Archivio per il tag: NAKAMAS

Introduction

Awakening is a huge topic of interest and it has become one of mine too. Initially, I assumed it could end up with a lot of discrepancies if it were a deus-ex machina boost as there are so many devil fruit abilities, but Oda’s shown he has a method to his madness.

If anything, I expect awakening to be similar to haki; something that’s been a part of One Piece since the beginning, isn’t outlandish and is usually pretty simple. As we all saw with gear 4th, it was absolutely simple and straightforward and I expect awakening to be the same.

Without further ado, I shall proceed to breaking down awakening and elaborate on the results of my findings.

What is Awakening

Awakening is the full manifesting of a Devil fruit’s full power; it’s a phenomenon that occurs when one has fully learnt to control their devil fruit.

A simple analogy to explain awakening would be it’s more sensible to be able to ride a bicycle with perfect control at high speeds before upgrading to a motorbike or accidents will occur; the same is synonymous with Devil fruits, you don’t get to use the full potential of an ability when control isn’t adequate or it becomes a counter-productive and useless power.

Devil fruits

Devil fruits as we know endow one with powers; unbeknownst to us, there exists another side to these Devil fruits which is called awakening. I will be breaking up devil fruits into 2 sub-divisions:

• Baby-Stage: When referring to the initial powers granted which is the suppressed power of a Devil fruit.
• Awakened-Stage: When referring to the unsuppressed power of a Devil fruit.

The user’s role and levels of Devil fruit control

The user and the Devil fruit are 2 separate entities, Joker’s brief description of awakening is consistent with this belief; he goes on to mentions that it’s the Devil fruit that awakens rather than the user. If it’s the Devil fruit that awakens, then it begs the question, what role does the user play in awakening the devil fruit?

According to my findings, awakening is dependant on 1 factor which is perfect control over a Devil fruit at its “Baby-stage”. How did I come to such a conclusion? One has to read Joker’s analysis of Luffy before he boasts about awakening as answered in the spoiler below.

Based on this, it seems rather conclusive that only perfect control is necessary for one to awaken.
Simply put, there are 2 levels of Devil fruit control:

• Baby-tier control: Imperfect control over a Devil fruit.
• Awakened-tier control: Perfect control over a Devil fruit.

Advancing from Baby-tier control to Awakened-tier control at a Devil fruit’s Baby-stage is when the Devil fruit advances to the Awakened-stage.

Awakening Model:

• On consumption, user is at Baby-tier control and has access to the Devil fruit’s “Baby-stage” abilities.
• Train to advance from Baby-tier control to Awakened-tier control.
• Fruit advances to the Awakened-stage once user has advanced to Awakened-tier control.

Rarity of Awakenings

The first thing to notice is he never says awakening is rare; however, he just says it’s the next and final stage to Devil fruit progression or development. He only mentions an Aspect of awakening that is rare and that’s when it affects beyond the user’s body like Joker showcasing the evidence of his fruit being awakened.

This external effect is such as buildings turning into strings can be activated or deactivated, so awakened users can affect when their fruits affect their surroundings.

Why all Devil fruits Awakenings won’t affect outside the user’s body

As the translations imply, an awakening will not always affect the surroundings. One has to ask then when does it affect the surroundings? Seemingly, it affects the surroundings depending on the nature of the Devil fruit or ability at the Baby-Stage.

The first Criteria is the ability must allow a user to produce and control substances of innumerable quantities which so far includes two Paremecia, Joker and Trebol along with all Logia.

Being that the purpose of awakening is to increase the effect of an ability, if an ability at the Baby-stage allows one to produce a substance, awakening enhances that ability by increasing the amount of the substance produced.

The question is what is the source of this increase? and this is where the surroundings become important…

If we use Ace, a Logia, as an example and assume Ace was awakened which I believe he was, what was his final and ultimate attack? “Flame Emperor” which was a huge flame ball we can assume requires being awakened. We can also assume he didn’t need to turn trees and buildings into flames, he can just conjure it which means his awakening doesn’t depend on surroundings as a source.

The question that finally arises is why does Ace’s awakening not depend on the surrounding inanimate objects to produce fire, while Joker requires’s awakening requires the surrouding to produce strings?

Perhaps, if the object being produced isn’t intangible like Fire, Sand, Magma, etc. then, it won’t affects the surroundings whereas if it is tangible like strings, it will affect surroundings.

Out of all the people who create and produce a substance that is tangible, those who produce tangible substances are:

1. Joker’s Ito Ito no Mi (Paramecia)

And this is why such awakenings are rare; not many DF users will extend their powers to their surroundings besides Joker.

Permanent or Temporary

It’s a permanent effect. Where is the sense in being a master at controlling one’s abilities for a moment and then suddenly being bad at it? None whatsoever. How to prove this? The Zoans in Impel-down were awakened and despite losing consciousness, they remained in the same form.

