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Happy Halloween! Bunch of news around One Piece, and I’ve got a tin-foil hat theory for you today regarding One Piece, and some small updates with things I’m doing.
Horror Books and Movies
Since it’s getting close to Halloween, I’ve been watching and reading a little bit of horror media. Right now I’m in the middle of “Tomie” by Junji Ito. I bought Uzumaki and Tomie a few months ago and I started Tomie pretty soon after buying it, but I wasn’t really enjoying it. The art was fine, it was really well drawn in some spots, but others it was really strange and almost bad looking. And the story was just kinda meh. Once I started re-reading it though I started to enjoy and appreciate it a lot more. It’s not something that gets me scared, like movies will, but it is a really cool series and I see why Junji Ito is known as one of the greats of horror manga. The artwork improved a lot as the story went on. There were just a few really rough panels to begin with.
I’ll read Uzumaki at some point soon probably. The anime for it came out recently, and the first episode was animated really well, but from what I’ve been seeing the rest of the show is really bad. It has something to do with the budget or the deadline. I’m not sure, I’ve heard it was a lot of management’s fault though and not the artists. Which is unfortunate because I was really hyped for it, and I wish they had at the very least kept the quality consistent (I think consistently bad is better than having a great first episode and a bad rest of the season). Junji Ito’s work is kind of hard to get the same feeling in an anime that you get from the manga. Which is true for a lot of artists, but I feel like Junji Ito is especially true.
I’m not the biggest horror movie enjoyer. I’ll find one every now and again that interests me, but I’m kind of a wimp so I avoid them a lot of the time lol. My older brother and sister love horror movies and are constantly looking for new ones to watch. They’ve actually gotten to meet a ton of actors from their favorite horror movies. I got to meet a few of the actors who played Jason Voorhees myself.
Anyway, I try to find something around Halloween to watch when it comes around. I watched “Longlegs” towards the start of the month because I thought it would be funny. Nicholas Cage dressed up as an androgynous person who sings? Sounds pretty silly to me. But this movie was actually super sinister, and way less funny than what I thought. It was good, but it was super evil and satanic. It was super suspenseful and not very jump-scary which stresses me out while I’m watching it lol. It was good though, I recommend watching it.
I also watched a Japanese horror movie called “House” from 1977. I hadn’t heard much about it, but I saw a few clips and it looked interesting. Japanese horror movies also kind of have a reputation for being pretty scary, so I was excited to watch it. I just didn’t enjoy it though. With 1970’s and 1980’s American horror/slasher type movies, you can tell at one point they might’ve been scary. With this, I don’t know if anyone would’ve ever found it scary. The visuals remind me of a really weird commercial. I guess that’s part of the appeal, but I just don’t get it. I was bored throughout a lot of it and was wanting it to be over. I think I’d still recommend you watching it, because maybe you’ll get it and enjoy it. It is silly, and I think it’s cool to watch older foreign movies because you get to see how the world was in that part of the world during that time.
One Piece Anime Hiatus
In case you guys haven’t seen, the One Piece anime is going on hiatus. The first video I saw almost gave me a heart attack by saying “ONE PIECE IS GOING ON HIATUS FOR 6 MONTHS!!!” and not mentioning that it was the anime and not the manga. I know it’s for clickbait, but it’s a little aggravating lol.
My understanding is that this is partly due to the upgrade in quality in more recent episodes. I don’t watch it weekly, but I will watch some scenes every now and again and the new animation style look fantastic, so I’m glad they’re gonna sacrifice the amount of time in between episodes in favor of quality. I believe this will also effect the pacing of the anime in a good way.
We’re also supposed to be getting a pseudo-remaster of the anime in the following months where they’re redoing a few arcs with better visuals, and removing some of the filler within the fights (making them faster and more concise). They’re going to be re-airing the Fishman Island arc soon in Japan with the new fixes. It’s going from like 57 episodes down to just 21, which is crazy. Fishman Island is an arc that a lot of people struggle to get through, so this should help with that immensely.
We’re still also going to be getting the new remake soon, so One Piece is literally getting so huge it’ll have 3 different versions of an anime all coming out at the same time.
