Imu-Sama, the secret ruler of the World Government, probably has the most mind-boggling power
in all of One Piece.
If you thought the Nika fruit was overpowered, then Imu is about to be straight up broken,
with one of the strongest devil fruit powers imaginable.
If we’re right, then Imu is firmly in One Piece final boss territory.
The King of the Pirates is the person with the most freedom on the sea.
But little does Luffy know - little does the world know, that there is a true king in the
One Piece world - and that no one is free.
If anyone is to claim the One Piece, it’s not the rival members of the Worst Generation
they have to worry about, nor the fearsome Yonkou.
Not even the almighty Cross Guild is the biggest threat on the Grand Line, despite having the
greatest swordsman in the world (and greatest clown in the world) among their number.
The faction that has the most to lose from the One Piece being discovered is the World
Government.
The future Fleet Admiral, Sakazuki, didn’t think twice about condemning an entire island
to a fiery death if it meant restricting the knowledge of the poneglyphs - the objects
that reveal the true history and lead to the ultimate treasure.
They’d even imprison one of their own CP-9 agents - Who’s Who - for losing the Nika
fruit, which is somehow connected to the legacy of Joyboy.
It’s obvious that the World Government will do anything to stop this treasure from being
revealed - and at the top of that government, at the top of the whole world, is not a pirate
king: that seat has long sat vacant since Roger’s execution.
The person with the most power in the One Piece world, even if most of the world doesn’t
know it, is the mysterious Imu-Sama.
And chances are that this mysterious entity will pull out all the stops in order to prevent
any pirates from claiming the One Piece and learning the true history.
There are a lot of candidates for who will be Luffy’s final opponent.
Could it be Akainu?
Or Blackbeard?
Or the infamous Buggy D. Clown?
We actually made a whole video about it that you can check out here: Only time will tell
who Luffy’s final match up will be, but it Im-Sama is one of the prime candidates.
The world government has been one of the story’s leading antagonistic forces even since the
earliest chapters in East Blue.
If the final opponent ends up being the World Government and not another pirate crew like
Blackbeard or Shanks, the most likely big bad could be Imu.
Even though Luffy has a personal grudge against Akainu, Imu-Sama is the ultimate leader of
the world government.
And if Luffy represents the the new dawn of the world, if he beats the drums of liberation,
and bring freedom to the world - then Im may represent the opposite, the highest authority
in the world, putting people across the seas in chains, both literal and metaphorical.
But if Im is a fighter worthy of occupying the spot of Luffy’s final opponent, then
they need to give us one hell of a fight and he needs a power set that contends with the
wild abilities of the Sun God Nika fruit.
One of the prevailing theories of Nika’s fruit is that they have the most overpowered
fruit possible: the water-water fruit.
Or the Sea-Sea fruit- Or Ocean-Ocean.
Or the fruit of some unnamed Sea God - whatever you call it, it’s the wettest fruit around
- pure water as opposed to muddy water like Caribou’s swamp or cold water like Kuzan’s
ice.
Devil fruit users all lose the ability to swim.
The sea drains them of their abilities, and even the ability to move while submerged.
Someone with a water-water fruit would be a natural counter not only to something like
the Mera-Mera no Mi.
Luffy’s hard counter to Eneru’s lightning fruit was one thing, but we’re talking about
a hard counter to every.
Single.
Devil fruit.
If we think that the Nika fruit seems OP, with its abilities to seemingly break reality
and apply cartoon logic to Luffy’s stretching and shape shifting, then get ready to get
a whole lot OP-er, when Imu-Sama simply turns off his devil fruit with a nice soak.
Besides the idea that a water fruit would just be absurdly broken, it would make a lot
of sense for Imu-Sama to have.
The Japanese word “Umi” means “sea” or “ocean”.
Umi backwards spells “Imu” = Coincidence?
Probably not, given how much Oda loves wordplay.
It’s too on the nose to not have a meaning.
Thematically, Imu having a sea fruit makes sense as well.
He is the being with the most power on the seas.
The dangerous oceans of the One Piece world are what keep people separated, isolated from
each other on their individual islands.
Only by braving the treacherous tides and turbulent weather of the Grand Line can members
of different countries connect politically and economically.
This separation makes it all the easier for the World Government to exert control over
the seas, especially given their monopoly on Kairoseki - sea stone - that allows their
ships to move safely through the calm belt, bypassing its deadly sea kings.
If Imu-Sama controls the oceans in a figurative sense, maybe his fruit allows him to control
the oceans in a much more literal sense.
However - this isn’t the only power that would make sense for this all powerful figure
of the One Piece world.
If Imu is “Umi” backwards - maybe he’s not the ocean at all.
Maybe he’s the opposite of the ocean.
And a lot of the time when we’re thinking about elemental powers, we think of water
and fire being opposites.
But in the context of One Piece, I don’t think fire really makes sense as the opposite
of the ocean.
In One Piece, you’re either at sea…or you’re on land.
We’ve seen Pica’s stone fruit and Crocodile’s sand fruit - we even had Miss Merry Chirstmas’s
tunneling mole fruit, but we have yet to see a proper Earth-Earth fruit in the series.
