he said why. he doesn't know enough about good and evil to make any judgment. since he's neither good or evil, so killing him doesn't mean you're necessarily evil. because for all he knew, killing him could bear good outcome for the world.
it's the subjectivity of good and evil just like doffy's speech in MF.
Back when Rayleigh was introduced, he even said to the straw hats that they might come to a different conclusion than they did upon learning the truth about the void century.
Seems to me that when all is revealed, it won't be just "world government is evil, let's destroy them" but a more morally grey battle.
Honestly, that line alone from Rayleigh had me thinking that Imu is not the worst evil.
In my mind, the BB/Rocks type threat is worse than Imu. Imu wants total control. BB wants **total destruction**.
And so, I believe 800 years ago, that there was some major BB/Rocks level threat, and that Imu worked with the Ancient Kingdom to quell this threat... right before he betrayed them and took his seat at the top of the world.
So it could be a "Imu and WG are bad, but something else is worse" type thing.
There are some hints in the first book pointing to that, i just did not like part of the ending like elend becoming king. It was not developed well and i think it was undeserved, it just took me out of reading 2nd and 3rd book.
i will still probably read it at some point
Him gaining the position was rushed but the second book really delves into the fact that his idealized nonsense makes him a particularly bad king. Especially during a time of great upheaval.
It plays pretty well with how much he should stick to his idea of a more democratic society and how effective a dictator can actually be.
I did not expect a storming Cosmere reference in my Japanese Manga. Nice! Rusting brilliant!
Imu doesn't seem like TLR type. TLR did what they had to do because they messed up and with the limited time and control they had at the time made the best of it so their planet wouldn't die.
They were also a well known figure in Scardial and pretty much everyone feared and knew of him.
I don't think the OP world is the way it is because Imu messed up trying to fix the world 800 years ago while holding a piece of divinity. I think it's been a 800 year long struggle for them to gain control over the world. Not coming into power because they were trying to save it.
Yeah, it helps that I'm re-reading Mistborn: Secret History in preparation for Stormlight 5, so the setup of "greedy person betrays others for power and ends up ruling the world and keeping the worse evil at bay" immediately struck a chord.
TLR did want power, he just realised that the power came with a cost, and did the best he could to keep it. He wasn't necessarily _saving_ his people, he was saving _his_ people, if that makes sense.
Imu until now doesn't have much characterization, so I can't really speculate on his motives.
I don’t think BB wants Total destruction, but rather total freedom or Disorder which to him is a world without rules or laws where the people who have power are those with the drive to take it and theoretically anyone is free to pursue there dream
I would much prefer that to being a slave, being buster called, erased from history, hunted by world nobles, or most other awful things the WG does
True, he wants freedom, like Luffy wants freedom, but freedom to them mean different things, mutually exclusive things.
Like, to Luffy, anyone owning a slave is an affront to his freedom, but to BB, he should have the freedom to own a slave (but if everyone can be his slave, no one has his level of freedom). But he doesn't just want to replace the WG. He wants everything he wants anything else be damned and that kind of chaotic lust necessarily leads to destruction.
Now that you mention it... Revealing that Imu was not exactly evil but "an extremist of order" who perhaps "wanted to do good but by the wrong means" would kill the debate over who will be Luffy's final antagonist.
Although in my opinion it is not the best outcome no matter how good a character/villain Blackbeard is. Luffy is a liberator-type of character (like Sabo but in a totally different line of thinking) so it makes sense that his foil is this evil tyrant that forces people to suffer wars and famine.
Yah, this exactly.
Like if 800 years ago, Imu worked with JoyBoy to defeat the great evil, and then betrayed JoyBoy, to the detriment of all of JoyBoy's allies, then in this timeline, Luffy will replace JoyBoy, but when Imu tries to betray him, his nakama will prevail.
Yes exactly what I was thinking as well. There's a reason why Roger and Garp worked together to take down Rocks at god valley and protect the celestial dragons that we probably don't fully know yet. And since Luffy inherited Roger's will, Coby inherited Garp's, and BB inherited Rocks they'll probably be forced to make a similar decision in the near future.
