#opmeta

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The "Luffy's fruit is a Zoan" reveal/retcon was extremely controversial when 1044 was first released; do you think Oda did a good job foreshadowing it?

yes!! it addresses a lot of idle questions i had about luffy's powers for quite some time (while also raising a ton more, of course, but that's the nature of one piece).

(all of my thoughts here and on gear 5 in general owe some credit to @grainjew, who has been my main discussion partner on this topic)

luffy's fruit has always been, from what we've seen, kind of weird for a paramecia? obviously since the categorization of 'paramecia' is sort of a grab bag and a lot less well-defined than logias or zoans, that's kind of a hard claim to make, but generally speaking, most of the paramecia users we see throughout the series do not have their powers always on. (the strongest counter-example i could think of to this trend is brook, and even that is one i think you can argue.) luffy's power is way more passive, in the sense that he doesn't have to activate it- it's just there, always. even seastone and seawater do not make luffy not rubber, they just sap his energy and stop him from stretching himself, as we see as early as arlong park.

that is weird! what we see of most other paramecias is that they have to use their powers intentionally, even when those powers do involve transforming their body in some way, like with mr. 1 or alvida. there's a whole plot in dressrosa about knocking a specific paramecia user unconscious so she'll lose her grip on her power and it'll disappear. luffy will stretch when he is asleep, when he is underwater, and without knowing he's doing it. he's always rubber.

so luffy is weird for a paramecia, though not completely unprecedented. his power has always seemed to me to be... almost logia adjacent, in the sense that he's made from a specific material and all his powers are based on being that material, but that doesn't quite track either. aside from the fact that the thing he's composed of is tangible and, again, he can't turn it off, he clearly has access to a greater level of complexity in his transformations than logias do (whose devil fruit powers seem to be basically a binary system).

which actually leads me to compare him to chopper, who is the zoan we know the best, and who, conveniently, also ate a version of the hito hito no mi.

i think the way luffy and chopper interact with their powers is actually very similar. much like luffy, chopper was fundamentally altered by his consumption of a devil fruit in a way he cannot return from. he can still look like a normal reindeer, but he can never actually be one, because the most important trait his devil fruit gave him was human sentience. and he would still have that if you put him in seastone, he just wouldn't be able to transform. similarly, luffy had his body fundamentally altered by his fruit in a manner he does not seem to be capable of even temporarily reversing. he can't make himself not rubber any more than chopper can return himself to being a normal reindeer.

like chopper, luffy's power progression has been based around finding new ways to transform his body and force it into new and more powerful forms. his gears are roughly comparable to chopper's points. that is zoan stuff! chopper is the main other person we see interact with his fruit in that specific way. so, yeah, i actually do think it does make sense for luffy's power to have actually always been a zoan. at the very least, it makes more sense than him being a paramecia, to me.

however, having said that, i also don't think it's as straightforward as luffy just being a zoan instead of a paramecia. we see that the awakening of his fruit definitely has both paramecia and zoan qualities, since he's transforming both himself and the environment around him, as well as other people. (the wiki puts this down to him being a mythical zoan but i just don't think that's true. kaidou is also a mythical zoan and he is completely baffled by what he's seeing.)

i made a bunch of jokes in discord about luffy being devil fruit nonbinary while i was reading this chapter- there's three genders and you have to pick one, and you can't just go switching it up, etc- and i do think that what luffy's fruit indicates is that the sorting system of devil fruits itself is imperfect. outliers do exist that don't fit cleanly between the lines- which we already knew! just look at katakuri.

[chromatic-lamina]

I know that fandom often clowns on this statement

from Law (about needing to take down monsters to learn about history), taking it as proof that he's somehow not fighting for freedom or that

freedom of expression is not something important that has been sanctified ratified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. (Article 19)

But that it is instead some nerdish pastime that no other character in One Piece or the real world is invested in (WG or otherwise) for obvious reasons of power, politics and freedom/repression.

