People can still strongly dislike something that others might like even if it is harmless.

I think I stopped watching One Piece YT videos after one of them spread the "fact" that Corazon was manipulating Law to become the harbinger of doom for the celestials and that he didn't care about Law as a person at all. All because they only read the mangastream? mangapanda? translation, which was very obviously badly translated. Of course he did not accept my corrections with the official translations.

I like absurd and over the top theories but I do draw the line at false details.

@kirei_lanford:

Its not gonna be it.
But lets face it, there are many manga with girls look much much more similar one another.
With one piece theres perona with her eyes, robin with her nose (and eyes), nami with her cheerful look, hancock with a hair that doesnt change unlike robin, vivi too has same style of hair each passing time, i think etc. If you line them one by one, you could see the differences.

Just because other manga might have the same issue doesn't excuse that One Piece has this issue and it has become such a problem to the storyline when it should not ever register. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that the reason people are annoyed with Oda's repetitive women is the fact that he can damn well draw women with different faces and physiques and he just doesn't. Take a look at Perona or Praline or heck, the gender-bent anythings that Oda draws. The women there look sooo diverse!! (I really wish he'd drawn Apoo as a woman, such a design). That's what annoys people (or me at least), he can but he won't and this was the last straw. People went wild on the theories because they couldn't tell from a glance who's who and took up (is still taking) so much discussion over such a thing.

The stuttering bit where Hiyoarasaki back pedals and calls Zoro noble…. I'm kinda stuck there because I feel it was Toko that stuttered and then Hiyoarasaki switched the attention from Toko to herself. As for her motivations, I feel like she's not being entirely forthcoming and is being just a tad sweeter than necessary. I don't think she is lying about being Hiyori though. Zoro's strength seems to have impressed her and I think she feels the need to 'trick' him into fighting for her but soon will learn that her usual tricks don't work and we will have an emotional scene filled with tears where she discards her komuarasaki persona and begs for help; either that or she stands tall as a samurais daughter and demands to be fought for.

Speaking of Zoro, it's really interesting that he views fighting differently from Luffy. Luffy says there's no cheating in pirates fighting (Kata+Flampe) but Zoro prefers 'honourable' and fair fights.The different creeds make it more organic.

The "Kapapa" of Kawamatsu gave me a whiplash flashback of CP9's Fukuro (Chapapa)

I have quietly been reading the manga again without going on any discussion pages but thought I'd come back to see what's piquing everyone's interest in the latest chapters aaaaaaaand most I see is the rehash of the argument old as time itself: Zoro vs Sanji. Love it!

I don't want to stick hard to this but what Marco has to say to Luffy is moooooost likely about Blackbeard's "peculiar" physicality that allows him to wield two DFs.

Now putting that aside, I'm also wondering what Oda will do with the Marco-Weevil side-story…. It'll have to happen with both Luffy and Marco (and/or other Whitebeards) present; and according to Marco then Weevil will target the peaceful village. But when will it be set? Pre-Wano or Post. I cannot see another side-trip with swirly-hats before they go to Wano and it'll feel slightly anti-climatic to have Weevil as a foe after seeing someone like Kaido get defeated. Unless the plot merges....but Wano is so thickly laid as it is....Of course there's the whole Big Mom issue as well...

So the sword-hats are trying to infiltrate the palace (or at least Robin is using her geisha costume to d so) but alas nothing ever really goes to plan with the strawhats.

Maybe its now Zoro's turn to be captured XD will be hilarious if so

Sanji's fighting capabilities will have to stay in the back-burner, I'll be pleasantly surprised if he does fight but otherwise I'm keeping my expectations low.

@RigaCrypto:

I can even suspect that IM (crazy eye midget) induced Roger his illness and made Zunisha walk the New World seas. Nevertheless, she can somehow manipulate the fate of others if my theory is correct.

