The One Piece manga just ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED our souls by revealing the near conclusion
of the epic battle between Monkey D. Garp and the former admiral Aokiji on Pirate Island.
And I DON’T THINK ANYONE expected the final result because, in a shocking turn of events,
Garp was stabbed straight through his gut and then basically defeated by Aokiji and the other
members of Blackbeard’s crew, which could lead to Garp being captured or even worse killed in
this battle with his former student. We also got to see even more insane powers from the
Blackbeard crew and a deeper look into the future possibilities for Aokiji’s role in the story.
But can we please just take a moment to appreciate just what an absolute monster
Garp is as a fighter. In this chapter, he is essentially fighting half of an entire Yonko crew,
including an admiral level character in Aokiji, and he is still dealing massive damage. In fact,
he nearly killed the massive San Juan Wolf by casually tossing the mountain of a man into the
ocean. Then he blocks a flaming alcohol blast by grabbing these random pirates,
and then he even has the audacity to toss the flaming bodies around the town
like they were firecrackers on Independence Day.
What makes this even more impressive is that he is doing all of this while at the
same time protecting the escaped prisoners and the other members of Sword while they flee the
island. And by the way, I’m loving the focus on his raw power during his fights and even
during some of the flashbacks in this chapter. I personally feel like insane haki and devil
fruits have taken over the series SO MUCH, so it's nice to see just one man popping off with
his fists. Although he's not technically doing this alone because Koby, Helmeppo,
Rear-Admiral Grus also remained on the island to allow the others to escape. Seriously though, I’m
pretty sure Garp would have been better off all on his own. Because while Koby is tricked into trying
to rescue a random woman, the invisible swordsman Shiryu appears and is about to stab the marine
Captain. However, we then get to see just how much Garp cares about Koby because he throws himself in
the way and gets stabbed through the stomach just like Whitebeard did back in Marineford.
And let me tell you, this moment literally made my heart skip a beat! Not only because of the shock
factor of the scene itself but also seeing Garp throw himself around to protect someone else is
such a monumental change compared to his actions back in Marineford. Because if you remember,
Garp also cared a lot about Ace because he helped to raise him as a child. Well,
if you consider dropping him off with a bunch of bandits solid parenting. Anyways,
to put all this into perspective, Garp knew Ace for TWENTY YEARS. Ace’s father, Gol D. Roger
even trusted Garp to take care of his child. But none of that was enough to make Garp rescue Ace,
which is why it is so shocking to see him completely put his life completely on the
line to rescue Koby. I mean, wow, just how much does he care for this pink haired kid?
We’ll discuss more about that in just a bit,
but first Garp isn’t out of the battle just yet. In fact, he immediately slams Shiryu’s
head into the ground. And while this deals some serious damage to the former jailor,
Shiryu gets the last laugh because he knows that Garp has taken a massive blow. And it’s honestly
pretty lucky for the Blackbeard pirates that Koby was still on the island because without this
deception that put Koby in danger, I think Garp probably would have definitely won this fight.
Now, while the battle continues Garp is weakened but he still has to face the massive threat of
Aokiji and the rest of the Blackbeard pirates. In fact, at the end of the chapter we even see
Garp bleeding on the ground. Which leaves me thinking that he might be defeated very soon
OR we could see him unleash his true power. Either way, Koby is still there to help him,
but I don’t really think Koby can take on all of the enemies by himself. However, since Garp
already sacrificed himself to save Koby, I could see him take it one step further and do something
crazy like launching Koby off of the island. And if this is the case, that would leave Garp
in a very tough situation, which I honestly don’t think he would escape from. And if that happens it
leaves us with two incredibly interesting options for what will happen to Luffy’s Grandfather.
The first and most likely option is that Garp will be captured by the Blackbeard
pirates. But seriously, good luck keeping this powerhouse hostage. Sea stone won’t work on him,
but maybe Aokiji will freeze him or something to keep him under control. Anyway,
this option is pretty likely to occur because in this chapter we even were told that his
Cross Guild bounty is three billion berries. Which is actually an extremely interesting
number because we also learn that it is the same amount as a marine admiral AND
you might even remember that it is equal to Luffy’s current bounty. So I guess this is
Oda’s way of telling us that Luffy is on Garp’s level now. Or maybe Garp is on Luffy's level?