But there are governments and organisations that regularly suppress this kind of expression (in One Piece and the real world--no surprise):

There are governments and organisations that fear the pursuit of knowledge:

Partial SBS: Volume 86: Pedro led the Nox expedition party who were chased by the government for searching for poneglyphs, thus they became the Nox Pirates. That's a story from about 15 years ago.

And there are governments and organisations that penalise people by taking their lives

for seeking out knowledge. 👆👇

From Clover,

to Nico Olvia,

to Rayleigh,

to

(Egghead Arc spoilers under the cut)

to Pedro,

to the giants (👇 read right to left),

to Vegapunk

the power and desire to learn about history is emphasised and

honoured,

(from chapter 396 👆)

(from chapter 1066 👆)

and also acknowledged as a very dangerous undertaking.

And even Cora talks to Law about

the meaning behind the Will of D. not being lost, BUT "living on in the dark shadows of history around the world" (it's not easily seen either).

Like, knowing history and access to history/knowledge is one of the main themes of the manga. And Big Mom is a monster. And the World Government is a repressive monolith. And this guy (guy?) 👇:

nuking places and people for not toeing the line, or for knowing too much; riddled with antipathy towards holders of the Will of D. and, with Artur's (Library of Ohara) claim (among others) that the ancient immense kingdom was formed by descendants of the D. clan (which is canon)—

—then wouldn't you too be curious and more than a little pissed off that your curiosity could be the catalyst for persecution and genocide?

That searching for identity, roots...your reason for being, is not allowed? (Sound familiar?)

Like, those scholarly waters are nothing if not shark-infested.

Ultimately the pen (Robin's ability to read the poneglyphs, the scholars' meticulous research) probably will be mightier than the sword, and although bureaucracy can entrap, knowing how to read between the lines, or even to read them, can loosen the ties that bind, and help ensure they are not unfairly cast.

Keep fighting to study history, Law. I too want to know about the Will of D.

[grainjew]

Nikaposting Pt 1: Crypto-Religion

This is the first of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

-

The Nika Cult is a Crypto-Religion

Terminology note: I will be using cult in these posts in the sense of “cult of worship,” rather than in the modern pejorative sense. Additionally, I tend to use “tradition” rather than “religion” as a general term, because “religion” is a messy and difficult to define concept, while “tradition” is much more inclusive of traditional practices, folk beliefs, and cults of worship that may not be considered religions by Western scholarship.

Raise your hand if you saw Kuma’s church and Bible, concluded “oh, the Nika stuff is basically One Piece Christianity,” and moved on with your life.

It’s an easy assumption to make, and for all I know authorial intent may well stop there. I’m not Oda. I’ll never be able to guess what goes on behind those fish eyes of his. But a second look at the worldbuilding around both Nika and Christianity in One Piece brought me to a very different conclusion: that the Nika cult is a crypto-religion and is, in Kuma’s case, using the outward appearance of Christianity as camouflage.

First of all: We have ample evidence that Christianity (or some variation of it- I’m fascinated by the implied existence of such things as One Piece Jerusalem and the One Piece Council of Nicea) does exist in the One Piece world, and is both fairly widespread and quite legal. Flevance was pretty explicitly Catholic (Law went to church as a kid), Miss Monday and Mother Carmel masqueraded as nuns to imply harmlessness, many if not most of the graves shown in the series are crosses, whatever Usopp was on about with that exorcism equipment, and, yes, Kuma’s church and Bible.

Even mentioning the Nika cult, on the other hand, is grounds for the government to assassinate you with extreme prejudice.

A crypto-religion is what happens when a religion is suppressed to the point that its practice is grounds for exile, torture, and/or execution: Some people will convert. Some people will flee into exile. Some people will die. And some people will outwardly adopt the dominant religion, but will continue to practice their own traditions in secret; ie, they’ll create a crypto-religion.

