Video version: https://youtu.be/gRfwCMoGNpU

Brook Piece Ending

We continue where we left off in the large chamber of the Palace. Given what we see in this chapter, it would appear this is the Throne Room, as later shots show a large throne which is likely the seat of power of the kingdom. A piano can also be observed in the room, which is befitting of Esperia’s status as a musical kingdom.

We don’t get much detail on the birdy figure but once again we can assume that it is Mars. Much like we saw with Gunko earlier in the arc and Saturn in God Valley, Imu’s silhouette pops out from Mars’s body. Interestingly, we’ve only seen Imu doing this with either the Gorosei or Gunko, and since we know Gunko is special due to having perennial youth, I wonder if Imu can only do full body possession with those he has the highest tier of covenant with. We did see him manipulating Harald, but it’s more like he was manipulating his personality as he described rather than taking over his body. Interestingly, Mars appears to leave the room as the door slams, though Imu’s spirit still lingers through the flames it seems, as his lines can be distinguished by the thicker bubbles and different font.

As for the other man instead, as we had assumed, he is indeed a God Knight and indeed a Manmayer, his name being St. Manmayer “Gurou” (グロウ). Now, it’s hard to say what “gurou” is romanized as; generally it’s usually the katakana for the English word “glow”, but could also be “grow” or something similar. There is however a distinct naming pattern here, as Gurou shares its first kana, “gu”, with “Gunko”. So it makes sense that father and daughter are both sharing a similar name pattern, but this would also explain why her name was changed from “Shuri” to “Gunko”. After all “Shuri” was likely given to her by Candelle and Luven, while Gunko is a name that better matches her biological father’s name, even if it carries the sad connotation of literally meaning “child soldier”.

Eitherway, Grow gives a bit more context as to how Shuri became a Celestial Dragon, and this is because she was born as one from birth. But rather than Candelle being a God Knight who had a kid with Luven, it would seem more likely now that Candelle legitimately was just a citizen of this kingdom, and that she was likely forced to bear a child against her will. Now, suddenly, the timeline from the last chapter makes a lot more sense: as Brook explained, a Celestial Dragon ended up drifting to Esperia, who we can now assume to be Grow. Brook claimed that Candelle was so overwhelmed that she ended up bedridden away from the public eye for months, but as some people had suspected, rather than actually being bedridden, it is likely that she went through pregnancy.

While we don’t get the details, due to the sensitivity of the subject, I think we can assume what it is that truly happened, although I’ll try to be as tactful as I can. It is likely that after drifting onto the island and spending some brief time there, Grow was enraptured by Candelle’s beauty in much the same way that many others were, similarly to how Don Moulon seemed to be interested with her too. However, while Candelle was in love with Luven, she could not refuse the orders of a Celestial Dragon, not while Esperia was part of the Government, and thus was forced to bear his child, even if that may have been by accident. Grow even mentions having briefly seen Brook among Candelle’s attendants, but Candelle always kept him at a distance and didn’t allow him to meet with Grow, likely as a way to protect him, as evidently Candelle had seen Brook kind of as her own kid or like a little brother given the dynamic we saw last chapter.

Bored and satisfied, Grow probably went back to the Holyland. Candelle was likely left pregnant, and retired from public eye to carry out her delivery, not wanting people to know what man had forced her to bear child. However, as Brook mentioned last chapter, right after Luven ascended to the throne and married Candelle, while Shuri was born shortly after. What we can infer from this is that Luven knew what happened to Candelle and, since she was in love with him, offered to take her hand and hide Shuri’s birth as being their kid, in order to not distress the people of the kingdom, as after all the two did seem to genuinely love each other. So even though Shuri was not Luven’s biological kid, he still raised her as his daughter, the same affectionate kid who would call her “papa”.

Eventually though, the kingdom would find itself without Celestial Tribute, and the Government would then demand they returned Shuri, but Luven refused to hand over his daughter to the Holyland, figuring out she would end up having to live like a slave despite her status, which indeed proved to be the case. After all, Imu took particular interest in Gunko, giving her special treatment with perennial youth and a seemingly higher tier contract, while also completely controlling her mind to ensure she’d be obedient. But finally this chapter we get the reason as to why that is the case!