I’m not too sure but if Garp is captured then he could actually be used as the bargaining
chip that Blackbeard described back in chapter 1080. Because remember the evil Yonko's whole
plan for capturing Koby in the first place was to try to ransom him to the world government
in exchange for Pirate Island being recognized as an official kingdom by the World Government.
And while that ultimately wouldn’t work with Koby because he is a member of Sword, Garp might be THE
PERFECT marine to hold for ransom. That’s because he is basically the most famous
marine in the world and he is called the literal hero of the marines. So if the
World Government didn’t do everything they could to rescue him it could turn
into a disaster that could cause even more people to lose faith in their leadership.
But if Blackbeard didn't want to deal with Garp, an even more absolutely incredible
option is that he could also turn Garp over to Cross Guild for that juicy bounty,
and it doesn’t take too much speculation to think that this could lead us to a reverse
Marineford. What I mean by this is that we could have a situation where instead of the
marines executing a pirate, like they did with Ace, we instead have the pirates executing a
famous marine. I mean can you just imagine the chaos something like that would cause
with Buggy broadcasting the show to the entire world? It would be INSANE.
Though this brings up an even bigger question. Would Luffy come back to
save Garp? With all the crazy events going on at Egghead right now, it is hard to say,
but with Ace already dead, it is hard to imagine that Luffy wouldn't try to save his Grandpa.
And while it's too early to really speculate any more about that possibility, the other
option for Garp’s future is that he simply dies during this battle on Pirate Island. And while I
personally don’t see that happening right now, you can’t say that Garp doesn’t have
A RIDICULOUS number of death flags. Let's count them, shall we... First of all, he is a likable,
older mentor-type character with no super clear role in the story, except maybe to
inspire someone. Remind you of anyone. Plus he is the family of the main protagonist and
we’ve just seen him save one favorite student while battling ANOTHER former student. And
if that’s not the stereotypical checklist of Shonen death flags, then I don't know what is.
But if we are taking this option seriously then we have to consider what would be the
purpose of Garp dying here on Pirate Island. Is it just to inspire Koby? He did shout out
that Justice would prevail, but as a certain pink flamingo once told us, Justice is determined by
whoever wins the war. So while inspiring Koby is certainly possible – although a
little weird since we haven’t seen Garp and Koby interact a ton in the story – there is
one other option that was hinted at during all of the flashback scenes in this chapter.
Because in this chapter we see that Garp developed a deep bond with Aokiji and
the former admiral truly respected his former teacher. And we’ll discuss more
about their relationship and what it means for Aokiji’s future in just a moment, but for now,
I wonder if Garp's defeat is actually a massive misdirection and Oda is trying
to trick us all. Back in chapter 1080 some members of Blackbeard's crew were suspicious
of the former admiral joining the group, but killing Garp would definitely show them once
and for all that Aokiji is on their side. So could Garp really be doing all this to help
Aokiji with some secret mission to infiltrate Blackbeard’s crew? It is kinda like in Harry
Potter when Professor Snape killed Dumbledore to gain the bad guy’s trust. Although to be perfectly
honest I don’t know how willing Garp would be to sacrifice himself since he wasn’t already dying.
But while we don’t know if Garp still trusts Aokiji this much, he certainly trusts Koby
to be the future of the marines. And I've always wondered why exactly that is. Is
it as simple as Garp seeing something special in the way Koby thinks about Justice? I mean,
Koby will do what is right, no matter the situation. We saw an example of this in
Marineford when he stood up to Akainu and even recently in chapter 1080 when we saw that he
was perfectly happy to work with this ghost girl if it meant he could continue his duty.
Or if it isn't just Koby's strong sense of fair justice, another option is that Garp actually
knows something special about Koby. I mean we don’t know Koby’s family lineage. We just
met him on this random boat in chapter two, but maybe Garp does know more about Koby and he has
a clue about some future special power Koby has inside of him. It's certainly possible considering
all of the new family dynamics surrounding other characters with interesting hair colors.
Whatever Garp's reason for believing in Koby, I can’t imagine that the young marine doesn’t
survive this battle, so I’m sure we’ll learn more about his super important role in the story very
soon. And if you want to make sure to hear all about the changes Koby will bring to the world,
make sure to subscribe to the channel for more One Piece content like this.
