This text was originally written for Arlong Park forums’ discussion thread.

Alright, so Luffy has been combined with a legendary sun deity. Short of the One Piece itself, this is the series’ biggest possible reveal, right? A complete recontextualisation of Luffy’s powers, which have been central since literally chapter one. My gut says this isn’t the greatest twist in the world – it’s less of an ‘oh, everything makes sense in hindsight’ and more of a ‘never in a million years would I have said this is where it’s going.’ But that’s not to say this new information has no synnergy at all with what we knew previously.

For example, the idea of the Devil Fruit having a mind of its own and influencing its own fate One Ring-style fits in easily. Zoan fruits can be fed to inanimate objects to create a hybrid with the mind of the animal. Evidence suggests the reason that Zoans were the only fruits that could be imitated in Smile form is because you could use living animals to sythisise them. The old wives tales told about the fruits at Ennies Lobby said they put actual devils inside your body. So if the Elders say the fruit tried to escape on its own, I see that as a logical extension of all these points.

Not mention all the symbolism of lions, sunflowers, suns and Luffy that have been in play for a long time now. There’s not nothing to go on here, although it’s little enough you might be called a crackpot prior to this chapter if you’d try to go all in a theory based on only that.

I’m interested to see what the relationship between Mythical Zoans and the creatures they represent really is. We haven’t seen any evidence in-universe of a phoenix or a natural-born dragon (depending on how canon you want Monsters to be), and no one’s arguing that the Buddha really lived in OP world’s history, so do we say that these creatures only exist in the form of their representative Devil Fruits, and are otherwise fictional? (If the mythological creatures are only extinct, surely they would be Ancient Zoans instead, not that we should be putting too much stock in presumed classifications and names after this week.) And then was it the chicken or the egg when it comes to the fruits and the myths?

In any case, I think the mythological angle spares Luffy from accusations of no longer being himself – or of never having been himself. If the will of the Buddha inside Sengoku’s fruit couldn’t keep him from earning a reputation as a powerful military leader and kept him in the service of an evil empire built on the backs of slaves, it’s safe to say Nika isn’t making Luffy do anything he wouldn’t already want to do. Is it a bit of a cheap coincidence that Luffy so naturally wants freedom and brings joy and just happens to eat the fruit of the god of all that? Sure, but so is a guy called Smoker getting smoke powers and a guy called Orochi getting Orochi powers. It hits a bit different when it’s the main character, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before.

That said, after every other Mythical Zoan was something you could find in real world legends, it’s a tad cheap for this one to be an all new made-up god with the exact traits needed for the prior evidence to make sense – a being of rubber and fire sounds made up to fit the clues, rather than clues being given of its existence. It’s not something that feels guessable, which can be a frustrating experience as a reader.

It’s funny that Kaido talked about Luffy trying to be Joyboy, as if that name was the title, leaving us to assume Nika was perhaps the last person to carry that mantle. But he got it wrong, didn’t he? Nika is the mantle and Joyboy was the last to use it. I wonder if we’ll see how the two names got twisted up, or if it’s just a natural result of the World Government’s attempts to erase history.

What I really would have wanted to see leading up to this twist, in hindsight, is Nika being better established long before Who’s Who brings him up. A scratching of the name or the silhouette carved into a wall in Impel Down, for example, lingered on just long enough by the camera to make it stick out to hardcore fans. I know we’ve had mentions of sun gods since forever (hell, there’s a thread I started on the topic still on the first page of this board) but not enough follow through between them and the ideas of liberty and broken chains and happiness and rubber now being ascribed to them. Maybe that was meant to click into place on its own when Who’s Who named Nika for us i chapter 1018, but that feels like too little too late for my tastes.

I like when I can reread a story and go ‘it was right in front of me all along!’ but my best recollections of One Piece lore still have me clutching at straws to find the build-up to it.

I’m also not sold on what exactly Luffy’s new powers are. I guess we’ll be seeing more fire for obvious reasons, but One Piece has been so cartoony from the start it’ll take a lot for this new imagination-driven toolset to actually stand out. Like yeah, it’s a big shift in tone for Luffy to be able to pick up Kaido and slam him back and forth like he’s a loony tune, but he did that to Oars too. I suppose it could be read as a point in this twist’s favour that it feels so in line with what we’ve seen Luffy do previously – it’s just more blatant about bending the laws of physics for laughs now. We’re probably going to be debating til the end of time what powerups or mid-fight goofball moments were unconscious manifestations of Nika’s powers. To what extent can “the most ridiculous power in the world” actually warp reality to get its user’s way? I’m not going to go too hard on that point though – this chapter was for the big reveal and a spectacle set-piece. Rules and limits come later. But I do want to see them get at least a tiny bit better defined in the future.