e might finally know what Devil Fruit awakening really is, how it works and why using it might
mean paying the ultimate price for Luffy. Because the One Piece Manga just dropped
some bombshell information about the origin of devil fruits and how these fruits work.
Which shockingly enough has gone completely unnoticed by many people due to faulty English
translations. I’ll link the video with the full literal translation at the end. But in essence,
Dr Vegapunk reveals to the straw hats, that devil fruits are born into this world
by people’s dreams and wishes for the future. And that devil fruit users are actually beings
created from someone’s imagination that live in a different dimension. Which is already huge,
but on top of that we have the epic clash between Luffy’s in his awakened Sun God
Nika state and Rob Lucci who has awakened his leopard Zoan fruit, that looks like this. If
you thought that the firey vapor around Luffy was unique to his devil fruit ability, turns
out it’s not. And with Lucci’s awakening sharing so many similarities with Luffy’s, we can finally
deduce a lot about how Devil Fruit Awakening actually works and why it’s so dangerous.
To give you a very quick overview on what we know about Devil Fruit awakening so far,
there are actually only 10 canon characters that have been officially
confirmed as awakened devil fruits users. Which is kind of crazy. 4 of
them are the jailors in impel down. And then we have Doflamingo, Katakuri, Law,
Kid, Luffy and Lucci. That’s it. And half of them have only been revealed super recently.
The first time it was ever officially mentioned was by Doflamingo during his fight with Luffy. He
showed us that there is a completely new level to devil fruit powers, that increases their abilities
immensely. This power up depends heavily on the type of devil fruit you have eaten. Zoan fruit
users can turn into some type of animal, like a dragon, a mammoth or a leopard. giving them all
that creatures abilities as well as generally boosted power and endurance. Logia devil fruit
users turn their body into some type of substance or element, such as fire, sand or electricity. And
paramecia type devil fruits kinda lazily basically cover everything else, like Big Mom Brook’s soul
fruits, Whitebeard’s earthquake fruit or sugar’s ability to turn anyone she touches into toys. And
as Vegapunk explains, each of these fruits are created because someone keeps wishing for their
existence. The ability to turn into a dragon, the ability to freeze everything or the ability
to turn anything into a toy. Though how this works is still unclear. Vegapunk himself claims that he
is not interested in whether this is some sort of ancient technology or if it’s some sort of
magic created by a god. If you want to feel like a god, if you hit subscribe under this video,
I will pay my respects by offering you high quality one piece videos every single week.
As Doflamingo shows us awakening your powers as a paramecia user means that his abilities would not
only affect his body, but also the environment around him and amplify the ability’s powers.
As a result, he was able to transform any objects around him into controllable strings,
that he could also manipulate without being in contact with them. Similarly Katakuri was able
to transform the area around him into Mochi and control it as part of his body. Kid could
affect his environment with his magnetic powers. Meanwhile for someone like law,
Instead of creating a ROOMs in which he usually controls objects,
in his awakened state, Law can apply his manipulation field, on objects like his sword,
which he calls KROOM. That way the sword now gains the same spatial manipulation abilities,
that usually only work with ROOM around him. For example. using a technique
called "Anesthesia" he enables his sword to spatially phase through anything without even
making a wound or creating an incision, thereby bypassing any type of defense.
So far, we have seen no officially confirmed example of an awakened Logia fruit user. But
it’s widely speculated, that an awakened Logia user would be able to not only turn his body into
an element, but similar to paramecia types, also affect the environment around them. For instance,
Punk hazard’s climate used to be a jungle island, but after the battle between Aokiji and Akainu,
it ended up being half frozen waste land and half firey lava field.
Zoan fruits on the other hand work a bit differently. While we first really learned
about Awakening on Dressrosa, the first time this was actually mentioned was by Crocodile during
Luffy’s prison break from Impel down. The 4 jailor beasts, a cow, a koala a rino and a zebra, are 4
awakened zoan devil fruit users. This basically turns them into giant monster like versions of
their respective animals, but with certain human features remaining, like arms and legs. These
awakened users act on pure animal instincts and have lost their human will. This of course is very
similar to chopper’s monster point form before the time skip, which has lead to the generally
accepted theory, that Choppers monster point is an artificially created state of awakening.
However, we now have at least two more examples of awakened Zoan fruit users,
that are nothing like Monster point chopper or the impel down guards, that completely lose
their human nature. With Luffy’s awakening of his mythical Nika devil fruit, we can definitely see
a personality change in Luffy, but he still is himself and aware of his goals. Whether
that is defeating Kaido or keeping Lucci from murdering more people in vegapunk’s lab. Now
originally, this could simply have been explained by Luffy having eaten a human devil fruit. And a
mythical one at that. But now, with Rob Lucci’s awakening, we have confirmation, that it’s very
much possible to retain mental control in your awakened state. Lucci doesn’t look at all like
the brainless monster versions of the impel down animals. Instead his leopard has grown slim and
powerful looking. And even more human than his hybrid form. And he has the same wheel of flame
and smoke around him as Luffy has in his Gear 5 state. So it seems that, at least for Zoan fruits,
there are 2 paths to awakening: One where you lose control and the spirit of the animal consumes you
and one where you unlock the animal’s full potential while staying in control yourself.