One of the more famous examples of this is the post-Spanish Inquisition crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal, who converted to Christianity in public but kept what Jewish traditions and rituals they could in private. To this day, descendants of these conversos whose families have been Catholic for centuries are discovering that their family tradition of lighting two candles on Friday or not eating pork on Saturday are in fact the legacy of a violently suppressed heritage. There are countless other examples of crypto-religions throughout history, both among Jews (my own personal field of knowledge) and among other traditions (for an example that would be known to Oda, the crypto-Christians of Japan).

There’s no way the Nika cult could have survived except in cryptic form. If it ever had physical infrastructure in the form of temples or pilgrimage sites, the government would have sought them out and demolished them long ago if they were not adequately disguised, especially in World Government member states like the Sorbet Kingdom. Likewise, anyone foolish enough to speak publicly about Nika will be summarily assassinated.

In fact, I have doubts that the Nika cult ever existed outside cryptic form, at least in a significant or long-lasting manner. It was specifically introduced as a slave tradition, likely nigh-exclusively oral, practiced in secret either from its inception—if Nika was a figure created by slaves, including the buccaneers—or for a very long time—if it was the cultural or ethnic tradition of the buccaneers, which spread from enslaved buccaneers to non-buccaneer slaves because Nika was a figure that resonated with them. I tend the favor the second option, but either has merit.

As @oriigami said when we were talking about this, Kuma has a church. Kuma has a bible. Kuma worships a god about whom absolutely nothing is written except in the oldest texts.

Additionally, I’ll expand on this more in pt 2 of this series, but the pendant Kuma leaves for Bonney, a large circular sapphire surrounded by eight smaller circular sapphires, matches the circular symbol inset into the crosses of his church. Bonney immediately identifies the pendant as a sun even though it really doesn’t look like one, and it can be surmised therefore that it’s a Nika amulet, and the sun with disconnected rays a Nika symbol. Following this read, and especially because this symbol occurs across the world in other contexts (see pt 2 for my thoughts on that), its presence in the church is a very careful bit of architectural sleight of hand on the part of whichever of Kuma’s ancestors built the place- echoing a very common practice of real-world crypto-religion adherents to mark the true nature of their allegiances and houses of worship in ways only those in the know might recognize.

And on a storytelling level, Kuma’s entire presence in the narrative and in the world has been a tragic saga of appearing to be one way until he’s revealed, again and again, to be the opposite. It makes thematic sense for him to be fooling the world about his faith as well!

[trinityalps]

i feel like dragon [loves his son but had to abandon him because of life circumstances and safety concerns] is what usopp Thinks yasopp is.

[oh-warizoro]

It feels very intentional that Zoro ends up paired with Usopp and Brook in the Ryugu palace.

In Sabaody, Luffy, Zoro and Sanji split so they could protect everyone. Of course Zoro couldn't do that then.

It's really cool to see him, 2 years later, protect Usopp and Brook from Hordy, going as far as being able to keep up and fight on equal terms with a fishman while underwater.

[flimflamfranky]

Alright folks, place your bets, the new character is:

Vegapunk

Vegapunk’s child

Vegapunk’s clone

Vegapunk but in a different body/robot

Vegapunk but piloting a different body/robot

Vegapunk but they’ve discovered eternal youth/immortality through science 

Vegapunk but they already had a run in with Bonney

Vegapunk but this is a weird side effect of their gigantism experiments

Not actually Vegapunk at all and this is a fake out

Or literally anything else, this One Piece and I don’t know what to expect anymore

[regnigt]

What makes Usopp so shippable for you (or even overall, what do you enjoy about Usopp's dynamics in his gen/romantic ships)?

He was one of my favorites from the little I've seen/read of OP, so I'm curious to know your thoughts!