This means awakening is not a temporary power-up since it neither requires stamina or consciousness (like gear 4th) as proven by awakened Zoans and this is also consistent with the theory that it’s a level of mastery which isn’t something lost with consciousness or stamina either.

Also, remember the awakening occurs in the fruit; not on the individual directly. So even though Joker was knocked out, his fruit doesn’t lose it’s status of being awakened except on death of the user where someone else will have to awaken it if consumed.

Predicting Awakening Power-Ups

We initially spotted the awakened Zoans in Impel-down and Crocodile mentioned that they had increased resilience due to being awakened. We only saw them in their Awakened-stage, but based on Crocodile’s comment it can be deduced that their resilience is higher than it was in the Baby-stage.

• Baby-stage: Zoan Devil fruit grants a resistance value 30 (made up value).
• Awakened-stage: Zoan Devil fruit now grants a resistance value level of 100 (made up value).

First thing to understand is Zoan Devil fruits naturally and by default increase one’s physical feats and this fruit clearly increased their resistance at the Baby-stage and enhanced this even further at the Awakened Stage.

Joker before mentioning he was an awakened devil fruit user showed amazing utility of his Devil fruit. We saw him healing internal injuries; creating clones; manipulating people and using it to fly. It’s fair to say even without the Birdcage and the White techniques (off-white, God thread, etc), he showed excellent control and mastery.

• Baby-stage: The Devil fruit only create strings from the user’s body and possesses less variety of strings.
• Awakened-stage: As we all saw, the Devil fruit now has a huge variety of strings and creates strings from outside the user’s body too.

What’s quite clear is the awakened string fruit allowed him to have a larger source of strings which enabled him to produce much larger attacks.

Luffy has shown excellent control over his abilities, his gears show how well Luffy has advanced in manipulating his abilities. Gear 4th however powerful it is cannot be utilized if not being held together by haki and evidently, it shows that he’s not mastered his Devil fruit manipulation as Joker rightly stated. If anything, haki being used with gear 4th is acting as a training wheel in aiding Luffy in learning to maintain this form.

• Baby-stage: Rubber Devil fruit can stretch and expand within set limits and offers good durability against blunt-attacks.
• Awakened-stage: The Rubber Devil fruit now stretches and expands even further (with little to no limitation) and has increased durability against blunt attacks.

If Luffy can stretch further because of enhanced elasticity and durability, it means:

Conclusion

It’s relatively straight forward; once the user’s control has advanced from Baby-tier control to Awakened-tier control at the Devil fruit’s Baby-stage, it means the Devil fruit advances to the Awakened staged where the full spectrum of the Devil fruit’s power is simply unleashed (permanently).

*Theory by Hannibal Psyche

What if she started using Armament Haki?

Blackbeard Pirates vs StrawHats

Here is a guess about these two characters.

I find it suspicious how Shanks was implicated into the whole Ace and Teach fight. We know that Rayleigh knows about the void century, the will of D, he knows everything. It is the same for Shanks, problably, since he was in Roger’s crew as well.
Going with this, I believe that Shanks try to find “that man” that Crocus, and Whitebeard were talking about. Of course we know it’s Luffy, but Shanks as a character, I think his duty is to find that man, and he kinda did it with Luffy and the whole bet about the new generation.

Here is another example of Shanks ‘duty’ when he says to Cody that these few seconds of courage “have just made a huge difference in the fate of the world”, and these seconds of courage have indeed, distracted Kizaru’s shot that was going to finish Luffy. Shanks definitely sees luffy as the man that will change the world, the man awaited by Roger and co.

Now about the Ace vs Teach confrontation. Why did Shanks want to prevent this? “It’s not yet time for them to face each other!!” What is the meaning of that line? Is it the idea of two “D” confronting each other? It make me think about Luffy vs Teach. Two “D” confronting each other might inevitably lead to big changes in the world? That’s the case for Ace vs Teach, and it will probably be the case when Luffy will face Teach.

Now about the relationship between Shanks and Teach:

Why is he so concerned about Teach? Yes, there is the scar, but that’s it? I think it goes way beyond that. Now, theory time. I think that Shanks was friend with Teach.

I don’t think that Shanks could have deduces all of this, simply by having a fight against Teach. Shanks knows him pretty well, his ambition, his dream, his real power and so on. Why didn’t he say all of this to WB? First, because WB would not care and Shanks knows it, secondly, Oda might keep all of this for a flasback involving Shanks and Teach.

Now about the scar, the most important element:

“What ashes me now, is this one”. Really? Shanks lost his arm, suffered various wounds, he is an emperor, yet this simple scar would hurt him? I think the meaning behind this line, is that Shanks suffers from this scar because of the meaning behind it, not physically. If they were friends, I can totally imagine Teach betraying Shanks for some reasons.

But when would they meet? Why would they talk each other? Why would they become friends?

