- Dr Vegapunk, maker of such things as the pacifista,
the dog gun and his greatest accomplishment of all,
the subscribe button for the GrandLineReview,
which when pressed will grant you regular One Piece content
uploaded straight into your YouTube feed.
Hello and welcome to the GrandLineReview
, your source for everything One Piece,
and today I think it's well past that time that we trained
our focus onto one of the most undoubtedly
prolific characters in this series,
a statement which in and of itself
is kind of an understatement
because it's actually mind boggling just how much
this guy is responsible for, despite the fact
that we haven't ever so much as caught a glimpse of him,
and I am of course referring to Dr Vegapunk.
And some of the more casual One Piece fans
may even be of the belief that we know
next to nothing about this figure,
but given the tenure of his name in the series,
we actually know quite an astonishing amount about this man
that we have never seen, not properly anyway.
But you know what I find
to be a very interesting question to ask people?
When did we first hear the name Vegapunk?
Because he's one of those names that just feels like
it's been floating around in the series for like forever
and due to the lack of a direct presence in the story,
it's kind of difficult to pinpoint
off the top of you head where this enigma began,
but it just so happens to be in chapter 433,
which was during the Return to Water Seven arc.
And there are several reasons why
this may not be a particularly memorable event,
firstly because it's actually fairly a casual name drop.
Basically Coby is speaking to Luffy and Nami
is eavesdropping mid conversation and all we catch
is him saying "When it comes to technology,
"Dr Vegapunk is Number One, he's amazing!"
And then Helmeppo cuts in with "He really is,
"even when it comes to that Devil Fruit you ate.
"He discovered how devil fruits confer their powers
"and even developed a technology where you can feed
"a devil fruit to an inanimate object.
"That's his biggest project from last year!"
And that was it.
And when I say that was it,
that was actually pretty massive information
during the Water Seven era,
I mean the fact that there was someone in this world
who had unlocked the secret behind devil fruits.
And in retrospect, it's pretty bizarre
that this isn't a more landmark moment for One Piece,
but then again it is embedded
in a period full of gigantic reveals.
For example, in that very same chapter,
the name of the New World was dropped
for the first time as well, significantly more dramatically
than Vegapunk was and in the chapter just prior to this one,
well that just happened to be the one
that revealed the existence of the four emperors
as well as the fact that Dragon was Luffy's father.
So without anything really substantive to grab onto,
Vegapunk became something of an afterthought here,
as he kind of remains even to this very day actually,
because we are now balls deep in emperor related drama,
as well as beginning to expand on Dragon
and the revolutionaries.
Meanwhile though, Vegapunk remains just as hidden as ever,
although we were graced with a brief visual
during Thriller Bark which is very different
from your classic One Piece mysterious introduction
given that Vegapunk wasn't silhouetted.
Instead what we see here is a fairly normal looking
body really in a lab coat
with a very casually striped shirt.
However, the much more intriguing
and more standard appearance
shall we say of Dr Vegapunk would have to wait
until Punk Hazard where we did receive
a brief classic silhouetted shot of him
and what we do see here
just kind of boggles the mind because what it presents
is either a character with an insanely long and tall head,
kind of akin to Fukurokuju, the leader of the Oniwabanshu
on Wano or someone like Vice Admiral Strawberry
who has really long gravity defying hair
and a funky hat to match.
It's quite a bizarre silhouette though
and it shows that by this point,
Oda has a very clear design in mind,
where as I'm not so certain that was the case
when the Thriller Bark panel was drawn
and Vegapunk was portrayed in this more standard manner.
But then again, his head was completely cut off
and maybe Oda did that for the very reason
of masking his weirdly aubergine shaped head.
But the more important thing about the Thriller Bark panel
is what Kuma says about Dr. Vegapunk which is the following,
"I was created by the world government's resident genius,
"Dr Vegapunk, he possesses the world's most brilliant mind!
"His scientific prowess is said to be 500 years
"ahead of mankind."
Which is, you know, quite the statement to make,
but at the same time, it leads to a lot of
the One Piece world falling comfortably into place.
Because this realm has always and probably will always
presented as something of an oddity.
A curious blending of time periods and technology.
In this regard,
there's very little consistency to One Piece,
for example you can encounter a race of nordic giants,
but then the very next day
you can run into highly advanced cyborgs
that shoot lasers out of their mouths.