What a cool ask! I have an old post both on Tumblr and Dreamwidth about Usopp's emotional role among the Strawhats in general and his platonic dynamics with Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Sanji, and Chopper in particular. The Dreamwidth post is available here: https://rainsometimes.dreamwidth.org/167329.html . In romantic ships, well, when it comes to Luffy, Zoro, Nami, and Sanji, I would just add romantic and sexual attraction to the platonic foundations mentioned above. With Luffy - Usopp is up for silly shenanigans and while he will veto the most bizarre ideas Luffy might come up with in bed, he's likely to caught up in fun flights of fancy. I view Luffy as pretty uninterested in dominance play in the bedroom and I think Usopp would be all on board with that, too. They have a really strong bond in canon and it would be a silly and for the most part - if not always - harmonious ship. (Naturally there would be plenty of slapstick violence when Luffy is being idiotic.) With Zoro - the chill relationship I mentioned in the old post would serve them well in a romantic relationship. Now, I do think that Zoro is someone who will always place Luffy's dream and wellbeing higher than anything else, but I actually think that Usopp is similar to Zoro in that regard, and so it makes good sense to ship them. At the same time that they are mostly pretty chill, there's also an interesting potential tension there especially tied to them both being so much engaged in the idea of being a "warrior", with inner and outer strength, pride, and masculinity - but not in the combative way that Zoro and Sanji have. -That being said, I also think Usopp/Sanji/Zoro makes for a spicy yet ultimately functional three-way-ship.

With Nami: they are just such good buddies and they're easily tactile and it's not that hard for me to see them in a more physical and sensual light. Nami generally doesn't seem to be into dudes but I can see Usopp as her one exception. ...Except I also like both Luffy/Nami/Usopp and Sanji/Nami/Usopp! Look, Usopp is just so great for OT3 ships. With Sanji: it can easily be seen as bros with benefits, but they also both have a romantic side in common, even as they're both heteronormative enough to have assumed that romantic side will be directed towards women. Sanji/Usopp can have a delicious yearning undertone, whether mutually or not. With Robin: here the maturity gap might be just a bit too big (I'm not thinking so much in number of years, more in personality types) but there are still ways I can see them working together. Even more than Robin/Usopp separately, though, I think Franky/Robin/Usopp would be a delightful OT3. With Franky: despite Franky being older than Robin in years, he's got more childish sides to him and I don't feel as much of a maturity gap with him. Him and Usopp have a number of things in common and they hang out a lot. And one more OT3 I've seen in the wild is Franky/Zoro/Usopp which I also think would be a fine ship! (Incidentally, putting Usopp at the end of most of these shipnames here doesn't say anything about my headcanons for sex preferences, it's just a random way of writing the shipnames. Personally I see Usopp as a switch, most of the Strawhats as switches, and Zoro as a bottom. But I'm totally on board with other interpretations too!) Then Kaya of course is the one with the canon shiptease and I think has a pretty good chance of becoming canon at the end. I like the ship - but only if either Usopp is willing to settle down for at least ten years or so on an island and stay put, or Kaya is healthy enough to sail with adventures as a shipdoctor with Usopp. I don't want Usopp to be an absentee husband and father like Yasopp was. I was going to go on naming other ships but if you haven't read or watched much of One Piece I'm not sure if they would mean much to you. Summing up, I think the one caveat with shipping Usopp is that he's pretty young in years and while he's seen and experienced lots of things on their journey, he's still not the most mature character out there. So for these reasons many people in the One Piece world might not be into him. Of course there could be other reasons he wouldn't be their type too. Obviously he's not conventionally handsome or consistently fearless and confident! But many of Usopp's qualities are on the social and emotional side and the way he's a tactile dude with flexible personal boundaries means he's easy to ship all over the place, in my eyes!

[goldenbunniesxo]

so. i just finished WCI and i have THOUGHTS. theres literally no one here to listen to them but man. i just needed to get them OUT. bcs i feel this is something ive seen no one talk abt/do an analysis of so. here i am. anywho, see, in whole cake island, with the reveal of big moms backstory, we learn smthing kinda huge?? Like, it’s not surprising given everything we know of the world government, but the *implications* of it are. What we learn, right, is that big mom grew up in this orphanage run by mother caramel, but then we also learn that mother caramel is a *child trafficker* planning on *selling the children to the world government* to be used as marines. The marines use CHILD SOLDIERS along w whoever else they recruit w their propaganda. They literally say that the best thing abt using orphans is that they create great CP agents since they don’t have any past to be traced back to.

