One Piece Mega Convo Thread

kkck · Aug 1, 2025

Quick question... The series has a number of repeating themes. A significant one for instance is the sun which means a number of things to different people. Obviously there is the sun god nika angle, a god of freedom and laughter (though some in elbaf would disagree). The sun is also a symbol of the fishmen. Fishmen aspire to live in the surface under the sun. And so on.

Now, this made me wonder what the deal is with tenryubito and the hoof of the soaring dragon. Tiger fisher took the mark and painted into a sun to remove a mark of slavery and replace it with one of freedom. But... where exactly do dragons fit into the mythology/history here? Dragons have a bit of a reputation in OP down from even ryuma's days. But as we learn more about Imu and the world's history dragons up to now seem notoriously absent. Imu is a demon king and is apparently able to grant demon related abilities. However even among the gorosei none turn into dragons. Kirinham has a devil fruit of a kirin but this is a relatively benign creature that is used by someone evil. The hoof of the soaring dragon even matches kaido's dragon hand with it's four fingers. It's also worth noting that not all "dragons" are necessarily evil as you also have luffy's father who is named dragon though I can't tell if he does or doesn't have a connection to the metaplot in this regard (I think garp is dumb enough to have named his kid dragon because he thought it was cool).

With Imu being a demon king... where exactly do dragons fit here? why did the teryubito adopt the name celestial dragons? Why are dragons apparently an anthithesis to the sun?

electricmastro · Aug 1, 2025

kkck said:
Quick question... The series has a number of repeating themes. A significant one for instance is the sun which means a number of things to different people. Obviously there is the sun god nika angle, a god of freedom and laughter (though some in elbaf would disagree). The sun is also a symbol of the fishmen. Fishmen aspire to live in the surface under the sun. And so on.

Now, this made me wonder what the deal is with tenryubito and the hoof of the soaring dragon. Tiger fisher took the mark and painted into a sun to remove a mark of slavery and replace it with one of freedom. But... where exactly do dragons fit into the mythology/history here? Dragons have a bit of a reputation in OP down from even ryuma's days. But as we learn more about Imu and the world's history dragons up to now seem notoriously absent. Imu is a demon king and is apparently able to grant demon related abilities. However even among the gorosei none turn into dragons. Kirinham has a devil fruit of a kirin but this is a relatively benign creature that is used by someone evil. The hoof of the soaring dragon even matches kaido's dragon hand with it's four fingers. It's also worth noting that not all "dragons" are necessarily evil as you also have luffy's father who is named dragon though I can't tell if he does or doesn't have a connection to the metaplot in this regard (I think garp is dumb enough to have named his kid dragon because he thought it was cool).

With Imu being a demon king... where exactly do dragons fit here? why did the teryubito adopt the name celestial dragons? Why are dragons apparently an anthithesis to the sun?

Dragons sometimes symbolize greed or an assistant of evil, like how Dragon Kaido assisted Orochi.

SupremeMod · Aug 4, 2025

Why didn't Raleigh or Gaban show up for Ace? Were they told not to intervene in future events? Shanks pulled up, conspicuously late.

Core D. Roy · Aug 5, 2025

SupremeMod said:
Why didn't Raleigh or Gaban show up for Ace? Were they told not to intervene in future events? Shanks pulled up, conspicuously late.

Gyaban I get not intervening in anything, he was in Elbaf living his best life and was *actually* retired. Rayleigh was "retired", though, and it's hard to believe he didn't know about Ace's execution. Honestly for him I just expect him to have been too drunk to deal with it, it'd be in character. Shanks though... wow, what incredible timing. Like I fully expect it to just be for dramatic effect that he teleported in the goldilocks zone of timing after Ace dies and before Coby dies the same way, but it's just ridiculous. But basically everything involving Shanks feels that way to me so *shrug*

kkck · Aug 5, 2025

As far as I can tell there was some time between roger giving himself up to the marines and the roger pirates being disbanded. It's entirely possible that Rogue was merely a footnote in the roger pirates adventure or something which roger managed to keep secret even from his friends hence why it didn't occur to them to intervene. On Gaban's side it's also possible he was simply at Elbaf and was not even aware of what was going on in the outside world.

electricmastro · Aug 5, 2025

kkck said:
As far as I can tell there was some time between roger giving himself up to the marines and the roger pirates being disbanded. It's entirely possible that Rogue was merely a footnote in the roger pirates adventure or something which roger managed to keep secret even from his friends hence why it didn't occur to them to intervene. On Gaban's side it's also possible he was simply at Elbaf and was not even aware of what was going on in the outside world.