Now, just like Koby these slimeballs are also going to play vital roles in the final saga,
and in this chapter we once again see that the theme of the Blackbeard pirates is to win
using tricks and deception. We saw it in Impel Down and Marineford, and here again when they
tricked Koby which led to Garp being stabbed. In fact, we will undoubtedly see some sort of
devious scheme when they face the straw hats. Like they could kidnap a crew member – I’m looking at
you Ms. Archeologist – or maybe somehow they get a traitor close to the crew.
Whatever it is, one nearly certain thing is that Zoro will also have to deal with
Shiryu’s dishonorable fighting style, especially considering his famous quote back during his
duel with Mihawk, that scars on the back are a swordsman’s shame. In this chapter,
we also got a better look at the powers of Vasco Shot. If you remember it was recently
revealed that he ate the Liquor fruit, and we just now saw him spit out a stream of flammable
alcohol that he somehow set on fire. But what’s even more impressive were these truly massive
arms that Avalo Pizarro shot out of the island using his mysterious devil fruit. Seriously,
what is the deal with these powers? They seem incredibly overpowered
given that everyone in the One Piece world basically lives on islands.
Though none of that was nearly as impressive as Aokiji’s mastery of his devil fruit and
especially his overpowered haki that we got to see in this chapter. And I
don’t care about the power scalers who will say that Garp was already weak,
but Aokiji’s haki powered fist absolutely sent Garp flying, so kudos to this ice-cold
dude. And even though Aokiji got thrown back as well, that’s still incredibly
impressive considering Garp is likely one of the strongest haki users in the entire world.
That's not to say that Aokiji shouldn't be thankful to Garp though, because he
would have likely never gotten to this level with Garp’s training from the past. Because
in this chapter we see in flashbacks that Garp trained and eventually befriended a
young Kuzan. The former admiral even trained so hard that he could beat up these old ships on
the same level as Garp. But what’s even more impressive is that Garp seemed to consider
Aokiji a friend that he could talk to about his problems. He mentions that his grandson
Luffy wants to become a pirate and that his SON Dragon started the revolutionary army.
Wait…hold on this is incredibly important. If Dragon is actually Garp’s son and not
just his son in law, that could mean that… but I’ll save that discussion for another.
Though one thing that is still really bugging me is Oda is really trying to make us believe that
Aokiji truly wants to work for Blackbeard. Even though Aokiji’s justice motto is “Lazy Justice”,
to me he has always seemed like a guy who wants to do the right thing but
he was still searching for answers. And to speculate on what he might actually
do in the future, let’s briefly go over his character arc so far in the story.
It all started in chapter 321. During this fight,
Luffy challenged him to a one on one duel so that the admiral wouldn’t go after the rest
of the crew. And even though he easily defeated Luffy, Aokiji didn’t kill the
straw hat captain AND he honored the terms of the duel by not chasing after the straw hats.
Then we had a boatload of information about the icy admiral during Robin’s flashback, where Aokiji
was part of the group that destroyed the scholarly island of Ohara. And Aokiji even appeared to go so
far as to kill his friend Saul after the giants had betrayed the marines. But then in that very
same chapter, Aokiji seemed to recognize that Saul desperately wanted to save Robin for some reason,
and he decided to let Robin go instead of killing her like he was ordered to. To me,
this means that he inherited Saul’s dream that Robin should live. This idea is further supported
by Robin and Aokiji’s talk outside the banquet after Enies Lobby. He tells her that maybe she
can answer the question of why Saul wanted her to live, so really he seems to be searching for
answers that he can’t discover for himself. Plus we later found out that Aokiji didn’t
actually kill Saul, so there seems to be a lot of internal conflict for what Aokiji truly believes.
In fact, after the time skip Aokiji left the marines because he didn’t want to work under the
bloodthirsty Akainu. We next saw him in chapter 698, when he actually saves Vice-Admiral Smoker
from being killed by the Warlord Doflamingo. And this scene shows us that Aokiji still is a good
person who cares about his friends and the overall safety of the world. Which makes it even harder
to believe that he is truly evil and joined the Blackbeard pirates just to take over the world.
But then again, maybe he just really wanted to be a pirate to have a fun time tossing back the booze
with the boys like we saw in chapter 1080. And this actually makes me wonder super curious about
what Aokiji's journey would really look like if he was a pirate from the start. With his powers, he
would absolutely be a massive threat to become a Yonko and find the One Piece that I went ahead and
thought out exactly how his pirate adventure could go in this video, which you can watch right here.
Shanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one.