As Grow mentions, Shuri’s heterochromia appears to be something more special than just a genetic trait. He, of course, also possess this trait (interestingly though he also has the lower eyelashes), but he claims he couldn’t “awaken it” (覚醒), a term similar to devil fruit awakenings. However he speculates that Shuri might be able to awaken, and that the Great One is interested in such an ability. Imu however cuts Grow off before he babbles too much about what this ability truly entails, leaving us a bit hanging. But it is clear this is the secret behind why Shuri is special. The concept is a bit reminiscent of the three eye tribe, where it was said that Pudding could awaken her third eye allowing her to hear the voice of all things and thus “hear” poneglyphs. I wonder if this too is a trait to hear the voice of all things though or if this awakening has more to do with something else entirely.

Regardless, Shuri closes the conversation by stabbing Brook through the skull. She uses Gavotte Bond En Avant, one of Brook’s iconic thrust moves, and thus, ironically, likely a move that he taught her to begin with. As we speculated last week, it seems this is indeed how Brook developed the scar on his forehead which he retains even as a skeleton, which now, finally, after two decades, we can finally find out what it is that caused it.

Ironically though, even as Brook recalls his song about how cows and frogs, slaves or kings, all end up as bones, he himself… is once again denied death. The theme of mortality repeats as he becomes incapable of dying, by the sheer miracle of the sword missing most of his vital blood vessels, similarly to how Jarul survived the skewering of his head. Clearly though, recovery wasn’t easy, having taken so long to wake up that he even developed a bit of a beard. The trauma however runs deep, and both the brain damage he received and the shock of what happened made Brook doubt whether what he saw was real or not. Following this period of time, he would decide to leave the past behind and just follow his dream as a pirate, leading him to eventually befriend Laboon and follow a different purpose in life.

Back to Present

As we end the beautiful tale of Brook Piece and return to the present, Brook begs the straw hats as he prostrates to help him liberate Shuri, although as Jinbe reminds, there’s no need for formalities among nakama. Still, they try to plan on how to unthaw the ice, considering what Loki said that Ragnir is the only one who can melt the ice.

As we wrap up the chapter, interestingly, Imu mentions how in the Void Century too the giant race ended up losing due to similar circumstances, as children had been abducted then too. I don’t think this necessarily might have lore-changing implications, but might simply be a proper explanation as to why Douzan lost his life, as the desire to protect future generations is a never-ending human instinct. But while Imu views it as an inevitability of history repeating itself, perhaps it is more fitting to better call it the never-changing kindness of our hearts.

Regardless, the final conflict now finally approaches as Luffy charges up a big punch coated in haki and lightning sparks as he finally lands the first proper hit on the grand villain!

Stigma

Imu unleashes a new attack against Loki and Luffy, in which he leaves behind sentient flames, akin to homies, that move on their own and cannot be easily extinguished, which later serve almost as a homing attack for Imu to use. The attack is named “sutiguma” (スティグマ), which obviously is meant to be the English word “stigma”. Traditionally the word stigma commonly refers to a negative association, or a mark of disgrace, which someone has to carry across their life no matter what they do, although over time it’s also evolved to take the negative connotation of being an unfair belief associated with a person or group of people based on stereotypes. The name is fitting because Imu’s move here is a homing attack, one that no matter how much you try to get rid of it or run away from, cannot be dodged (although Luffy later dodges it by getting rid of his coat). This is just like how stigma works, something that essentially sticks on you and you cannot get rid of.

Going further back though, stigma is derived from stigmata, from Greek which means “marks”, and historically refers to the wounds that Jesus Christ bore when he was crucified at the hands and feet, which ties into the heavenly and religious association of Gods and Devils we get with Imu. Furthermore, the attack is written with the kanji for “grudgeful devil blade” (怨魔剣), with the mention of “grudge” fitting the concept of stigma sticking around like a grudge, and of course the devil referring to Imu while the blade represents the sword-like shape the attack takes.

Conquerors

The Straw Hats are busy trying to unthaw Gunko, but are unable due to what Loki said that only Ragnir can unthaw the ice. Luckily enough though, Ragnir precisely lands on her, allowing the ice to vanish. This panel also serves as a very good comparison for Ragnir’s size when compared with the Straw Hats. Oda also does a really silly joke of Brook and Franky being unable to feel the cold of the ice, due to Brook’s hand being made of bones and Franky’s hand being made of metal.

Imu attempts to attack Luffy further, but as mentioned before, he dodges by tossing his coat, exposing his chest. The following panels might be confusing if you don’t pay attention to the sound effects, but said effects read as “don do to to don do to to”, the sound of the Drums of Liberation, which is Oda’s cue to show that Luffy is entering Gear 5th before we reach the end of the chapter.

