The one piece manga FINALLY REVEALED the true reason that Bartholemew Kuma is called a tyrant
because in this chapter we saw that he wiped out the evil ruler of Sorbet kingdom not once,
but TWICE in order to defend his home island from this complete scumbag who I wish would
just crawl in a hole somewhere and never come back.
And since he literally wiped out an entire marine fleet by himself, I just have to put
prime Kuma into my top tier of fighters in the one piece world.
I mean just think about it for a minute.
If Kuma was truly allowed to become as strong as he was capable of then it’s hard to think
about who could actually stop him.
First, he is a Buccaneer which gives him incredible natural size and strength.
On top of that, he has one of the most broken devil fruits in the entire story.
Seriously, he has the perfect defense that can repel any attack, plus incredible offensive
power with his pressure cannons and air compression bombs which can cause massive damage on a
large scale.
It’s just a shame we’ve never seen him truly reach his full potential or go all out
in a fight because of his eventual cyborg modifications and brain manipulations.
In fact, he is almost like a version of Luffy before our Straw Hat captain was even born.
Seriously, he was this hero type figure who liberated tons of kingdoms with the Revolutionary
Army and is one of the main reasons that the Revolutionary Army has grown so powerful in
the current story.
The reason for that is because it was Kuma’s kind nature and willingness to do whatever
it took to free people that truly inspired people to join the Revolutionary Army.
And even though Dragon is the leader who likely has the strong conviction and big ideas that
the Revolutionaries forward, I truly think that without Kuma the Revolutionaries would
never have gotten as many followers as they have today.
But back to the chapter because it is now that we see exactly why Kuma earned the title
of Tyrant.
Because when this corrupt king of Sorbet Kingdom returns with the marine support, Kuma literally
wipes them all out.
And during this fight, Kuma earned the title of Tyrant which somehow spread around the
world, though as we can see now the popular rumors that Kuma was really an evil person
are completely false.
However, there is something super interesting in these rumors, because as we saw in chapter
1064, Jinbe explained that he thought Kuma was thrown out by his own people and forced
to become a pirate.
And while that isn’t exactly true, Kuma does leave and become a pirate after repelling
the former king, most likely to protect the people of the island from revenge by the world
government.
However, it is what happens next in this chapter that I’ve already seen a ton of people complaining
about.
Because just like most people expected, Kuma eventually takes Bonney to see Dr. Vegapunk
after years of searching for a cure.
He does this in order to get treatment for his adopted daughter and in exchange, Kuma
agrees to become a government test subject in Vegapunk’s cyborg experiments.
And yeah, I think most of us could have guessed something like this was going to happen even
before the flashback started, but many people were apparently hoping for something way crazier
and are not happy with how this played out.
And we’ll talk more about some interesting details from this section in just a moment,
but first I JUST HAVE TO point out that one of Oda’s favorite things to do to create
incredible narrative payoff is to give us something we all expect and then follow it
up with something that will completely blow our minds.
Don’t believe me?
Well, here are a few examples.
During the Skypiea arc, it was pretty much a guarantee that once we learned about the
Sky Islands then we would eventually go there.
But the big twist was that once the straw hats got there, they learned that the golden
city that this guy had been searching for had actually been sent up into the sky 400
years ago.
Likewise in Sabaody, once they made Luffy promise to not get involved with a Celestial
Dragon, you just knew that eventually something big was going to go down.
And boy did it.
But the big twist at the end of this conflict was that the Straw Hats were COMPLETELY defeated
and separated, which almost no one saw coming.
And if you want an example from a flashback, well just take Law’s backstory from the
Dressrosa arc.
We all knew going into the flashback that Law was going to eat the Ope Ope no mi, but
man, no one could have prepared me for all the emotions I felt when we eventually learned
the exact circumstances that Law ate the fruit.
This moment still gets me to this day.
So all of this is to say that, yeah, we all knew Kuma was most likely going to go to Vegapunk
in order to save Bonney.
But even though this was what we all expected, I can almost guarantee you that there is going
to be a massive shock in store for us very soon, either at the end of this flashback
or shortly after when we reach the climax of Egghead Island arc.
And even though those were parts we expected, there were some incredibly interesting new
details from this chapter as well.
First, we finally solved the mystery of Bonney being the Dowager Queen Conney since we learned
that there was a real Conney who was married to the king who took over Sorbet after Kuma
freed the people.