So it begs the question, how many of the cipher pol agents we’ve seen are children who’ve been trafficked from ppl like mother caramel? Or any of the marines for that matter. When she’s bargaining w the world government representative and talking to them abt how she isn’t scamming them bcs linlin really is that naturally strong as a six year old and has the potential to even become an *admiral* it’s like?? Ur telling me these trafficked children could be at any rank and position in the marines currently?? Knowing this completely recontextualises some of ennies lobby/water seven. Like, Rob Lucci could’ve been one of these orphans turned child soldier?? Like in his flashback we see him at 13 years old, already working as a cipher pol agent and killing people.

He could’ve been groomed to be the perfect weapon for the government just like we saw mother caramel attempting to do w big mom, but *worse* since in his case, it actually succeeded. Like. Just how many of them are child soldiers man. It’s so. And then what makes this even more interesting is taking this and comparing it with the revolutionary army.

The revolutionaries are a huge organisation working to take down the world government, w their whole thing being to liberate oppressed people. They’re the main thing directly opposing the world government in universe, and while a lot of people also oppose the world government (read: luffy and everything he does) theyre the only ones who’s whole goal and existence is for it. And also the only ones who like selflessly pursue it. They’re a nice foil to the world government, but what oda does that is great is that he shows that they’re not perfect either. Sabo, for example, we see him being picked up by them as a child.

While at first he seems like the exception, not the rule, bcs Iva and some of the others protest his joining since he’s a child, we see later in the training scene that there are a bunch of other children being trained there too, and koala only joins a few years after sabo, also as a child. There is this implication that the RA *also* uses child soldiers which is so. Interesting to think abt. I feel like a fair amount of them are slaves and stuff they’ve liberated too, if we’re going off of koala, before joining. (Tbf tho, she was liberated by fisher tiger and joined like a year or so after returning home but still). I like that while we’re shown time and time again the fault of the world government, the RA is not exempt from being morally gray, and I think it’s interesting to compare Rob Lucci and Sabo, two people who could be seen as child soldiers, and who are extremely powerful in general but also in their respective organisations, and wonder. How much of this has been indoctrination, and how much of this is free thought?

[writesailingdreams]

what's interesting about One Piece as a long manga series that it's kept its premise pretty consistent throughout it's still continuous run.

compared to other long manga series, could you actually consider One Piece in the genre of Epic, if only because it has a consistent premise; it is a story about a very simple idea in an ever-expanding world

[pom2]

i feel as though we dont talk enough abt this scene in punk hazard. This is why Zoro is seen as the unnoficial first mate: he is always reminding luffy of his responsibility as captain during important moments. He did it during water 7/ennies lobby, and he does it here too. Zoro saying this is the *only* reason why Luffy survives the fight with Monet. otherwise, he wouldve died. And (if im remembering correctly) Sanji in this scene is literally talking abt how harsh Zoro is on himself. He smiles so much less post time skip than he does pre, and u can see him shouldering the responsibility that hes placed on himself as one of the strongest on the crew. I think a good video that talks abt this somewhat is MelonTees’ video called “Zoro and the anxiety of strength” (or smthing like that). Agh i just love Zoro and i love this scene.

[ninhaoma-ya]