And the large majority of that latter experience
with advanced technology
can be directly attributed to Dr. Vegapunk.
Not all of it of course because characters like Franky
also exist, as well as other prolific scientists
such as Vinsmoke Judge,
but the large majority of it is Vegapunk's doing.
So the pacifista for example,
are a series of mass produced cyborg entities
that are a bit of a fusion of the physically
of Bartholomew Kuma, the technical prowess of Dr Vegapunk,
and marine admiral Kizaru's devil fruit ability
which allows him to, amongst other things, produce lasers.
Vegapunk took all of this and put in a neat,
little and highly destructive package,
thus delivering an incredible set of weaponry
to the World Government.
In fact speaking of the World Government,
Vegapunk is almost certainly one of,
if not even the most important figure
in their maintenance of domination of this world.
Because in addition to providing them
with advanced pirate fighting weaponry,
he also gave them a lot of handy utility developments
and the best example of this would be that Vegapunk
is the man responsible for discovering and implementing
the process of lining marine ships with sea stone,
thus allowing them to cross the calm belt
without being noticed by sea kings.
And that development is highly underrated
because this gives the world government
an unparalleled advantage when it comes to travel
because they can now quite comfortably
slip in and out of the Grand Line as they so desire,
making it very easy to maneuver and muster their forces
in any given location deemed necessary,
something that no other force in this world
has the option of doing.
In addition to this, Vegapunk has also very much been
on the precipice of playing god
and he has very successfully even created artificial life,
which can be seen in the two living breathing dragons
featured in the Punk Hazard.
These were both crafted by Dr Vegapunk
and designed to act as guards of the Punk Hazard lab,
a role they continued to inhabit
even after its destruction.
The bigger being of which is named Dragon Number 13,
a name which was actually given to it by the world nobles
in their ever creative wisdom,
but this was the first model of dragon
to be deemed a success
with 12 other prior experiments failing.
And meanwhile this smaller dragon thingy
was developed afterwards.
However, Vegapunk is probably best known work
comes in the form of devil fruits.
Now as I stated previously, Vegapunk is of course the man
responsible for delivering such creations
as Lassoo and Funkfeed,
a gun and sword that were somehow imbued
directly with the abilities of zoan type devil fruits
and thus once again effectively resulting
in Vegapunk creating a new form of life.
Not only that though, Vegapunk even went so far
as to develop his own artificial devil fruit,
an existence often forgotten by many casual fans,
but it is the zoan type that Momonosuke ate,
which turns him into a teeny tiny eastern dragon,
the Mushu of the One Piece world really.
But this artificial devil fruit
is not to be confused the SMILE devil fruits
though were developed through a collaboration
of Caesar Clown and Doflamingo
because Vegapunk's fruit actually appears
to be somewhat functional,
giving the user the ability to turn completely into a dragon
rather than the smile effect
of a random and unpredictable body part.
Despite that, Vegapunk's devil fruit
was considered a failure for as of yet unknown reasons.
but even he was apparently unable to mimic devil fruits
entirely which actually has pretty big impact
regarding any idea that devil fruits were man made at all,
because if this 500 year into the future brained genius
can't pull it off,
then I don't know what it would take to do so.
Maybe a genius who was 501 years into the future?
But even if he was not able to achieve
creating a full blown devil fruit himself,
Vegapunk did solve the mystery behind how they function,
which was a co-operative effort actually between himself
and another well known scientist, Vinsmoke Judge,
the head of the Germa Kingdom.
Together they discovered what is known
as the Lineage Factor,
which I believe is known as Bloodline Elements
in the official translation.
But it's basically a blueprint for life very much akin
to the concept of DNA which is present
in all living organisms.
The theory behind which has also led to the idea
of manipulating life by changing this factor,
something that Judge himself was very successful
in achieving with his own children,
as well as eventually developing an entire clone army.
And of course Vegapunk used his findings
to study devil fruits themselves,
discovering that the fruit properties
manipulate the lineage factor of a living being,
thus imbuing them with all of the funky powers
that we see in the series.
Very fun fact though, Vegapunk was not an agent
of the World Government when he
and Judge discovered the Lineage Factor,
quite the opposite actually.
They were independent rogue scientists
and then the World Government discovered their research,
they promptly arrested Vegapunk, although Judge,
as the leader of a world government affiliated Kingdom,
was assumedly spared for that very reason.