Bonney spent a lot of time with this Conney and practiced with her new age powers to make
her old lady form look like Conney
On top of that, we learned about Kuma’s time as a pirate.
Interestingly, he had to give up being Bonney's guardian, which I honestly thought he would
never do, and left her with Queen Conney in the castle in the Sorbet Kingdom.
After this, he actually visited all of the places where he sent the straw hats during
the time skip while he was looking for a cure for Bonney.
However, his search was hopeless until Dragon directed him to Vegapunk’s new lab on Egghead
island.
Which, by the way, did you all catch Dragon’s comment about leaving things to the “blow
of the wind”?
Maybe Dragon having some sort of wind powers is closer to being confirmed?
Anyway, we also learned that Vegapunk moved here after the Punk Hazard explosions, which
also tells us this was only about four years ago.
Which if you ask me is so cool to finally learn that Kuma has only been a warlord for
less than four years from the current story.
Now, while most of us expected Vegapunk to have a cure for Bonney, one thing that really
stood out to me was that Vegapunk did heal Bonney, but he ABSOLUTELY did not do it for
free.
Like, shouldn’t Vegapunk, who was once friends with the Revolutionary’s leader, want to
heal Kuma’s kid as a favor?
Apparently not, because he says that he will only heal Bonney on the condition that Kuma
becomes the host for his clone army that he is planning to create.
Which just seems incredibly greedy and selfish for a scientist who supposedly is all about
peace, but at least he kept his word and healed Bonney with some new cell transplant technology.
So goodbye Bonney is a clone theory.
However, Veagpunk’s selfishness kinda fits with what he has shown in the past.
For example, during the brief flashback in chapter 1066, Vegapunk refused Dragon’s
offer to join the freedom fighters because Dragon’s group simply did not have enough
money to fund Vegapunk’s scientific research.
So in the end, it seems Vegapunk wants to help, but usually puts his own selfish interests
first.
Typical genius.
That’s not the only interesting detail though because we also see that Saturn was listening
in on Kuma and Vegapunk’s conversation.
Which just hints that Saturn must have twisted Vegapunk’s experiments in ways that weren’t
originally planned.
For example, it makes a lot of sense that Vegapunk just originally planned to enhance
Kuma’s body with cyborg parts like the laser beam and improved durability, but then Saturn
took it to another level by forcing Vegapunk to take away Kuma’s memories and personality.
That would explain this brief dialogue at the end of chapter 1094 which hints that Vegapunk
didn’t originally plan to erase Kuma’s personality and memories.
Of course, it would make sense for Saturn to want this since we already saw him interact
with Kuma during the God Valley part of this flashback.
During this scene, Saturn told Kuma that he either had to live as a slave or die just
like the rest of the Buccaneer race.
Which is just horribly tragic if Saturn indeed forced Kuma to become a mindless slave to
make his own statement come true.
But this exact situation is what makes the current conflict on Egghead island so interesting.
Because at this point we assume that the flashback is going to end soon and then Kuma just HAS
TO show up.
Right???
I mean we thought maybe he had something important to do on Mary Geoise, but it seems more and
more likely that Mary Geoise was just a stopping point before Kuma launched himself off to
Egghead.
And if this is the case, it would just be completely fitting for Kuma to show up right
at the end of this flashback to save Bonney from being executed as we saw she was about
to be right before the start of the flashback.
However, then we have to ask what will happen next.
And I actually see a few different ways for this to go.
First, Kuma could arrive, do something incredibly heroic, and help the straw hats defeat Saturn.
This would make him the hero that he always wanted to be ever since his childhood.
But if we’ve learned anything from this flashback and Kuma’s life story it is that
something has always prevented Kuma from being this perfect hero.
In fact, ever since he became a cyborg his life has basically been one of two competing
natures.
On one hand, he is a servant to the government.
On the other hand, he wants nothing more than to protect his friends.
This is perfectly shown during Kuma’s conversation with the Shadowy Warlord, Gecko Moria, where
he comes to deliver information from the Government, but still asks Moria his famous question of
where he would go on vacation.
To me, this shows that he has to follow orders from the government, but he’s always kept
that spark of his daughter inside of him since that question of asking “Where would you
go on vacation” originally came from asking Bonney.
And although we’ve recently seen Kuma rescued by the revolutionaries, he still wasn’t
back to his normal self.
So all that to say, I don’t just expect Kuma to show up and save his daughter without
having to struggle at all against his programming to serve the government since that would go
against the character we’ve been shown so far.
