My internet is down at the time of writing this (Saturday), so I figured I’d go ahead and try to knock out this month’s blog post.

General Updates

Not too much going on with my back. I’ve been back to work once, I kinda want to start going back a more frequently. I’ve been pushing myself to sit up more at home. It’s rough at the end of the day, but it’s not too bad while I’m doing it. The “McGill Big 3” is really helping, if you are having any sort of back issues I would highly recommend trying it if you can.

I started reading “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, which talks about making good habits and getting rid of bad ones, and reading consistently is one that I want to start. I had set a timer to read for about 5-15 minutes every night at 7pm so that way I would get used to reading at a specific time, instead of doom-scrolling on social media. It was going well until I got sick, I’m not sure if it was Covid or what but it was rough. I had been going about a week or 2 strong, but I felt so bad I stopped. Which isn’t really a good reason, but what’re you gonna do. I bought a kindle and loaded it with a bunch of books so I will hopefully start reading more on it.

One Piece Chapter 1094 and 1095

This is the part of the blog post where I start talking about One Piece, so if you’re not caught up with the manga I’d stop reading. Some major things are happening right now.

Egghead is very quickly rising to become one of my favorite arcs in One Piece.

A real quick note about the terms I use. I sometimes switch between the official translations and the versions that are more common in the online communities. So in case you don’t know what I’m talking about and I use one word or the other this is what I mean:

Official	Alternate	Example sentence
Five Elders	Gorosei	“Jay-Garcia Saturn is one of the Five Elders” or “Jay-Garcia Saturn is one of the Gorosei”
Emperor of the Sea	Yonko	“Shanks is an Emperor” or “Shanks is a Yonko”
Marijoa	Mary-Geoise	“Marijoa is on top of the Red Line” or “Mary-Geoise is on top of the Red Line”
Supreme King Haki	Conquerer’s Haki	“He has Supreme King Haki” or “He has Conquerer’s Haki”

If you’re caught up to 1094 or 1095 you probably already know these words and their variations, but sometimes I use them interchangeably. I will typically use the alternate versions because they’re shorter. Except for “Mary-Geoise”, I do use “Marijoa”.

I also use the following names for the (former) Navy Admirals: “Akainu”, “Kizaru”, “Aokiji”, “Fujitora” “Greenbull”. I think that’s pretty common, except for maybe Aokiji also being known as Kuzan. Greenbull’s real name (Ryokugu) is hard to remember how to spell and say, so “Greenbull” is how I’ll mention him.

Anyway, on to the discussions.

Chapter 1094

This chapter was INSANE. We finally got shown in detail one of the Gorosei’s alternate forms, and got to see Luffy WHOOP Kizaru. We’ve known for a while that the Gorosei all had alternate forms (since Sabo went up against them when Cobra was killed), and for even longer I think we’ve all questioned if they had devil fruits or haki. This chapter doesn’t really answer if this transformation is devil fruit powers, or something new entirely, which is what makes it so interesting.

One theory a lot of people have is that it’s a mythical/ancient zoan devil fruit transformation, because he matches a certain demon (that I can’t think of the name of) from Japanese folklore. I think this is entirely plausible and probably closest to the truth. From what we know, the Gorosei seem to be immortal/eternally young based on flashbacks from many years ago and their appearances looking identical, so it’s entirely possible all the Gorosei have insanely powerful mythical/ancient zoan fruits.

Another theory that I like is that he himself is 100% a demon. He shows off a fraction of his power by killing a low rank Navy man by just looking at him. This could potentially be haki and his skills with haki are at a level we haven’t seen before, it could be a part of his devil fruit abilities and specific to Saturn, or it could be a new form of demon power entirely. During the time skip when Brook was sent away by Kuma, he was sent to an island that happened to be holding a satanic summoning event where they then believed Brook to be king of the demons. So, we know that demons exist in at least folklore of the One Piece world. I personally like the idea that he’s a demon, but I think it’s more probable that all of the Gorosei are devil fruit users with the eternal youth surgery having been performed on them by the previous Op-Op fruit users.