One Piece Fan Letter
There was a new special episode released called “One Piece Fan Letter” that follows this girl who is trying to deliver a fan letter to Nami on the Straw Hat crews return to Sabaody after she figures out the meaning behind “3D2Y”. It also follows some other fans of the Straw Hat Pirates, including some people in the marines. It was directed by Megumi Ishitani and is about 30 minutes long.
This was such a warm and fuzzy kind of an episode. It was so much fun to watch, the animation was great, the story was simple but had some really impactful moments. It fits One Piece so well in that it expands the world and characters without having to change anything or do anything too crazy. I’m not sure if it’s canon or not, but it’s absolutely worth a watch. I’m going to rewatch it soon.
One Piece 1130
SPOILERS: This contains spoilers for Chapter 1130
This chapter was super good and gives me chills thinking about. This sets the stage for Elbaf and shows off how the Giants perceive Elbaf. The biggest thing to happen in this chapter is the reveal of Loki and his absolutely sinister character design. The other very small detail, but I believe important drop was Vivi potentially having left a sign for the Straw Hats.
On the ship with the rest of the Straw Hat crew and the giants, the newer giant pirates explain how Hajrudin is the king’s son and how he is the rightful heir to the throne of Elbaf. But there was another prince, Loki, who killed King Harald in order to obtain the devil fruit that was passed down through the royal line. It took all the giant warriors to subdue him and trap him, and how if he escaped it could mean the end of Elbaf.
Luffy separates from his group to go look for this power source he’d been sensing all the way inside of Rodo’s room. He knew it was absolutely massive. He comes across this giant with a devilish smile who is chained up and blindfolded. He claims he is the “Sun God” who will destroy the world.
There’s been a lot of discussion around what he means by him being the Sun god. There’s a few people who are called the Sun God, or call themselves the Sun God. Nika, Joy Boy, Luffy, the dragon in Skypeia, Rodo and now Loki all are called Sun God in different ways. People think that maybe his devil fruit is actually the Sun-Sun fruit and he can literally turn into a mini sun, which would be an insane power. Other people think maybe it has something to do with the sun, like radiation or maybe heat. My friend brought up the idea that maybe it’s the rubber-rubber fruit and they thought it was the gum-gum fruit. Like what if the giants have been passing down a fruit they think is the human-human fruit model Nika thinking it’s super hard to awaken, but they actually just have the wrong fruit. I’m not sure what I think yet. He is blindfolded, so I’m wondering if maybe this has something to do with his fruit at all. Like does he need to be able to see to use it? Or does he have some ability that requires sight, like maybe Saturn’s death stare.
Based on some certain dialogue from Rodo and Loki (separately, not together), it seems as though they both don’t hold Elbaf as highly as others might. Rodo is upset that the new giant pirates joined up with the Straw Hat Grand Fleet and are serving humans, and Loki says that Elbaf “once lived and breathed warfare”. So reading into that, my conclusion is that some giants probably do not think as highly of Elbaf as they once did. Especially now with King Harald having been killed, Elbaf is probably in a state of political disarray and a civil war may be brewing. Nothing new for the Straw Hats though, this is like the 10th war they’ve been a part of.
While on the ship, Robin points out that Luffy has an x on his arm that isn’t normally there. It’s also not as blurry as the rest of his body in the photo. She says it looks familiar but she can’t place it. The x is significant because this is part of the secret sign that the Straw Hats used in Alabasta to keep track of eachother. It’s also what the crew showed to Vivi as they were leaving to signal goodbye, but keep Vivi’s affiliation with the crew a secret. It makes sense why no one who is looking at the picture understands the meaning behind it, because none of them were on the crew during Alabasta. Robin joined right after the events of Alabasta and would probably recognize it, but not know the meaning or that it was tied to Vivi. Brook, Franky and Jimbei have never seen it before.
Since the sign is in the newspaper, it’s almost guaranteed to be a sign from Vivi and Big News Morgans. What this sign means is yet to be determined. I’m sure it’s probably her trying to let them know that she’s ok, and to potentially come help her out. Because as we know, the Nefeltari family is in hot water with the world government and Imu specifically. So is Wapol for that matter. We’ll just have to see when we cut back to her what is going on.