So you might be wondering if Kuma isn’t just going to show up and be the hero, then
what do I think will happen?
Well, one theory I’ve seen floating around is that Kuma will show up, push out Luffy’s
pain, or maybe his own pain, and deliver it to Saturn like one giant Spirit Bomb of pain.
Which would be incredible to see that all of the pain caused by this evil person is
being sent right back at him.
However, this still ignores the fact that Kuma is a servant of the government, and as
much as I want him to just fight against Saturn, I really have a hard time believing it will
be that simple.
So another option is that Kuma does one last desperate act of free will and then is basically
a slave again.
We’ve already seen an example of this when he stayed during the entire time skip to protect
the Thousand Sunny, but after that he became 100% a government slave.
And to show just how tragic this was, the next time we saw him was in Mary Geoise being
ridden like a horse by the world nobles.
So if he is going to have one last act of freewill here, then I could imagine that he
would then once again be a complete government slave.
Which might mean that he has to follow Saturn’s orders and could even attack Bonney or the
Straw Hats.
And that could lead to a heart breaking scenario where the Straw Hats or even Bonney has to
finally end Kuma’s suffering.
You know, in all of this, I kinda wonder what Kuma would say if anyone asked where he would
want to go on vacation, and if he could answer, I wonder if he would just say that he wants
to go and be with Ginny.
Which could be a kinda mercy that someone could give him by finally ending his life.
Man, the possibilities are getting truly tragic here.
However, if we’re talking about Kuma changing sides, it would actually be fitting since
that exact idea is a theme of this entire arc.
Because I’ve truly lost count of how many times the Seraphim and Pacifistas have gone
from friend to enemy back to friend and then enemy again just based on who is commanding
them.
So seeing Kuma go from friend to enemy at some point would make a lot of sense.
But while we're talking about all this, it is also important to remember that at this
point Vegapunk is 100% against the world government, so if there was ever time to reveal a secret
password or override command that could make all of the Pacifistas and Seraphim turn against
the World Government once and for all, this would be the perfect time for that.
This could also affect Kuma, since he basically has the same programming.
So maybe there is still hope that he could come back to the good side for good and be
with Bonney.
Maybe the memories that he has just randomly sitting in this room could also help him regain
control of himself.
However, we aren’t done with options for what Kuma could do because there is one more
connection that I haven’t really seen people talking about.
And that is this giant robot that we saw awaken at the end of chapter 1092.
Because if we’re being honest, it still hasn’t been clear what this thing is going
to do.
But maybe that all changes once Kuma shows up.
Because there are actually some interesting connections between Kuma and the robot.
First, they both know and seem to respond to Nika’s heartbeat.
Kuma learned the rhythm as a child and hearing the rhythm from Luffy’s Gear 5 seemed to
wake the robot up.
Also, we first learned in chapter 1067 that the robot attacked Mary Geoise about 200 years
ago.
Then we conveniently saw Kuma also attack Mary Geoise and cause tons of damage just
like the robot did.
So maybe Oda was trying to make connections between Kuma and the robot because he plans
to do something with them both during the end of the arc.
Now what could that be??
I’m not really sure, but maybe the robot could be a vessel for Kuma’s memories or
soul or something like that.
It could be one way for Kuma to continue living on even if his original body is destroyed.
But the most tragic option for Kuma’s role at the end of this arc is actually what comes
next.
Because we’ve talked before about the parallels between Egghead and other arcs, and one connection
I’d like to remind you about is that Vegapunk’s laboratories ALWAYS have a self-destruct button.
We saw this when Franky visited Vegapunk’s home island and eventually blew it up.
It happened again in Punk Hazard where Vegapunk worked for many years, so if Kuma is going
to truly be a sacrificial hero, I could see him somehow pushing all of his friends to
safety while blowing up himself, Saturn, and maybe even Vegapunk with the island’s self-destruct
feature.
Which of course just leaves the question of what happens next with Bonney.
And since we learned she is actually only twelve years old, we have to wonder what she
will do next.
Would she go back to being a pirate?
Or maybe retire somewhere?
Or, the even crazier option would be what if she joined the straw hat crew?
Which sounds INSANE, but you might be surprised to learn that she already fulfills some of
the Straw Hat crew requirements.
So if you want to learn all about exactly what those requirements are and who else was
close to joining the crew during the story, you can check out this video right here.
Shanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.