Hey there just wanted to say I really liked your chapter analysis you've done so far and I wanted to offer my two cents about one thing you mentioned in particular. I like you also don't necessarily like the idea that luffy was preordained to be where he is however after seeing some other meta content about it and my own thoughts I don't necessarily think thats what happening. Fate has been brought up a lot in the series however I think its important to note its not necessarily fixed. The fight between ace and blackbeard for instance is mentioned by one of the crew as a crossroad of fate and something that could go either way. Shanks also says that Kobys bravery in marineford which let luffy escape also changed the fate of the world as luffy would have died otherwise. And other things like how Hawkins readings are percentage based rather then fixed and the point about how Kakuturiki was able to see the future but its others that are able to change it. I think with the idea that devil fruits are based upon peoples wishes and in some sense have a will of their own my idea of Luffy obtaining the Nika fruit is less he was fated to be joyboy but rather that the fruit is part of the inherited will of those who wished for freedom (and inherited will being carried out regardless of bloodline has always been important) and that its only because Luffy cares so deeply about freedom he was able to unlock this aspect of it rather then anything to do with him being preordained to eat it (in fact I think its possible shanks intended for ace to have it cause I think people might naturally expect Rogers son to carry out this supposed fate of the next joyboy but in a metaphorical sense it is complete chance instead of Luffy eating the fruit that actually matters because its about freedom and freedom includes the chance for chaos and accidents)

Hi anon,

First, I am so sorry that I've left this in unanswered for almost half a year (got this on the first of January). Thank you for your patience!

And those are amazing thoughts and I am so happy that you shared them! You are completely right – there is freedom in chaos and although things usually follow a certain pre-ordained path, that can always change.

I hadn't even thought of the 'crossroads of fate' idea with respect to Blackbeard vs. Ace or Koby at Marineford, kudos to you for bringing those up! It really made me rethink the whole thing with Devil Fruits and the nika nika no mi.

Thank you!

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

What's your opinion on the idea of the "chosen one" trope, and how it relates to Luffy in particular? Most of the controversy I've seen over Gear 5 seems to be about that specifically.

this is a really interesting question, and one i had to mull over for a bit! i think the idea of a 'chosen one' or 'destiny' more broadly can reasonably rub a lot of people the wrong way, especially in a story where freedom is such a strong thematic focus- the idea that luffy's actions might be preordained and not driven by his own will feels inherently wrong. (fortunately, i don't think they are.)

the short answer is that i think the use of prophecy in one piece works (at least for me) because it never feels like anyone else is making luffy's decisions for him. this is why it feels somewhat incorrect to me to call him a 'chosen one'- he very much makes all his choices himself.

there are prophecies surrounding him- about joy boy, about the dawn of the world, about nika- but luffy doesn't know about them, and if he did he wouldn't care. they don't define anything about him, how he acts, how he views himself. the world and narrative shapes itself around luffy, and not the other way around. you get the sense that even in the total absence of any prophecy surrounding luffy, he would still be doing the exact same thing he is doing because he only ever does exactly what he wants to do. he's as inevitable as the rising sun! the future changes to fit him!

one piece generally rejects the concept of unchangeable fate out of hand- if you tell luffy something can't be done he'll take it as a personal challenge- but it does have a lot to say about inherited will. i think it would be more accurate to say that all the strawhats and their allies, luffy especially, have in some way come to embody the inherited will and dreams of the people who came before them, whether they know it or not, both through their own experiences and because of who they already were as people.

like, the prophecies about luffy don't say he's destined to become the pirate king, or anything so specific as that. he decided on his own that he was going to do that, and that has always been his goal- to be completely free and have those he cares about be completely free. that's what he values. and it just so happens that that trait makes him fit the image of the liberator.

[chromatic-lamina]

The thing with Belle-Mère, and also Cora, is that they both knew they were going to die. I hadn't realised it in Belle-Mère's case until I was rereading her chapter the other day when looking at source material for a meta.

Maybe it was stubbornness, or maybe she knew her time was up. If she knew her time was up (and true, she almost guaranteed it was), then letting her kids know that she loves them and they are family is a complex gift.

Probably not the move I would've made. Nami was afraid of being alone, and she did end up being alone regardless. I wonder how she views her mother's sacrifice. I love Shanks' line at the graveyard of Whitebeard and Ace that he wished his captain sometimes knew when to retreat, when to be tactical. But, like Ace, he wouldn't back down.

It seems to be an ethos One Piece supports. Though, perhaps not.