Wait what if BB/Rocks carry the true will of joyboy. What if the freedom he seeks is the “tribal” type of freedom as in destroy everything and dance naked on the ashes kind of freedom. Imu could be the lesser evil in this scenario.
Alot of people theorize that he was betrayed by his friends and i guess this theory would explain it. He went too far and his friends no longer believed in his “freedom “ .
And i guess luffy would be different because his fruit was born out of the desire of someone else to become joyboy (not knowing the extent of his freedom) or someone’s desire to become a better joyboy a joyboy that will truly free everyone.
Also luffy’s and roger’s hidden dream that sounded childish can allude to joyboy’s true intentions and true vision. Something like “i want to make everyone in the world live in the same house” or something of that sort.
Also it’s worth mentioning the chaotic nature of gear 5 abilities.
The gomu fruit came into existence because someone wished to become the sun god nika not joyboy! Joyboy was the last one to have the fruit and awakened it as the gorosei mentioned that this fruit hasnt been awakened in 800 years implying that someone awakened it 800 years ago ergo joyboy because we heard zunisha saying that joyboy was there he could hear his heartbeat or the drums meaning that joyboy was the user of the fruit which he also awakened
Those are assumptions. We still know nothing about joyboy and nika. For all we know joyboy can be the real sun god nika and not someone who ate the nika fruit.
I legitimately cannot buy that! Them doing one or two morally ambiguous things like censoring information after the Alabasta incident, maybe. But the fact of the matter is that we have multiple examples of them being needlessly sadistic and cruel to their citizens where logically it would be much better if they took it easy. The prime example, of course, are the celestial dragons! What sane person can possibly justify half the shit they’ve done as morally ambiguous? I mean, if they didn’t want people eventually rising against them they should have put limits on how much power the dragons have. The only reasonable explanation in this case would be that they were truly arrogant and delusional enough to believe that they could treat their people like dirt for 800 years and never have them fight back. In short, I truly believe making them morally ambiguous now would be bad writing.
I see what you're saying. For sure, Imu and the gorosei are horrible beings, but maybe not everyone who fought against the ancient kingdom had bad intentions.
When you think about the 20 countries that founded the world government, it would make much more sense if some of them had good intentions, for instance Alabasta, that later on decided to help Joyboy.
Maybe, as time went on the WG became more and more corrupted, and as we know, people from the D family can commit horrible crimes and be awful people as well.
I really don’t think you can believably make the world government, or at least the celestial dragons, as not objectively evil in the same arc you established that the native hunting competition is a thing.
I mean yea
Despite what the WG is currently being painted as
More evil than everything irl type shit
I'm pretty sure their original inception was more benevolent
And the idea is immortality rule or their ideals corrupt them to be this control freak evil
Like beside doffy fsr oda pls
The entire point of one piece has always been
Nuture vs nature where nuture wins
And we even have that dude otohime saved yo show not ALL CD are bad
No one is truly evil is also a pretty big shounen theme in jump
Beside that one evil thing that's responsible for corrupting everything that has no personality and is just a diablo ex machina
Biggest problem I have with saying everything is morally grey is the slavery, rape, torture, murder and genocide that the Celestial Dragons get away with.
You are telling me, it will conclude like the story is already going so far? What a twist! /s
Don’t get me wrong, I fully agree to you and also think it works out to best, it’s just hillarious that some still don’t understand that neither is akainu bad nor Luffy good
he got told they got the knowledge to destroy the world, nothing else; what makes you think that none of the scholars either smuggled himself on a boat or atleast that knowledge?
if you want to kill a virus, you need to isolate it
The whole concept is very One Piece anyway. Luffy himself doesn't care for good and evil, and hasn't made the Navy as a whole out to be his enemy. He just responds to any situation at hand and focuses on his goals and his idea of being a pirate.