Now even though Luffy and Lucci are the only two characters with this form that have been
officially confirmed as awakened, there are two more likely candidates. The more obvious of the
two is Yamato, son of the Yonko Kaido. She has eaten the mythical dog fruit model Okuchi no
Makami, which is a divine wolf. When she is facing her father in battle, because Luffy fell into the
ocean, Yamato seems to be in her hybrid form. However since we have seen Lucci with the same
slim figure and vapor coat around him, it’s pretty safe to say that this is actually her awakened
form. Which would make sense, because how else would Yamato be able to keep her father at bay.
And Kaido himself is of course the second possible awakening. To everyone’s surprise, Kaido was never
confirmed to have awakened his devil fruit. And it’s possible he never did. After all,
the fight against Kaido was mostly a battle of Armament and Conqueror’s Haki. And Kaido
also seems to lack the vapor coat that Luffy, Yamato and Lucci have. However,
Kaido does have 2 distinct hybrid forms. One that looks a lot more like his human form and
one that looks a lot more like a dragon face with human features. That second form also has
flame patterns, like the eyebrows, similar to the flame shape on Lucci’s fur. Interestingly enough,
in his Dragon form, Kaido does have the vapor coat and the flame shaped fur, like Lucci. So i would
simply speculate based on that, that Kaido was indeed awakened, as the king of beasts should be.
But that still doesn’t explain what Awakening truly is. From Doflamingo and Katakuri,
we know that awakening one’s devil fruit, at least naturally,
requires a certain power level, as well as a great mastery of one’s ability.
And we also know from Law and Kid, that fighting in one’s awakened state takes
a huge toll on the user’s body and energy and can only be used for a limited time.
But the key here i think is Vegapunk’s explanation. Devil fruit powers basically
tap into abilities that exists in a different dimension. Oda literally uses the word different
dimension in the manga by the way. Vegapunk also goes into even more detail with Luffy’s
nika fruit. He explains that even though Nika’s name has been erased from history,
long as people keep wishing for his existence he can never be erased.
It seems like eating a devil fruit means that a user not only takes on the abilities that have
been wished for, but also the reason for why it was wished for. In other words, based on
Vegapunk’s explanation, devil fruit users seem to inherit the will of those who wished for the
power in the first place. Kaido tells luffy that awakening happens when the mind catches up to the
devil fruit. And Oda himself had actually revealed something very similar to this in the road to
laugh tale booklets, while the manga was on break. He explained that the downside of Zoan awakenings
is that the 'innate nature of the animal' can consume the user if they're not careful. Which
seems to be exactly what happened with the guards at impel down or chopper. And it’s something that
seems to be quite dangerous for Luffy as well. If the Nika fruit is born by people wishing for it,
that explains Luffy strange behavior while in gear 5. Who’s Who, the person who was supposed to guard
the Nika fruit for the government before it was stolen by Shanks, tells Jinbei about Nika. That
he is legendary figure that slaves pray to in the hope that he would bring smiles to their faces and
free them form their suffering. He also mentions that he doesn’t know whether or not he actually
existed or if he was dreamed up. Which was of course perfect foreshadowing for this reveal.
So what seems to be happening here, is that the essence of Nika is bringing smiles to people’s
faces and freeing them from suffering. The citizens of Wano literally wished for that
and it was Luffy’s promise and purpose in his fight against Kaido to do just that. Therefore
Luffy could only awaken his devil fruit once he truly embodied the essence of his devil
fruit. So while Luffy hasn’t been overtaken by his fruit, like the impel down jailors,
he seems to still be a different person. Normally Luffy takes big fights very seriously. But in his
awakened state, he can’t stop laughing and uses his powers in quirky ways that he finds
amusing. He takes things too lightly, overseeing that Lucci is attacking Sentomaru. Which could
well be the true nature of the sun god nika trying to take over. This might we a major
risk for Luffy going forward: Losing control and having Nika slash Joy Boy come out instead.
But it’s not only Luffy. Devil Fruits carrying the will of those who dreamed them up explains why
pretty much any devil fruit user fits his fruit almost perfectly personality wise. Doflamingo has
the string fruit and is extremely manipulative. Yamato who is the guardian deity of Wano, a dog,
is extremely loyal, straightforward and decides to put the safety of Wano over their desire to
go out to sea. Both big mom and mother caramel had the soul soul fruit and loved to control
people’s lives and existence. Akainu has the magma fruit and is boiling over with hot rage. The list
goes on and on. So awakening one’s devil fruit, might simply mean becoming one with the original
will behind its creation. Maybe the ones who dreamt of the string fruit, wanted to control
things. And doflamingo became so controlling and manipulative, that he was able to tap into
the fruits full potential after being perfectly aligned with it. Or in Lucci’s case, someone who
would dream up a leopard would want to hunt and kill their prey. Lucci was always a bloodthirsty
hunter and at some point, he matched the nature of his devil fruit so well, that he could awaken it.
That works really will with the idea of mastering ones fruit too. Because mastering one’s fruit
means nothing else than using it in the way that it was meant to be used. The only real question
now, is HOW exactly people’s dreams and wishes are turned into actual abilities in one piece.
I have personally translated Vegapunk’s full lecture about
devil fruit from Japanese and discuss this question and much much more in a
lot of detail in this video right here. So check that out if you’re interested.