I really liked the factual layout of your conclusions and this is the one that struck me the most (mainly because I had the exact same line of thought but didn't elaborate on it in the chapter discussion thread).

I also thought that IM might have given Roger his illness and it raised a few questions for me:

1. At what point did Roger actually get sick? We know that his last 3 years he was travelling with crocus so he was sick then but what actually got IM's attention to 'cleanse' him

2. If inducing a sickness is IM's way of cleansing then he/she is not really omnipotent because Roger took years to die after getting sick and it wasn't the sickness that killed him in the end; it was an execution.

I'd like to know what you think about this.

@dropper:

I bet we'll see whose light was erased in the past during a flashback, just so the audience knows the extent of this danger.

It could very possibly have been JoyBoy

@Greg:

Currently I'm of the belief that Im has been alive this entire time and might even be Uranus; that Im is what the Elders are so afraid of.

My current thoughts are:

The Celestial Dragons' ancestors won a great war but that victory meant sacrificing the will of the world to Im.

They might not all have been AHole families, but they saw the futility in going against Im and submitted….except for Nefertaris.

This irked Im because Im was infatuated with (who I'm going to call) Ancient Vivi. We know that mother-daughter share a strong resemblance. It could be that Vivi bears a strong resemblance to an ancestor that Im wanted for itself (to love? to kill?) but was robbed of when they left.

The CD now act as avatars of Im. They cover Im's existence and are themselves considered the highest being when in fact its Im who is working mostly everything.

Why is Im hiding its existence? Perhaps because it fears the return of whatever threatened its power/influence long ago.

I'm a tad suspicious on this part of your explanation. Maybe it's just me but adding love, infatuation, obsession into this feels slightly off to me. I do find it possible as a reason but also slightly…not? Maybe because Vivi looks like her mother, who probably looks like her grandmother and so on. If his infatuation was that central to him killing Vivi here then there were plenty other look-alike beforehand to eliminate.

Of course, this can be explained by Cobra off-handedly stating that all previous Nefertatri females were mysteriously offed. At the same time, such an infatuation could be the reason she was chosen as the light to be erased (if she really is the chosen one) because I cannot see a reason why she would be chosen and not Cobra if it was solely about Alabasta.

This was truly a twisting chapter!

As for Im's existence….to be honest I'm very excited for their role in the story. If it truly turns out that he/she has been alive since the void century and can order "cleansing" on the fly then he/she must view the emperors as non-threats to his/her rule. This would explain why he/she's never gotten rid of the emperors and he/she's been right so far; none of the emperors have made world-changing waves as much as Luffy and Blackbeard (I do wonder why Dragon wasn't there though, given that his life mission is to change the world).

Now as for Shanks....he's an enigma wrapped in more enigma. I'm leaning on Shanks actually knowing about the existence of Im and the reason he wants Luffy to be PK and is not actively looking for Raftel (as far as we know) is because he cannot see himself changing the world. Thus he settled for keeping the world in order by becoming a force of 'good' as a powerful emperor. Shanks knowing the existence of Im (or just the very hush hush relation between him and the Elders) makes one thing make sense if true. Even as an emperor Shanks can move between the seas without much uproar (aka the theory that Shanks went to East Blue during the timeskip can make sense)

Finally, the matter regarding BB or Im as final boss. This will mainly depend on the order; If One Piece as a manga will end straight after Raftel then I can only see BB as the main villain but I'm of the opinion that post-raftel will be the main act of the collapse of the CD and WG as we know. I previously used to think that Akainu+5elders would be the obstacles for such an arc but we might have Im in the mix. Im is very thin and spindly looking (and I'm definitely judging the 1-chapter character based on looks) but they don't look 'strong' in the sense that he/she doesn't look like a 'brawling' type that we can see Luffy go up against. And if Im turns out to be a woman...well....then she is not likely to brawl with Luffy.

My mind's all over the place right now so sorry in advance if my statements don't make sense or I'm jumping through many loops.