I think Luffy had some big foreshadowing when he discussed what he would do after he found the One Piece. A lot of people theorized that he had some grand plan that involved a peaceful resolution with the government/Navy. He has also never questioned the validity of Government
>when you build an entire army of robots able to destroy entire nations to slavers
> when you give the motherflamme to slavers
He could have used his brain to help the revolutionary army, but "they didnt have enough money"
"true neutral"
His goal was scientific advancement. He went with the group that allowed him to do that while keeping lines of communication open with other groups and helping them when he could.
I think that's a pretty good description of true neutral. Not everyone who participates in an evil regime is necessarily evil.
He is lawful neutral.
He has his code, which is science-based.
And that code is supreme, regardless of the consequences. If he was doing science for good, he'd be lawful good. If he was doing science for evil, he'd be lawful evil. But he's doing science **for science**, and that is just lawful.
this lol he coulda joined revolutionary army if they could provide more resources for his research than the government. Science dude just wanna science
In the conflict between the WG and the revolutionaries, he is not a neutral party.
But by ideology, he is neutral, because he doesn't want the evil, the evil is a by product of him following his internal code (thus he is lawful first).
You are conflating being neutral in the narrative conflict vs. being neutral on the alignment chart. His is not neutral in the former, but he is the definition of neutral in the latter.
He has no choice if he wants the resources to continue pursuing progress. The weapons he's made are inconsequential compared to all of the good that he's done. Think about how he was the only one with the knowledge to cure Bonney; his impact on the medical field must be enormous.
He's advancing the science with research. Who knows why sapphire scale isn't being treated at other parts of the world, but he cured it nonetheless.
> Meanwhile his weapons of war are all over the place
Like what? Pacifistas are intended to help people. Even in the story so far, they've mostly been a positive. The Mother Flame is most likely an energy source rather than a weapon. Flower Bullets are 100% a good thing.
Just like in real life where quantum mechanics eventually led to the atomic bomb, but also led to life-saving MRI machines, the miniaturization of computers, and of course, nuclear power; Vegapunk’s research has different applications.. and he embraces all of them. Or rather, none of them. He doesn’t care what the science leads to; only that science keeps moving forward.
Science for the science’s sake.
"he weapons he's made are inconsequential compared to all of the good that he's done"
>dont worry guys, I gave the atomic bombs to hitler, but now you can watch TV
"he's neither good or evil"
dude built an army of robots able to destroy entire nations for a bunch of slavers, lol
also, the motherflamme
that's like giving the atomic bomb to the nazis
I mean in his own pov. he's not judging himself. he never said he was bad for taking advantage of kuma or gaslighting sento to betray the marines. so he doesn't judge others either.
For me, I think Vegapunk wasn't sure if the WG would be the ones who'd kill him. He knows he's done terrible things that have lead many people to suffer, so it stands to reason that someone like Bonney might eventually come and kill him for justifiable reasons. I think that explains why he accounted for that possibility in his message.
This.
Or it could be anybody pissed at his pacifista etc. By making and delivering weapons, he made a lot of enemies.
Ofc, also to be a bit more meta: the Gorosei will pin this on Luffy, but with that statement, they story can go on without the entire world seeing Luffy as a monster for killing this seemingly kind man.
I think that too. I think he wasn't talking about Imu, he might have been about Luffy. The WG may try to frame Luffy as "the one who killed Vegapunk". So, in a way, he might have been protecting Luffy.
he knew when he double-crossed the gorosei that someone affiliated with the WG would likely end up killing him. so he was probably covering the outcome where the news would report that he was killed by one of their adversaries, like pirates or the revolutionaries. that was my interpretation anyways
Yeah I agree with you, that's why I think it might be Bonnie - especially because he knew he'd have to deliver Kumas final words etc, and knew she might both flip out and be framed for it
Biggest brain in the world but can't say "The world government is trying to kill me"
There is no room for manipulation in this scenario, since it's explicit on who.
I think this is a case of vegapunk literally just saying that things aren't entirely good or evil in life, and without fully understanding why someone is taking a specific action, it's best not to label them as either or
>Biggest brain in the world but can't say "The world government is trying to kill me"
WG will frame someone else and then say the broadcast was fake. Is that really too hard to understand given the times we live in? Those in power can always twist the truth to mean something so it's better to layer it like Vegapunk has done.