[grainjew]

Nikaposting Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism

This is the second of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 1: Crypto-Religion | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

-

So About That Sun Symbol (and all those sun gods)

Context note: This post assumes you’ve read pt 1. If you haven’t, the TLDR is that the Nika cult is best categorized as a crypto-religion and may not ever have existed outside of a cryptic and oral form.

There’s a lot of sun gods in One Piece. And there’s a lot of appearances of that sun symbol we discussed briefly in pt 1, with the disconnected rays. This post will cover that symbol, the survival of non-Kuma Nika cult branches, and the proliferation of sun gods across the One Piece world.

The sun symbol can be found everywhere, in what seems at first to be a wildly disparate collection of places. There are a number of borderline cases, so I’ll be defining the “Nika sun symbol” as being any symbol with a central circle, disconnected rays, and four- or eight-fold radial symmetry. This leaves us the below list (images of the majority of these instances can be found in this very helpful post):

The Kuma-Bonney/Buccaneer version found in his church and on the amulet he left for her (8 circular rays) ; this is our basic template for the symbol

The Alabasta national symbol (8 droplet-shaped rays; the droplets seem to be drawn at various different orientations depending on the panel)

The Kozuki crest (8 circular rays in the center of a bird in the center of another circle also there’s some sprouts or something)

The Shandian crest (8 circular rays inside a larger circle, also the central circle contains the kanji for kami/god)

The Sun Pirates’ mark (4 more traditional flaring rays; the rays seem to be drawn inconsistently, especially in the anime)

There’s also Ace’s dagger, which has the basic template version, but one can assume he bought that thing in Alabasta or something like that.

From this we can conclude that the sun with disconnected rays is not exclusively a Nika symbol- in fact I would be surprised if it was, because of how prominently it was displayed in Kuma’s church (see the discussion in pt 1). However, Alabasta, Shandora, and Wano are all poneglyph countries, and were all involved in some way or another in [incomprehensible void century muttering]. I would be extremely unsurprised if the sun with disconnected rays wasn’t a more widely-spread popular symbol among [void century muttering] countries back then, which was adopted by Nika worshippers as their secret symbol around that time and simultaneously retained in more benign form by certain nations as an element of their national symbology.

(Sidenote: If you were unaware, Oda snagged this symbol from a castle in his hometown and clearly just seems to enjoy drawing it. However that doesn’t matter to us in meta analysis land. We continue.)

The Nika cult absolutely survived outside Kuma’s family: at the very least, among slaves on Mariejois. There’s a very high chance Fisher Tiger heard Nika stories while enslaved- the compositional similarity of the Sun Pirates’ mark to the base Nika symbol, Jinbe’s pissed off refusal to answer any of Who’s-Who’s questions, Fisher Tiger’s own status as a warrior of liberation, and of course, the Sun Pirates’ name and the importance of the sun to the residents of Fishman Island all point in this direction.

The proliferation of the Nika sun symbol across the world also points, to me, to at least pockets of the Nika cult potentially surviving in cryptic form across the world, like Kuma’s family did, with various levels of conscious awareness about what their rituals and symbols actually mean and what secret seditious knowledge they’re actually carrying.

However! All that said! Not all sun gods are Nikas- At least, not completely.

Upon their arrival at Egghead Island, Dorry and Broggy identified Luffy as the Sun God. However, I contend that Nika was not originally Elbaf’s sun god.

In expository Nika dialogue, Nika is specifically cited as a god of slaves (& as an ethnic or cultural god of the buccaneer people), and the giants as far as we know are (1), not a traditionally enslaved people nor particularly easy to enslave, (2), are based on Vikings & have their own pantheon which includes a god of war, & (3), while I can absolutely see how a tradition of a prolonged fast > feast festival would have evolved around a Nika figure, it does still feel a little strange. That’s supposed to be a Luffy-alike!

