The One Piece Manga just dropped a bombshell, by revealing the true origin of Devil Fruits,
that no one expected. Oda might just have broken the 4th wall and written himself into
the story. And because the literal phrasing here is incredibly important, I want to give
you the literal translation of what Dr. Vegapunk tells the straw hats in the original Japanese
version: When he sees Gear 5 and realizes that Luffy’s Devil Fruit takes the form
of Nika, he says this:
‘You probably have not heard the name Nika before, because it’s a name that was erased
from history. However as long as people keep wishing for him he can never be erased. Everything
is born into into this world after it was wished for. The same goes for Devil Fruits.
If things only were like this or if only that happened…they are powers of a wide range
of wishes for humanity’s future. Therefore, these artificial fruits are hated by the mother
of nature, which is the sea. That’s just my personal hypothesis. I’m not even thinking
about whether there are gods or not. Isn’t that fascinating! So, devil fruit users are
actually beings created from someone’s imagination that lives in a different dimension.’
Yes Vegapunk, this is pretty fascinating. Holy Usopp. This is by far the biggest lore
drop we’ve ever had about devil fruits in the entire story. Something we’ve been waiting
for since the beginning of Luffy’s adventure. There is so much we have to talk about here,
because this answers a ton of questions we had, but raises even more new ones. ‘Devil
Fruits are actually beings created by someone’s imagination living in another dimension’.
Oda did you just write yourself into the story? We need to discuss this. However, the first
thing, before we can get into the meats and potatoes of this, that we need to address
, is the big caveat that Vegapunk gives us here: All this information is his own personal
hypothesis. In other words, Vegapunk himself has deduced this much from all his research
and the research made by the archeologists on Ohara, but he acknowledges himself that
it’s not confirmed the whole story. Knowing Oda, I believe that there is a lot of truth
to what Vegapunk said here, but I’m convinced there will be a few twists to this explanation
in the end.
But with that said, let’s go through everything we’ve gotten here, because it’s a lot.
Basically Vegapunk’s hypothesis states, that Devil Fruits are created from people’s
imagination and wishes for the future. And as long as people keep wishing for these things,
they will become reality in the world of One Piece. His example here is Luffy’s Nika
Devil Fruit. Vegapunk actually didn’t seem to know that this particular devil fruit existed.
He looks up the Gomu Gomu no mi in the ancient devil fruit encyclopedia, yes that’s a thing
too apparently that we’ll have to talk about at some point. And he realizes that there
never was a Gomu Gomu no mi. However, apparently Vegapunk has either seen an image of the sun
god nika or heard a description of his appearance, because he correctly identifies that Luffy’s
gear 5 is Nika, based on some ancient texts he references. Once again, I do wonder, whether
all these ancient things that Vegapunk references, are all dating back to the Void Century and
Joy Boy’s time, or if this goes back even further in time. After all the void century
is ‘only’ 800 years ago, while One Piece history dates back at least several thousand
years.
Then of course there is also the entire Luffy vs Lucci thing and Lucci’s awakened devil
fruit having the same steam coat around his body as Luffy and Yamato. In generall, this
chapter answers a bunch of questions we had about devil fruit awakening and how it works.
Especially in the context of this new information, there is a lot we can deduce, especially about
Zoan fruits. And i want to discuss this in detail, so I will make a dedicated video about
that that will be out within a week, if at least 1000 people subscribe until tomorrow.
Anyways, Vegapunk basically says, that even though Nika’s name and the true name of
Luffy’s devil fruit were erased from history by the world government, the powers of sun
god Nika will never cease to be as long as people believe in his existence. As we know,
Nika is a deity worshiped by slaves as the warrior of liberation. In other words, Nika
would be the literal embodiment of people’s wish for freedom, which of course fits in
perfectly with the main theme of One Piece and what Luffy represents as a character:
Freedom.
So it turns out that Blackbeard was being quite literal, when he said that dreams never
die. He wasn’t being philosophical at all. He KNOWS, that people’s dreams literally
never die, as they are reborn as devil fruits as long as people believe in them. It looks
like this was a major piece of foreshadowing, that Blackbeard had knowledge about devil
fruits, no one else has. This is speculation, but it might well be the case, that this is
the key to Blackbeard’s ability to steal devil fruits as well. Maybe the darkness fruit
is the strongest devil fruit in his eyes, because if there is darkness, there can be
no other dreams when you sleep. Maybe exactly how this fruit can cancel out other fruit
powers, and why Blackbeard never sleeps.