“This wound isn’t from my adventures”. I think it’s safe to say that by “adventures” Shanks means his journey with Roger, and his journey with his own crew.
Here is a timeline:

I think that longtime ago, after Roger’s death, Shanks met Teach and have seen in him the man that was awaited by Roger and co. Teach is a D, and Shanks could have been interested by him just like he was with Luffy. Shanks made a mistake and picked the wrong guy, that’s my guess. Why is Teach so confident about his fate? What does he know about the D? I think he knows almost everthing, thanx to Shanks. And that’s why Shanks might be so concerned by Teach. He was still young, and he made a mistake. He told him everything. Learning from his mistakes, he then did the opposite with Luffy, telling him nothing but just giving him hope and motives.

Why did they fight? Being a nobody (Teach’s childhood picture), I guess that knowing all of this story and his incredible fate, it changed him. He might have become greedy and power hungry from this moment.

And now:

They will probably end all of this with a fight.
So yea, that’s my 2cents about this.

*Theory by Kirk

I want to speak about a thought I had. It’s about the similarities between the Revolutionary Army and the Cuban Revolution.

First about their leaders:

On one side, we have Monkey D. Dragon and on the other, we have Che Guevara.

These are my thoughts about them:

–         Similar appearance,

–         Both are directly against the government,

–         Both travelled in their early years,

–         They both saw the suffer of the people caused by the government(s)

–         Both had fights in other countries. Che in Bolivia, Congo and some others, and Dragon succeeded in South Blue, has his base in the Grandline, and now Sabo appeared in the New World (I expect Dragon to be in the New World too).

–         Their followers were imprisoned, after fights: many cuban rebels were captured and many others killed. In addition, in One Piece we saw Ivankov and Inazuma being in Impel Down.

Other hints despite their leaders are:

–         The new cuban government (after the revolution) accepted sexually different oriented people, in One Piece we have the “Okamas” which were suppressed by the government before (Ivankov in Impel Down).

–         Che was raised christian, and Dragon had Kuma as a friend.

These are the parallels, I hope you enjoyed my theory and I hope for some feedback.

*Theory by Daniel Lippert

Weekly Shonen Jump magazine interviewed both Eiichiro Oda (One Piece’s mangaka) and Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto’s mangaka). They talked for over 4 hours, the whole interview is about 13-page long and will be included in the official Naruto Guidebook “Michi Road”.

Here comes an extract of the interview (*Q – Interviewer | *O – Eiichiro Oda | *K –  Masashi Kishimoto):

Q: When did you two first meet?

K: When… I think it’s when I was still a newbie mangaka. In the Jump new year event.
O: Is that so?
K: Maybe. (laugh) At the time, my impression on him was like he’s a great and famous sensei.
O: What’re you saying… (wry smile) (Oda was saying ‘you’re making fun of me’ friendly.)
K: Nah… Because Oda-san started the serial run of his manga two years earlier than me. I really thought a super sugoi man had appeared. Later, I addressed him as Oda-sensei, but he said (like begging) that I must not use such a honorific.
O: I took that for granted cos we’re at the same age. Why would I listen to your sensei when you’re talking to me…
K: Though we’re not performers, I think people who stepped into an industry earlier are admirable. (laugh)
O: I’m always aware of Kishimoto’s presense when he was a newbie. He can draw very well. To some extent, I felt we may have the same style.
K: What style… (embarrassing smile)
O: It’s like the feeling of why you also have the gi of Kamesenryu (Master Roshi from DB). (laugh) From the beginning I’ve prepared with offensive state. (Oda wanted to win against Kishimoto.)
K: I see, you had that determination back then. (laugh)
O: Because we’re both at the stance of manga, eventually there’ll be a winner and a loser. However, after I’ve met with him personally, I found he’s really a nice and kind man. It suddenly made me think the result didnt matter. I couldnt compete with a man like him. That’s what I thought.
K: I think that’s because we both understand each other’s hard work.
O: Very pleasing to hear you say that. When you’re working hard, it’s important to know who said what about you and your work. I sense you, who has the same standpoint as me, really understand how I truly feel, good to know.
K: Yes I do. (laugh) But I think I’m the one who has less pressure. Oda-san, you’re always at your peak. Your hard work and that pain must be abnormal (that normal people cannot bear). If I were you, I guess I would have gastrointestinal perforation due to huge pressure.
O: It’s wonderful having Naruto as an opponent. The luckiest thing was you didnt let me get complete victory. Actually, I didnt have complete victory in weekly serialization, besides and most importantly, Naruto is more popular than OP in foreign countries. Though a part of me was not reconciled to that turth, at the same time, I’m grateful. Cos the existence of such a piece of work, is one and only in the world.
K: Same goes for me. Instead of saying OP is my target, I’d rather say I always want to beat it. Seriously, I always think that.

 

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