The One Piece Manga just revealed 3 shocking things about Monkey D. Dragon, Vegapunk and
how a character we all believed to be dead pretty much confirms the next destination
of the straw hats, the man with the burn marks that kid is looking for.
And since I chose to go with a Marine Admiral Dragon for the Thumbnail, let’s start with
him and why this chapter might give credit to that idea.
Oda just gave us the first proper flashback for Luffy’s father, who has been even more
mysterious than characters like shanks.
We see Dragon, bringing a bouquet of flowers to the chard and depressing ruins of the island
of Ohara, some time after the deadly buster call had devastated the entire island and
all its people.
Seeing a 22 year younger dragon is absolutely awesome, he basically looks like Luffy with
long hair and Zoro’s personality.
Interestingly enough, 22 years ago Dragon doesn’t have his iconic tribal tattoo on
the left side of his face yet.
Instead, you can see a very similar looking pattern embroidered on his left pant leg.
We also get confirmation that Dragon had just founded the revolutionary army the very same
year the incident of Ohara happened.
It seems that Vegapunk knew Professor Clover, Robin’s father figure and the head archeologist
of the island.
I think this is a super interesting little detail about Dragon’s past.
He seems to have had real interest in the void century and the past.
We always suspected that Dragon would have a decent amount of knowledge about the lost
history and the ancient kingdom, but the manga has now pretty much confirmed this.
Because this flashback is being told, not from Dragon’s perspective, but from Dr.
Vegapunk’s.
Yes, the smartest person in One Piece was on Ohara the very same day, also to lay down
a bouquet of flowers in memory of Ohara and their work too.
And yes, we finally get to see Dr. Vegapunk's real appearance, and I will say, that this
mock artwork my team made for him a while ago, did hold up surprisingly well.
But we’ll get to that in a second, because Vegapunk’s appearance holds a bunch of hints
and easter eggs that we need to discuss.
Let’s stick with Dragon first.
Now it was always hinted at that Vegapunk might have ties to the revolutionary army.
The biggest one of course being Kuma, whom Vegapunk programmed to protect and save the
straw hats and watch over their ship during the time skip.
And while he isn’t an official member, we do now know that Dragon actively tried to
recruit him to his cause.
And while Vegapunk decided to work for the government, apparently in order to get insider
information on their activities and plans, Oda shows us that these two men seem to share
a common cause.
Especially since we have seen Shaka in direct communication with Dragon.
What is really interesting here however, is that despite their mutual liking and shared
cause, Vegapunk and Dragon didn’t come to Ohara together.
In fact, Vegapunk is extremely shocked to see Dragon there, to which Dragon replies
that that’s his line.
Both of them feel like the other shouldn’t be on Ohara right now for some reason.
Which brings me back to the thumbnail.
Could this meeting on Ohara be a hint at Dragon being a former Marine or Cypher Pol agent?
After all, there are a lot of theories out there about this.
The world government making him the most wanted person in the world and number one threat
to their rule.
Going to such extremes as putting him over people like Kaido and Big Mom suggests that
they know things about Dragon and what he’s capable of.
Monkey D. Garp being one of the biggest names in the marines, who we know also tried to
recruit Luffy.
Vegapunk comments how Dragon is someone who despises war.
And in this chapter we see another former Marine who was chasing after the archeologists,
only to try and save them in the end.
Haguwar D. Saul.
Who is actually confirmed to be alive and well on Elbaf.
We’ll also get to that part.
Saul, just like Dragon is a member of the D clan, who became disillusioned with the
government.
And as we know Dragon doesn’t want to take down the marines, but the celestial dragons,
which would make sense if he had a lot of friends there.
Overall there are a lot of arguments for and against the possibility of Dragon being a
former Marine slash Cypher pole member.
If that were true though, it would make a lot of sense for Vegapunk to react the way
he does.
If Dragon betrayed the government and founded the revolutionaries, he should stay away from
an island that was burned to the ground for its forbidden research.
Dragon clearly learnt something about the true history and the meaning of his D initial
from the archeologists.
And he even says that he can’t have Dr. Clovers death and the will of Ohara be in
vain.
In other words, Dragon has inherited the will of Ohara.
Which you know, is pretty cool.
Now a really interesting detail here hidden in the japanese is that Dragon only founded
the revolutionary army AFTER this meeting with Vegapunk.
While Vegapunk is introduced as the head researcher on Punk hazard, Dragon is not introduced as
supreme commander of the revolutionaries, but as commanding officer of the liberation
or freedom army, an organization that we have never heard of before in one piece.
Maybe it’s an earlier version of the revolutionaries, but it might also be something else entirely.
What seems pretty apparent though, is that the revolutionary army were a direct product
of the Ohara incident.
He decided, that he would do everything in his power, until every last person in the
world is subscribed to the Ohara channel.
But what really was Dragon’s connection to the revolutionaries?
Now it’s plausible that Dragon was simply affiliated with Clover and got all his information
about the world from them.
However, I want to speculate here for a moment if there might not be a bit more to it.
You might know where I’m going with this.
After all this chapter also heavily features Nico Robin and her mother Olvia, quite a lot
actually.
So let me just throw it out there: We don’t know Robin’s father.
