longer part of whole, there is no longer an “original” to serve, they’re both individual and alone now. york already went through this, with how she isolated and disconnected from the other punks to hide her plans, but how lilith reacts will be so juicy. will she continue to be vegapunk or develop into her own person? how will she view her personhood, coming from such tragic circumstances? what did she lose from being disconnected from everything she knew? is vegapunk’s dream her dream? oh, and how that’ll interact with the themes of inherited will and dreams is just!