We get our setup for the fight between Zoro and Sommers and Sanji and Killingham, with the latter expressing desire to defeat Killingham, the only way being of course through conqueror’s haki. We finally get better elaboration on the scene between Sanji and Gaban, where Gaban says Sanji has the makings of someone who might have conqueror’s haki, but gives off the impression that they limit themselves through their doubts and uncertainty. This is quite fitting of Sanji’s character, as he’s someone who has always been plagued his whole life by doubt and uncertainty about his true worth as a result of his childhood trauma, and it took him time as he grew up to understand that he was appreciated and beloved.

But to become a conqueror, he needs the confidence of one. After all, the full correct translation of “haoushoku no haki” (覇王色の覇気) is “haki of the color of the conquering king”, or “color of the supreme king” as the official translates it. “Ha” means “supremacy”, “conqueror”, or generally “ambition”, which is the same kanji that is used for the word “haki”. Haki is just a combination of this “ha” and “ki”, “ki” or “chi” being the eastern concept of life energy. Thus, “haou” is a combination of “ha”, “supreme” or “conqueror”, and “king”, although we English fans tend to shorten it to just “conqueror’s haki” due to how much of a mouthful it is in English compared to Japanese. But given this name, it signifies that one with conqueror’s must be someone with enough ambition as if to be a king, one to stand above all.

So far we have 28 conqueror’s haki users in the series, though you can add to that list Dragon since Ivankov compared Luffy’s conqueror’s haki to Dragon in Marineford during Chapter 570, and likely Juu Peter too since all other Gorosei were confirmed to have it (Garling likely may have it too but that’s a whole other level of speculation). So with some 30ish users so far, Sanji might join the club as member number 31!

Flashback

The following chapter opens up with a Void Century flashback between Joyboy and Imu, showing us the legendary first encounter between the two, although it is all depicted as dark making it hard to understand what’s happening. The style of the bubbles and the sound effects makes it sound however like this is a den den mushi call, and as if Joyboy was trying to call for someone, similarly to how Luffy picked up the distress signal in Punk Hazard perhaps, and Imu replied, leading to their first encounter. I’m sure that once we get the Void Century flashback, this scene will take a much deeper and more emotional significance, but once again, it seems to suggest that at least for some period of time, Imu and Joyboy may have been on friendly terms. The interesting thing is that even at this time Imu still retains the “mu” and “nushia” pronouns, whereas Joyboy instead shows to have an “ore” pronoun. This is the fairly generic male first person pronoun that a lot of characters in the series use, but the interesting part is that in this case “ore” (おれ) is written with hiragana rather than with its kanji (俺), essentially being written phonetically rather than written out as proper. The interesting thing is that one of the only other characters to use the pronoun this way is Luffy, giving it a more childlike and natural feel to it. Given how Joyboy also shares his VA with the original voice actor for Luffy, it’s clear that Oda is trying to build up some parallels between the two.

Majin

For his next move, Imu covers his fist in the living flames, allowing it move freely and extend quite similarly to how Luffy uses his own powers, with the next panel showing how this fist extends massively all the way to touching the ground, showing again the sheer versatility of the devil fruit where Imu can match just about anything someone else can do. This homing property also seen with the Stigma also now applies to the Omen, since given how the bombs appear to have a will of their own, they are able to home in on Luffy.

Imu shows to be incredibly fast, as Luffy tries to hit him but he instantly moves behind him. Luffy however copies this move, as when Imu tries to skewer him, Luffy moves behind him as well. Oda does a great use of paneling to achieve this, where on the first panel, Imu is on the right and Luffy attacks on the left. Imu reverses to being behind Luffy and skewers him moving towards the right, but as Luffy vanishes, Imu looks to the left. However, the sound effect comes in from the right as Luffy has effectively circled all around Imu and once again attacks from the right. All of this is done without breaking the cinematic rule of 180 where both characters should remain on corresponding right and left sides of the screen.

Luffy showcases a new attack called “Gomu Gomu no Majin” (ゴムゴムの魔神), where he takes the form of a giant djinn, or as you’d also call it in English genie. The word “majin” is simply the Japanese word for genie, combining the kanji for ma (魔), or “devil”/”demonic” and jin (人), “person”/”being”, and has historically been used to refer to the djinn. At the same time however, the word can also be used in the context of someone who is superhuman, a person with incredible powers, and so Oda could be doing a wordplay here where Luffy’s superpowers also qualify him as a “majin”. Funnily enough, within this design, instead of wearing a gemstone on his turban, Luffy has a piece of meat.