Tin-Foil Hat One Piece Theory on the Origin of Devil Fruits
SPOILERS: This includes spoilers up to the end of Egghead. I thought I could get away with chapter 1044 and episode 1071, but there’s some medium sized spoilers in Egghead that I have to mention.
This isn’t going to be a total shot in the dark, but it is really big stretch (lol, you’ll get that joke in a minute, that’s kind of a slow burn). I’ve never heard anyone mention a theory like this, and it has to be a newer one since we only learned about Nika around 3 years ago. I think it’s an interesting idea, even if it doesn’t turn out to be true.
We’re probably going to learn a lot more about Joyboy, Nika, and the ancient kingdom in Elbaf, considering they have most of the work that was written in Ohara and saved by Saul. They also seemingly worship Nika, so the lore behind him might be common knowledge on their island. What if we also learn the origin or cause of devil fruits?
There’s 3 important trees in the world (The Adam Tree, Sunlight Tree Eve, and Yggdrasil). Since we know that devil fruits grow like normal fruits on trees and bushes, could the trees be important to the origin? Some people believe that Yggdrasil could be a potential origin for them having been brought into the world. I think that’s a more likely answer than what I’m about to propose.
What if it wasn’t any of the trees? What if the fruits aren’t really fruits at all? What if all devil fruits are actually pieces of the original Nika’s body?
Don’t get the straight jacket yet, let me explain a little. It’s an insane theory and has a huge likelihood of being proven false, but it’s something I thought up the other day and have a few pieces of evidence that point towards it being possible. My general idea is that Nika’s body was split up and turned into these fruits with great power, be it to spite someone, because he was bored, or maybe he was forced to. The main points of evidence I’m going to bring up are the almost bookkeeping like nature of them, the taste of them, and then some of the folklore surrounding them being apart of imagination.
We learned a little bit about devil fruits and the ability to recreate their powers in Egghead from Vegapunk, we know that they change you at the DNA level to have these powers. So Vegapunk was able to recreate a fruit such that 2 nearly identical fruits existed at the same time (Kaido’s Fish-Fish model Azure Dragon). Why did it take this kind of science to achieve this effect? Why aren’t there huge fields of devil fruits that all have the same abilities? They have a sort of bookkeeping nature to them where 1 fruit can exist until the user dies. How can fruits keep up with this sort of thing? What if Nika decided his own rules for them and split himself up and keeps track of that himself. He realized that certain fruits could cause mass destruction, so he decided to keep it as a limit to 1 fruit each. This could also be some run of the mill limitation of the magic or system that was used to create devil fruits, but I have yet to hear a theory surrounding this particular aspect of the devil fruits.
All we know about the tastes of devil fruits are that they taste horrible. It’s never been really described what the taste is apart from bad, but could it be that they taste like rubber? Or a rubber/human mixture? Again, this is a reach, but what purpose is served by them tasting bad? Normally, plants or fruits will taste bitter to make animals avoid eating them. But devil fruits can only be eaten the 1 time, so the taste wouldn’t really make animals avoid eating them. They’re also super rare, so animals would probably rarely get the chance to eat them anyway.
Nika is a being that embodies imagination and freedom, as we’ve seen from Gear 5. Luffy is able to do most everything that Luffy wants. Partially (in my opinion) because Luffy has such a big imagination, he was able to awaken his fruit. What if Luffy’s imagination wasn’t as great? Well then he might not have been able to awaken it. What if what we know about devil fruits also follows the same rules? What if they work on a belief system. We’ve heard that if you were to eat 2 devil fruits you would explode, but what if that’s just what everyone believes? What if the key to having multiple fruits is simply believing that you can eat them. Blackbeard is a character that believes in dreams and may have just believed that he could eat multiple fruits. This is probably going to be disproved so hard when it comes out that Blackbeard is actually 3 people.
Most of this is sorta half finished, but I want to get this post out before the month is up. I haven’t thought through my theory in its entirety, but I think it’d be cool if I called the theory that turns out to be so vital to the story of One Piece. I hope you guys have a fun and safe evening trick-or-treating!