It only took a handful of chapters to Eiichiro Oda to reconfigure all the assumptions we have formulated over time about the History (the one with a capital S) of One Piece and the phenomena that founded the Empty Century. So much so that the only way to interpret the future trajectories of the manga is to retrace all the revelations outlined here from the speech of Vegapunk.
In the eyes of the mangaka, in full Machiavellian vision, the past is the origin and destination of every question (iconographic, narrative and thematic) on which the present and the future take shape of the narrative. And it is no coincidence that the scientist’s message began precisely with the dismantling of the enigmas behind the Empty Century, but above all of the truths (later canceled by Im and the Gorosei) about topographical constitution of the world: revolutionized by a cataclysm (natural? Artificial?) of which now only the remaining members of Roger’s crew are aware, and which in the near future of the story will come back to reshape the entire universe in which the characters of the manga move (thus giving life to one of the three questions that One Piece has not yet answered).
According to Vegapunk, the use of the Ancestral Weapons caused a sudden rise in sea levels, such as submerge 800 years before the narrative, much of the world, of which the current islands represent only the tip of the iceberg. But the Gorosei, after having silenced the libertarian fantasies of the first owner of the Nika Fruit, have erased from the annals of history every element relating to the secular conflictand to the figures or ideologies that have marked its course, to the point of founding the current status quo on the concealment of the past.
And it is precisely in relation to the figure of Liberation Warriorwhich Vegapunk has long focused on. From this point of view, the final table of One Piece 1114 has taken on a historical value, both for the radicality with which it has reconfigured all the hypotheses that we have formulated over the years on manga myths (starting from that of piracy, of which Joy Boy he is the progenitor) both for the naturalness with which he has declined Luffy in the role of successor of the Warrior of Liberation: being Straw Hat the witness of that will that will lead him to give body to all the libertarian fantasies manifested by his predecessorand to reshape reality according to more ethically virtuous parameters.
But the protagonist’s destiny does not end solely in his role as a neo-Warrior of Liberation: so much so that infinal act of his speechbefore the Gorosei attacked the Ancestral Titan and prematurely ended the transmission, Vegapunk placed emphasis on the meaning of D: arguing that those who have this phantom letter in their name have inherited a will, through which all the future trajectories of the world will pass. Also because, according to the scientist, “the centuries-old conflict has not yet seen its epilogue”. And Luffy and his counterparts will therefore have to take charge of the fate of the citizens of the globe, if they want to avoid (or exacerbate?) the cataclysmic phenomenon that will re-submerge the worldonce the Ancestral Weapons will be used again.
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