We do know though, that he must have had black hair, since Olvia’s is white.
And I think it would make a ton of sense story wise, if Dragon was actually Robin’s father.
Think about it: Yes the incident of Ohara was cruel and losing friends would make you
hate the government.
But what would really make someone who hates war like Dragon, suddenly form a militant
revolutionary group against the government itself?
Well losing your woman and child to the governments craziness surely would explain that.
Plus laying down flowers The reason why the gorosei targeted Ohara was because they captured
Olvia and her comrades.
Could they have targeted her because Dragon left the government?
Also remember that Dragon was incredibly interested in meeting Robin and instructed Kuma with
sending her to him.
The Revolutionaries who helped Robin at Tequila Wolf, revealed that they had been searching
for her for ten years because she was the only survivor from Ohara.
Dragon, told them to protect her from the World Government to the best of their abilities.
Robin being Luffy’s half sister would be an absolutely fantastic reveal in the story.
Robin has truly been the older sister he never had.
But since there isn’t all too much evidence for this, let’s put it aside for now and
instead focus on Vegapunk.
We already discussed Vegapunk’s affiliation with clover, who by the way is revealed as
an adventurer like Nolan in his youth, being captured more than 10 times by the government.
He dedicated his life to travelling around the world and piecing together the void century.
Now we finally also get to see what Vegapunk actually looks like.
And it’s as Oda as it gets.
Among the army of quirky characters he has drawn so far, this is one to rule them all.
I can never unsee this.
Vegapunk seems to be part of the same race that Fukurokuju belongs to.
It is also the same head shape that we see on the flag of the space pirates that enel
encounters.
And there is a lot of room for speculation that Imu, due to their strange placement of
arms and the top of their head, might be part of the same race as well.
These people are all associated with extremely high intelligence and technological advances
due to their large brain.
And it seems that Vegapunk has since split his brain into six parts, that he has infused
into the 3 robots and 3, i want to say people, that are part of his persona.
It also explains their personalities, as each vegapunk has most likely inherited whatever
function the original brain part held.
Now, I probably don't have to point this out, but Vegpaunk is of course the spitting image
of Albert Einstein the genius german scientist who developed the theory of relativity.
Especially the most famous photo of him, where he sticks out his tongue, resulting in a permanent
long tongue for the original vegapunk.
Maybe this race has an elongated head, plus something else, after all Fukurokuju has elongated
ear lobes.
The brain split thing also fits into the Einstein inspiration.
After his death, Einstein’s brain was removed and split into parts for further research.
The fact that Vegapunk is covering up his head with an apple is a nice little nod at
Issac Newton and the famous apple that fell on his head, that made him discover gravity.
It turns out, that Vegapunk didn’t only reverse engineer the ancient kingdom’s technology
from stuff he found lying around.
It turns out that the scholars of Ohara actually succeeded in rescuing the contents of the
library from the fire, by throwing all the books into the lake, sacrificing their lives
in the process.
These books were then collected by the giants of Elbaf, that due seem to be part of Hajrudin’s
crew if i’m not mistaken here.
It looks like the giants of Elbaf are confirmed as another ally of the ancient kingdom here,
next to Shandora and Wano.
And it was here on Elbaf, that Vegapunk showed his true genius.
He learnt all that knowledge in all the books by heart and started to get to work, replicating
its contents.
In other words, everything that vegapunk knows about the ancient kingdom and devil fruits,
it’s all thanks to the research of the archeologists on Ohara.
They figured it all out by themselves.
The real chads of One Piece in other words.
SO Vegapunk is a real genius, just not in the way we thought he would be.
And he does seem to genuinely be a good guy, that has been waiting for Luffy, though we’ll
have to wait and see about that.
I’m sure there are still a ton of reveals left during this arc.
Though i do have the feeling that it might be on the shorter end of things.
So let’s finally talk about the person that saved all the knowledge from Ohara and brought
it all to Elbaf: Hagwar D. Saul is alive.
And so it seems that Aokiji hasn’t killed a single person in the entire story.
He froze Luffy and Robin, but made sure they would survive.
Same with Doflamingo and same with Saul as it now turns out.
He didn’t kill his friend, but instead probably saved his life, with the ice saving him from
the flames.
Another major hint, that Aokiji might be working with Dragon to infiltrate Blackbeard.
Now we don’t know if Saul got severely burned by frost bite or by the fire of the buster
call, but he is alive.
And seeing Robin’s tears of Joy after realizing that, might be one of the most emotional panels
since the time skip in all of one piece.
Really made me tear up.
Now, given his burns, Saul sounds a lot like the prime candidate right now for the man
marked by flames that Kid is looking for, that has the last road poneglyph in his possession.
That of course makes sense for two reasons: One, Saul as the safekeeper of Ohara’s will,
the only people who can read the poneglyphs, would be a prime candidate to have it.
It might even have been ON ohara originally.
And two, we always speculated that it most likely would be on Elbaf, an island that most
likely is under the protection of Shanks.
That makes Elbaf 99,99% the next arc of One Piece.
And i discovered WHY Shanks is most likely guarding the last poneglyph there and WHAT
will most likely happen during that arc.
if you are curious, make sure to watch that video right here next.