The closest may be the Revolutionary Commander Morley’s Oshi Oshi no Mi, which allows her
to push the ground and mold it as if it were clay.
However, this fruit is a paramecia - we’re still missing an Earth logia in a club that
includes other elements like fire, ice, and so on.
Speaking of Morley, though - did you know that this revolutionary has a bounty of 293,
000, 000 berries.
Impressive and befitting one of the most wanted people in the world.
It’s far more than the slithering slime-man, Trebol’s 99, 000, 000 berry bounty.
With your help, though, you can help our channel to overtake Trebol and raise our bounty by
hitting the subscribe button!
The Earth fruit doesn’t feel as overpowered as something like a sea fruit - but it also
feels a lot more likely to exist.
If devil fruit users are cursed by the sea, and the sea is their ultimate weakness, it
might not make much sense for there to be a sea fruit after all.
And we can’t really discard Earth - as one of the four classical elements, it would definitely
still pack a punch as a devil fruit.
Having the earth fruit would make a lot of thematic sense for Imu as well.
For pirates like Luffy, setting out to sea is representative of finding freedom and adventure.
It’s the opposite of being trapped on the land - like Luffy was for so long when he
was too young to set sail with Ace or Shanks.
If the open sea gives pirates freedom, then the earth or the land represents the opposite.
Where else but the land do the Straw Hats find corrupt kingdoms and monarchies like
that of Wapol - when pirates like Arlong, Crocodile, and Doflamingo gave up adventuring
on the sea, they turned to dominating others on islands.
Imu having the earth fruit would also solve one of the biggest mysteries in One Piece:
Who created the Red Line?
Back when Luffy’s fruit was still thought to be just a rubber fruit, he showed us how
a creative, strong, and willful fruit user can turn even an average fruit into a force
to be reckoned with.
The Earth fruit may not seem overpowered at first glance, but imagine if Imu is powerful
enough to create a continent.
If Imu was alive during the void century, perhaps he’s the reason there are no continents,
save the Red Line.
Using an Earth fruit, Imu-Sama could have reshaped the world to their liking.
Landmasses could have been sunk, leaving the human population disparate and scattered across
distant islands.
The red line could have been erected, bordering seas from each other and restricting travel
between parts of the globe.
Imu’s home itself, Mariejois, even sits atop this mighty landmass.
If this is Imu’s power, then Luffy will need a fruit as OP as the Nika fruit to even
stand a chance.
However, water and earth aren’t the only options for Imu’s potential power, either.
There could be a To-Be-Determined mythical zoan to rival the Nika fruit - maybe a Sea
God fruit or, while we speculated in a previous video - that you can watch here - that Blackbeard
possesses a Moon God fruit, maybe Imu-Sama is the real Moon God instead.
If Oda does have Imu as a final villain instead of Blackbeard, this could be very fitting.
And after seeing Shanks’ incredible feat of conqueror’s haki in chapter 1055, we
have to wonder if Imu even needs a devil fruit at all.
Perhaps, like Shanks, Imu-Sama is just a haki user.
However, one has to wonder how strong is the conqueror’s haki of someone who has literally
conquered the entire globe.
Shanks’ haki stopped Aramaki in his tracks from miles away off the coast of Wano - could
Imu’s haki have an even farther reach?
There’s also the matter of the saber that Imu carries.
So far we’ve only seen them use it to tear up bounty posters, in order to let the Gorosei
know which lights need to be extinguished.
We have to wonder, though, if maybe that’s not all that sword is good for.
Luffy is particularly susceptible to cutting, slashing, and stabbing attacks - but this
would be a strange route for Oda to go down.
Either Mihawk isn’t actually the strongest swordsman in the world and it’s Imu instead,
or Zoro would end up with a more powerful opponent than Luffy’s in the final war.
Finally, though, we have the somewhat anti-climactic option.
Imu might just not be a fighter.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a major antagonist wasn’t a combatant.
In Water 7/Enies Lobby, one of the other notable times the Straw Hats went up against the World
Government directly, the leader of CP9 and arguably the central villain was Spandam.
Spandam, despite his special sword, Funkfreed, was not a fighter.
This incompetent, sniveling, utterly punchable Cipher-Pol operative relied on the muscle
of Rob Lucci and Lucci ended up becoming Luffy’s primary opponent for the arc.
It might be the case that Imu-Sama, like most Celestial Dragons, just relies on the military
might of the marines to carry out his will and for protection.
It could be that the Gorosei serve as Imu’s elite guard - though it isn’t yet confirmed
that they’re fighters either.
We just really, really hope we get to see Ghandi break out that sword.
It’s unclear what Imu’s role in the story will be, but after their introduction at the
Reverie, it’s clear that they’ll play a pivotal role in the final saga.
We still need to learn what the Great Cleansing is - and to learn how the World Government
plans to carry it out.
Maybe the Marines’ secret weapon, the SSG, will play some part.
But with so little One Piece left, here’s to hoping that Oda can pack in as many wild
fights and earth-shattering revelations as possible.
And if you track of all the poeple luffy still has to punch before the end of the story and
why, you should watch this video here next.