But then for reasons we can only describe
as completely unknown,
Vegapunk then began working directly
for the world government which is a curious endeavor
because from everything we know about Vegapunk,
this doesn't quite add up.
But to begin exploring this mystery,
there is one other huge piece of information
that needs to be laid down first,
which is that we know where Vegapunk was born and raised,
which is a location called Karakuri Island,
home of the Future Kingdom Baldimore.
Which isn't to say that it will be a kingdom one day,
it's already a kingdom,
it just calls itself a future kingdom
because of its access to incredible technology,
once again thanks to Vegapunk.
In his youth, Vegapunk created multiple labs on the Island,
housing a whole host of unfinished experiments
primarily due to him lacking the skill and finances
required to bring them to completion.
Although he did for some reasom
successfully convert a whole host
of the nations wildlife into cyborgs,
which I suppose would lay the groundwork
for his future conversion of Bartholomew Kuma.
But the most interesting thing
is that according to the residents of Karkuri Island
who knew Vegapunk as a young man,
he was described as a very generous individual
who genuinely cared for those around him.
And this sense of morality does translate
into other accounts of Vegapunk,
specifically what we know about his interactions
with Caesar Clown when the two of them
were working together on Punk Hazard.
Caesar being an example of a highly immoral being
who focused his research on chemical weaponry
as well as proposing that for the sake of science
they kidnap children
in the pursuit of gigantification experiments.
After which point Vegapunk dismissed him
from the science division,
which shows an innate sense of morality.
However, he might not be the paragon of kindness
that the inhabitants of Karakuri Island paint him as,
because looking a bit closer at it
his words to Caesar were the following,
"You're exiled from the science division Caesar.
"Your shenanigans have gone far enough
"and I can't cover for you anymore,"
which is not the most opposing of statements, really.
It sounds more like a superior
becoming frustrated with the antics of an underling,
but not necessarily philosophically opposed
to what they're doing.
Which is important to highlight
because the elephant in the room
is that Vegapunk works for the World Government,
which is certainly the largest scale operation
of corruption in existence on the One Piece planet.
So if Vegapunk did feel particularly strongly
about doing what was best for the people,
then why would would he be associated with them,
with the world government,
much less provide them with supreme domineering weaponry?
The easier explanation is that he's a selfish scientist
who can only truly work with the near infinite resources
that the World Government is able to offer him,
but at the same time that's unlikely
to be the answer either.
Because we do have examples of Vegapunk acting kindly,
specifically when it comes to Bartholomew Kuma,
who he programmed to guard the Thousand Sunny
during the two year time skip,
at the request of Kuma himself,
before he was fully converted.
Where as I suspect that a purely selfish man of science
would have converted Kuma and then just not kept his word,
because why would you, who's going to hold you to account?
Certainly not the dude who you just transformed
into an obedient cyborg!
So there's this definite sense of grey area
when it comes to Vegapunk.
He's not the epitome of corruption
presented in the world nobles,
nor is he the strict, lawful,
absolute justice maniac embodied in Sakazuki
or even a purely selfish existence like Caesar.
Vegapunk does fit somewhere on this scale,
but not at any of the extreme points,
which only makes him that much more enigmatic.
He's a character who has had a hand in shaping this world
and these characters as we know it.
Without Vegapunk, this series would lose a lot more
than you'd think and despite his distance,
he's had a fairly incredible direct impact
on the Straw Hats themselves.
Whether it be discovering the lineage factor alongside Judge
that led to Sanji's traumatic childhood,
or the fact that Franky was sent to Karakuri Island
during the time skip to study Vegapunk's previous work
or what I just mentioned before with Vegapunk
being practically directly responsible for protecting
the Thousand Sunny for two years.
His reach in this story is probably only eclipsed
by that of Gol D Roger himself,
and even that is probably debatable.
Dr. Vegapunk is the most important figure in this series
that we have never met.
A true lurking legend of One Piece
who I cannot wait to examine hopefully in the near future.
But what do you guys think?
Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below
or even join my discord server.
And If you'd like to see more videos like this,
then please do check out some of my other content
or even subscribe to the channel
for more glorious One Piece business
uploaded straight to your YouTube feeds.
But for now, this has been the GrandLineReview
and I'll see you next time.