@Scabbard:
One of the FT shadows had its eyes (?) near the sea surface, that would be weird for an elephant.
As if it has a large head with his eyes located relatively low, like an octupus.
I don't think chapter 490 necessitates this is the case. I could be wrong, but I don't see eyes on the initial panel showing the three figures (or three bodyparts of one figure). the eyes come on the next panel's closeup, which could be at the top of the figures or anywhere else.
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Even the anime shows the eyes at the top of one of the initial figures and not at the water's surface. It could be that the eyes are at the top, it could be that they're at the bottom of them, or it could be a misdirect and the part of the figure we see in the closeups (the head) is not what we see in the later part.
Our first glimpse of Zunesha looked pretty similar to one of those figures,
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but seems to me to have been its leg.
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Which says to me that Oda has done the… legwork, to be pretty fuzzy about it all. The hardest evidence that the figures in the FT were individual creatures is the gwoooom sound effect seeming to come directly from the top of one of the figures.
@Johnny:
I would imagine they just go through the Calm Belt, no?
We don't have any information to suggest they do or don't have a relationship with the Sea Kings to allow this. My guess is that they do have a relationship given their similar way of "talking", but that the Sea Kings wouldn't let Zunesha in and out of the calm belt, given their presumed relationship to Joy Boy and that Zunesha's promise to me seems like it's because of a betrayal of Joy Boy. Maybe Zunesha is free to walk wherever he wants, but it makes more sense to me that he has to stay in the New World, away from his herd in Paradise. Of course it could be that he can walk everywhere but paradise, but a stricter limit to The New World would be more constrictive and helps build the mystery of the New World in general.
Oh, and my justification for why it's a herd is simple. He brings fog with him when he walks, but we have no reason to suspect that it lingers. If it is lingering and a giant elephant that brings fog happens to be present, it seems inevitable that it's actually a multitude of them creating more and more fog in a single area. If it's just Zunesha, or even a mate, then the fog is incidental, which makes little sense to me.
On an aside, Zunesha's way of speaking and the Sea Kings are exactly the same as Luffy and Momo's on Wano. I'd bet that Shirahoshi will be able to speak in the same way.