Roger tried romantically approaching Shakky and even take her with him, as if to say he didn't know Rogue at this point.

kkck · Aug 5, 2025

electricmastro said:
Roger tried romantically approaching Shakky and even take her with him, as if to say he didn't know Rogue at this point.

Well, yeah, there's a 20 year period worth of possible shenanigans here.

Fox666 · Aug 6, 2025

SupremeMod said:
Why didn't Raleigh or Gaban show up for Ace? Were they told not to intervene in future events? Shanks pulled up, conspicuously late.

Shanks was late because Kaido also showed up to stop Whitebeard

Rayleigh and Gyaban are pirates, not Saints, and are not responsible when another pirate like Ace is captured by the Marines. That's probably not the first case which someone related to Roger was executed by the Marines, and the two can't attack Marineford everytime

But it's possible Rayleigh and Gyaban didn't knew about Ace being Roger's son

electricmastro · Aug 6, 2025

So I imagine that Oda is heavily featuring Rocks in the Elbaf arc as a lead-up to Blackbeard's next appearance, since he is Blackbeard's father after all.

Best relevance I can see with this is that Blackbeard's dream is somehow linked to his dad's dream. I suspect he's trying to reclaim his dad's glory or fulfill his dad's glory or something like that.

HereNThere · Aug 6, 2025

SupremeMod said:
Why didn't Raleigh or Gaban show up for Ace? Were they told not to intervene in future events? Shanks pulled up, conspicuously late.

While they probably knew Roger had a kid somewhere out there, it's possible they didn't know it was Ace until the Marines announced it to the world. And even if they knew that Ace was their Captain's kid, I mean, what do you want them to do? Both of them had been out of the business for years by that point and basically on their own.

They probably figured it'd be best to let Whitebeard handle things as he was guaranteed to do so and had the resources to potentially succeed.

JStackz26 · Aug 6, 2025

I need more Sanji doing what he did to Caesar Clown in Bege's Body. Or Sanji domineering over his family. And Sanji living up to the Kuma speech, where he actually gets a fearsome reputation rather than the once in a blue thing. Less it is only a Luffy and Zoro crew. Because it is definitely a three man crew.
Where Killer and Kidd are a two man crew, Sanji is not an equivalent to heat and wire or Law's #3. He as a #3 is literally at some level equivalent to Killer. If we presume Killer is not as strong as Queen. As we saw Jozu vs an Admiral is cannot drop his guard level or defeat. Thus one would be arguing Killer is stronger than that Jozu or can go toe to toe with an Admiral.
This is not Usopp, Sanji has literally been kicking butt from the beginning. Need Sanji to start getting those is a powerhouse showings.
Which of course sending Queen flying off an island says powerhouse. Tankman to Cracker. Garp was able to launch San Juan Wolf as well. The only difference is that it was one of Sanji's stronger attacks vs Garp's regulars.
My guess is Sanji is currently King Level but not able to defeat a King or Katakuri yet. Hopefully Sanji is not kept at a level where he can't defeat any first mate and he is far able to surpass even major captains, within reason. It feels like Luffy should be looking at it like this:
We had four Yonko and then a pirate King unclaimed.
So Luffy a pirate King then Zoro, Sanji, Yamato and Hancock (as I believe she will join and be the fourth or fifth strongest) represent the Yonko. Something like that. Where there may be a few stronger pirates. The story started that 7 pirates were a balancing force to 4 powerful pirate crews and the world government. So Luffy having five members extremely powerful is not ridiculous.

SupremeMod · Aug 7, 2025

HereNThere said:
While they probably knew Roger had a kid somewhere out there, it's possible they didn't know it was Ace until the Marines announced it to the world. And even if they knew that Ace was their Captain's kid, I mean, what do you want them to do? Both of them had been out of the business for years by that point and basically on their own.

They probably figured it'd be best to let Whitebeard handle things as he was guaranteed to do so and had the resources to potentially succeed.

Why did Shanks know?