Besides this, the Shandian pantheon also includes a sun god, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that the sun god in question existed prior to any awakened user of the Nika fruit running around causing issues (although, more on my thoughts about Joyboy and Shandora in pt 3). Human sacrifice traditions also feel about as odd for a Luffy figure as fasting does, and while obviously Luffy, Joyboy, and Nika aren’t the same person, with the way One Piece’s narrative conventions work they’re probably quite similar.

Solar deities are the lynchpins of many if not most traditions in the real world. Sun’s a very notable noticable thing that follows a set course across the sky and brings light and life! And especially in One Piece, where the sun is also a critical thematic element and motif, I would be surprised if the majority of One Piece cultures hadn’t developed their own sun gods at some point or other.

So, all that said, why were Dorry and Broggy calling Luffy Sun God? Syncretism.

Not every god has a mythical zoan or the things would be wildly more common- only gods and figures with, as @oriigami put it while we were talking about this, a particularly potent wish attached to them. Even fewer gods have awakened mythical zoan users around. So when an awakened user of a sun god’s mythical zoan is running around (and particularly, a sun god with an incredibly potent wish attached, because Nika is a god of liberation as well as the sun, and it’s a god that people wish they could be and emulate as a matter of course), it’s easy to fold them into your mythology as your sun god. Tradition is very malleable! He’s the sun, even if he’s not exactly how you traditionally pictured it.

Traditions are very good at working with what they get, and at the moment what they get is a smiling, laughing pirate captain and liberator of slaves. What could be better?

[trinityalps]

luffy, usopp, and sanji all obsessively worry about abandonment. luffy and zoro both obsessively worry about the safety of their loved ones. nami and usopp both obsessively worry about helplessness. zoro and nami both struggle to rely on other people and over-accept responsibility. zoro and usopp are both very unused to having loved ones close by and involved in their life. zoro and sanji have equal-and-opposite trauma regarding gender roles. nami and sanji both obsessively hoard money/food respectively.

[oh-warizoro]

When ch 1044 and 1045 were released and all the chaos was unleashed, I remember having a very obvious question

"How come the power of human human no mi: model Nika is connected to rubber?"

How is a gomu gomu fruit's awakening the power to turn imagination into reality?

I mean... This awakening grants the user freedom, not just of spirit but freedom of how to use power too. Luffy's ability to manipulate reality while in gear 5 seems to show that.

So??? Why rubber? Why does the fruit give the user a rubber-like body? What does that have to do with anything?

I was totally not re reading Skypiea when I noticed this.

Of course it's white they're in a cloud sky instead of a water ocean, but it's the fact that they use "pure white". White would've been enough to get the point across, right?

Guess where else have we seen that exact expression!? Oda's drafts of Gear 5!!

And the chapter after that? Guess what?!

We learn island clouds in Skypiea bounce just like rubber.

There's no need for Oda to make them bounce, but they do! Exactly like when Luffy turns the environment around him to rubber due to the awakening.

Let's not forget that Skypiea is where we first hear about the "Sun God" and we see Luffy's sirouette resembling the "Sun God Nika" transformation.

So would it be insane to think whatever Luffy has going on during his gear 5 is clouds?!! More specifically island clouds just like the ones found in sky islands.

Think about it.

Rubber was unknown to the people in Skypiea, and sea clouds/island clouds don't survive in the blue sea under natural conditions. Most likely 99% of the blue sea population has no idea what an island cloud is or what their properties are.

For all intents and purposes rubber was the best description blue sea people could give to the power of the fruit. If the fruit hasn't awaken in 800 years, it means no one has seen that transformation (which clearly is not just a “rubber fruit” awakening) EVER?! since the end of the void history gap. You would have no way of knowing. You would just think it’s rubber.

Now what does clouds have to do with the Sun God?

Well other than "they're in the sky" I'm not sure 😂 but someone that dreams a lot is said "to have their head in the clouds". The same way imagination and thoughts in manga are depicted with a floating cloud above the character's head.

It seems to be a perfect physical and symbolic representation of dreams! That's the theme of skypiea and the true pinnacle of piracy - dreams and freedom. It’s what the whole story is about!