Imu tries to hurt Loki but is protected by Jinbe, who uses his move Karakusagawara Seiken (唐草瓦正拳). This move was one of his very first shown moves in Impel Down and translates to “arabesque tile straight punch”, which is a reference to the karate practice of trying to destroy tiles with your fist, with of course his trademark iconic move of “gosenmaigawara seiken” (五千枚瓦正拳) referring to five thousand tiles as if he could smash through five thousand of them.

The group continues to unthaw Shuri, and Nami and Usopp appear to bring up when Robin and Luffy were frozen, which surprises the others since they weren’t there at that moment, referring to the scene in Long Ring Long Land when they fought Aokiji for the first time all the way back then.

As a majin, Luffy uses a move called “Gomu Gomu no Sukiari Bullet”, a variation of his regular bullet attack but mixed in with the word “sukiari”. Sukiari (隙アリ) literally means “there is an opening” and it’s a move traditionally used in martial arts to belittle an opponent or pupil that they’ve carelessly left an opening when dueling, allowing you to strike. Realistically though, it’s abused a lot more in anime than in real life, and you may have heard a lot of anime characters saying “sukiari” when an enemy drops their guard down.

Imu attaches a Stigma onto Luffy’s beard, forcing him to stop the transformation. This seems to give the idea that Stigma only really works well on things that catch fire easily. But as Luffy is pursued by more Omen bombs, Imu unleashes his blade. Unlike his other momentary blades which where omen adaptations from his spear, this one seems to be a genuine legitimate blade. Imu appears to transform the spear into a little bomb, then passes it through his omen ring to unleash a blade that appears to have genuine physical form, except its hamon (the jagged black part of a sword) is made of omen flames. The sword, shaped like a rapier, appears to kill all life around it simply by existing, causing all nature on the tree to wither out.

Boufuu

The name of the sword is the Boufuu (ボーフー), which here is written in phonetic katakana, as if to appear as the given name of something. As the kanji reading shows us however, the reading is “kyomu” (虚無), which means “nothingness”, being composed by the kanji for “void” and “nothing”.

If you’ve been paying attention to your lore this kanji might sound familiar, as it was the same kanji used to refer to the Second World of the Harley. To recapitulate, in the Second World passage, it begins with “kyomu ni ibuki ari” or “Withing the nothingness, there be breath”. In this case, the “nothingness” can also be equated to something similar like “void”, but it should be noted just as I explained back then that “void century” uses a different word in Japanese, being “kuuhaku”, which literally means something more like “empty white”, or “blank”, but we tend to translate that as “void” instead. Interestingly, this line is followed in the Harley by “mori no kami wa ma o tsukawaseta” (森の神は魔を遣わせた), or “The Forest God sent forth devils”. Originally, we interpreted these two lines as breath signifying life rearising within the destroyed world and the following line about devils referring to the creation of devil fruits. If we assume devil fruits originate from a tree, then it makes sense that the Forest God could have been the entity behind the origin of devil fruits. But we don’t know if Imu created the devil fruits or simply attained the ultimate strongest version of it all when someone else created them. What is interesting though is that this could give more context to the previous line.

Because it’s in the meaning of the sword’s name, “boufuu”, that we can find the secret to all this. As I mentioned, it is written in phonetic katakana, which gives it the idea of sounding like the given name of the blade, but it also makes sense as “boufuu” is a sound effect, much like “nika” or “zaza”. And generally, it indicates the sound of a sigh, or an exaled breath. In other words, “within the nothingness, there be breath”. By extension, if “boufuu” were to be read as a kanji (暴風), it generally means “storm”, as in a great wind, like a great breath. Oda could even be playing around with the chapter title with the sound efect “boufuu” representing Imu’s disappointed sigh as Luffy cannot match the strength of Joyboy, or even Luffy’s own deflated sigh after he loses breath being stabbed. Furthermore, the katakana for “boufu” is the Japanese reading for “bohu”, a Hebrew term that refers to the Void state of the Earth before God said “let there be light”. This is quite fitting because once again it embodies that concept which we see in the Harley of the world having been ravaged by its previous cataclism yet even within that, life arises again, embodied in the metaphor of a “breath”. But Imu’s blade is almost the anthisesis, that which returns the world to nothingness, as we see it destroy all life and leave the world ravaged as it once was. But in a sense, the blade’s name appears to be a reference to the Second World of the Harley, right around the time that Imu would have appeared, and how that led to the creation of the devil fruits and the rise of the Devil as we know it today.