Kizaru getting punched was really satisfying to me. I don’t dislike Kizaru, but he got a good beat down from Luffy. It was a little touch and go, but Luffy punched him so hard he made him see stars and that was really awesome. I don’t know if Kizaru will walk away from this fight like he’s done before. Right now he’s knocked pretty much cold for a little bit.

Chapter 1095

It’s very possible that I don’t finish this blog post before chapter 1096 comes out, or I see spoilers. So this section is written as though I haven’t seen chapter 1096 (because as I’m writing it, I haven’t).

Chapter 1094 was already insane with the reveal of Jay-Garcia Saturn’s transformation. Now in chapter 1095 we got some of Kuma’s backstory, and he was someone who was on God Valley 38 years ago. Which matches up with the God Valley incident. These next probably 5-10 chapters are going to be so incredibly important and show off the history of the modern era in the One Piece world, and I am so hyped for it.

Originally it was thought that God Valley was where the celestial dragons lived, given the name. We know now that God Valley was the island that they chose to host their “native cleansing” game that year. It seems similar to other popular stories, think Squid Games except there’s probably no monetary prize for the ones being hunted.

There’s so many theories this is going to prove/disprove, this may go down as the most important flashback apart from any Void Century reveals. The God Valley incident has so much mystery surrounding it. It’s only been known about for 4 IRL years, and we’re already getting more information on it. We’re most likely going to see the following:

• Rocks D. Xebec in full (for the first time).
• The Rocks pirates’ motives and goals for being on God Valley.
• Garp in his prime.
• A rookie Roger.
• Shanks’ relation to Figarland Garling and the other celestial dragons on the island.
• How Shanks came into Roger’s care.
• Ivankov’s backstory.
• More about the Buccaneer race.

The theories surrounding the next chapter are so much fun to think about. There was a break this past week so lots of people have had time to discuss their ideas. Most of them surround what the prize of the native cleansing was going to be. We saw there were 6 small chests, so a lot of people think this is where many of the characters, who are confirmed to be on God Valley at the time, got their fruits.

From Boa’s time as a slave for the celestial dragons we know they like to feed their slaves devil fruits for fun (I think that’s really odd to give slaves powerful abilities, but to each their own), so this could be where they got the fruits to feed their slaves. We also already know from a conversation between Big Mom and Kaido that she gave him the Fish-Fish Model Azure Dragon devil fruit on that day, so that could’ve been 1 of the prizes. Kuma did not have his bear ears or paw pads (from what I could see) so he probably didn’t have his fruit that day, which means that could’ve been another. Ivankov was on God Valley but we don’t have any confirmation on if he had his fruit or not, so his Hormone-Hormone fruit may have been one. Whitebeard’s Tremor-Tremor fruit, Marco’s Bird-Bird Model Phoenix fruit, Dragon’s unknown fruit, the list goes on. I think that devil fruits being the prizes is the most probable theory as of right now, but I doubt that certain people got their fruits that day (Whitebeard specifically).

Since Kuma and Ivankov, 2 of the 3 founding members of the Revolutionary Army, have been shown to be on God Valley, another prominent theory is that Dragon will also show up in some capacity. The treatment that Kuma has experienced (and Ivankov has probably experienced) is surely the driving forces behind their decision to revolt against the government and celestial dragons. Surely the leader of the army also has seen terrible incidents involving the celestial dragons to make him want to go against them too, this would be an incredible time to expose that. One of the biggest theories right now, that I don’t disagree with, is that Dragon was at one point a part of the Navy and after serving for some time became a revolutionary. There’s at least a few pieces of evidence to support that idea. But there’s a few bits of information we still don’t know. Dragon created the Revolutionary army after the Ohara incident, but before that he was a part of a team called the “freedom fighters” for an undisclosed length of time, so we have no idea when he left the Navy (if he was a part of it).

It’s now Monday morning as I write this, so sometime this week we’ll see 1096 drop and hopefully some of this will be answered. I’m so incredibly excited and I hope it keeps going up from here. Egghead is amazing, and One Piece is one of the greatest stories around.