I have also at length talked about the fact, that devil fruits might be related to inherited
will. Inherited will in one piece basically describes handing down ones own dream to the
next person. And that the countless examples of devil fruits apparently changing people’s
personality, might be due to the will of previous owners stored inside them. Which also seems
to be connected to the so called lineage factor discovered by Vegapunk, and is essential to
devil fruits.
All of this of course gives extra special meaning to Roger’s final words at his execution.
**Inherited Will, The winding of the Ages, and The Dreams of the People.** **As long
as people continue to pursue the meaning of Freedom, these things will never cease to
be!**
This might be Roger describing the secret of devil fruits in the very first chapter
of one piece. People’s dreams and passing those dreams on to others, which literally
keeps Devil Fruits in circulation. And the winding of the ages might refer to the wide
variety of futures of humanity, that people wish for, that Vegapunk talks about as well.
Everything fits in perfectly with what Blackbeard and Roger have said. Only that dreams have
a much more literal power in the world, than we thought.
Now the reason i said that no one expected this reveal at the beginning, of this video
is not because I believe that no one ever had the idea that Devil Fruits could be based
on people’s dream. In fact you probably thought to yourself: What do you mean unexpected,
I thought of that ages ago. In fact I myself made a video over half a year ago talking
about the possibility that devil fruits might be created from human imagination. But the
reason i found this reveal so unexpected, was because so far, Egghead island had basically
one big message for us. And that is: Everything in one piece, that looks like magic, actually
is ancient lost technology. Basically the idea was that everything that’s strange
in One Piece can be explained by a technologically super advanced civilization that tapped into
an unlimited energy source that allowed them to do basically anything. We know that Vegapunk
was able to create artificial devil fruits using science and it fit in very nicely with
the idea that all of this is just super advanced technology. And now suddenly, the main science
guy himself, tells us that actually if you just wish for something hard enough, it will
come true in this world? It just feels very paradoxical to me. Which one is it now? Are
devil fruits and haki Magic? Or is it science?
Vegapunk himself actually addresses this himself as well. Remember he said that he doesn’t
really care wether this is the work of gods or a god. In other words, he doesn’t actually
know how wishes and dreams become reality. Which sounds a bit fishy to me. Don’t you
think that the man who wants to know anything about the world and ancient powers, would
want to find out how they work and where they come from? I think either Vegapunk is salty
that he couldn’t find out or he is actively withholding some information here. After all,
in order to create an artificial devil fruit in a lab, he clearly must have at least some
scientific understanding of these fruits. For example Momo’s devil fruit was created
by using Kaido’s lineage factor, basically the equivalent of DNA in one piece.
Also, Vegapunk contradicts himself a little in his speech when it comes to this. He talks
about how the sea, which is the mother of nature and how the sea hates these artificially
created things. The japanese here uses shizen and fushizen, which means nature or natural
and unnatural or artificial. In other words, he openly describes these manifested powers
as artificial creations. So, which one is it vegapunk? My best guess right now would
be that someone had either the advanced technology or the supernatural power to create this mechanism
in the one piece world.
And the key to that is Vegapunk’s most interesting statement of all here: ‘能力者とは誰かが思いえがいたいくつものいじげんを生きる者たち’
Which first of all is such a strangely phrased sentence. I asked some of my japanese friends
to help me translate it and everyone said something different. But here is the gist:
Ability users are people who live in many different dimensions that someone envisioned.
Ijigen means different dimension without any doubt, so this is a big deal one way or the
other. But It seems like Oda is keeping this a bit vague on purpose. And puh, this could
mean so many things. Is it the actual fruit users themselves who live in a different dimension?
Because to me it seems like they very much live right here in the one piece world. Is
it that those different dimensions are created by someone and devil fruit users can access
them to use their powers? Or does it mean that people from another dimension who envision
a certain ability, and that ability than materializes in the one piece dimension? Which would basically
mean that Oda imagining these powers in our dimension makes them a reality in One Piece.
oda saying that for him one piece is a real world and that vegapunk is aware of the fact
that our world exists? Which would be the most meta Rick and Morty twist Oda could possibly
pull off. These reveals are getting crazier and crazier and if you missed my thoughts
on last week’s chapter, make sure to check that out right here.