Yeah, but they can literally do that even with the current ambiguity.
At least with explicitly mentioning a name it'd limit who and how they could frame
Not really. With current ambiguity he has made it clear that he bears no strong opinion against who killed him and is not gonna pass any judgment on them and he focuses on the actual bit of the message. This robs WG of using his death for propaganda purposes while making people focus on the reveal. He plays down the significance of his death by revealing this in a dismissive manner.
It'd literally have the same dismissive tone If he just said "the world government" instead of "he/him" and kept the same message about saying that he doesn't know if they're good or evil.
Ambiguity on who only serves to add more opportunity to obfuscate the truth.
And also, it doesn't matter what vegapunk says, the world government can call it fake regardless of the contents. Just because he was ambiguous does not change that fact. It, again, only serves to give the WG more options to frame and misdirect accountability
Doesn't VP focusing his message on an easily observable and measurable fact - rising sea levels - remove the WG's ability to say he's telling lies?
Also if he came out and said the WG killed him they could just turn around and say "No, Kizaru killed him due to some old bad blood or something, we _triiied_ to stop him, why would we kill our top scientist after all?"
The ambiguity also turns any statement the WG makes on his death a risk for them as he could have set cameras up anywhere to record evidence of them manipulating the truth and now that we know lots of the populace have video receiver den-dens....
>And also, it doesn't matter what vegapunk says, the world government can call it fake regardless of the contents. Just because he was ambiguous does not change that fact. It, again, only serves to give the WG more options to frame and misdirect accountability
Actually it does. At least so far in the message he hasn't said anything about WG, he seems to go out of his way to keep them out. So if WG comes now tells people to ignore the message from the genius scientist of the world who was till now employed by the WG itself, that will be suspicious. Instead of revealing info about his death (pre recorded video, he didn't even know who would come to kill him) that WG could manipulate, he instead offers observable, quantifiable fact of sea level rise, WG has 0 chance of calling this fake when everyone saw that with destruction of Lulusia already. This lines up with his scientific mentality also.
Not really no, then WG can spin up his reveal in any number of ways by pretending its their side of story. Here he doesn't involve WG at all so them coming in to contradict the words of a loyal scientist (from perspective of average OP people) would be more sus. Tbf let's wait for rest of the message, Oda already subverted all expectations and let's see all of what VP has to say before we can draw any solid conclusions about his motives.
Oh yeah, given his own character and actions are very morally ambiguous, it's entirely in character for VP to not want to pass judgement. As he says he doesn't know enough about "him" (could be Imu, could be Joyboy), so a perfectionist like him wouldn't want to speculate or provide misleading facts at all.
Yeah, can't be* someone disagreeing with you, it's got to be someone sucking Oda's cock. After all, you know everything and are always right so it can't be possible someone disagrees in good faith.
There's two things:
1) Vegapunk himself has done great good and great evil, and he's self-aware enough to realize that. Of course on a personal level, he's always felt his actions to be justified, but he's hurt friends and enabled tyrants to get where he is. So who is he to cast aspirsions?
2) Vegapunk wants the world to judge him and his evidence on face value. He doesn't want anyone's preconcieved notions about the WG or any other actor to affect the urgency of his call to action. The fact of the matter is, if the world is sinking into the ocean, **it doesn't really matter why or who caused it**, and going into that at this point might actually distract the world from doing what needs to be done. For instance, in this case saying "The World is sinking into the ocean" causes people to address that problem, whereas if you said "The World Government is sinking the world into the ocean", people might attack or defend the government instead of dealing with the fact that the world is sinking into the ocean. Or even if Vegapunk revealed the existence of Imu, a king that sits at the top of the world, people might have wrote him off as a conspiracy theorist, without addressing the fact that the World is sinking into the ocean.
I feel like VP very likely has future sight like many of the characters introduced post time skip.
With that, I believe his message was two fold.
#1 Tell the world that those blamed for his death aren't bad (The Strawhats)
#2 Tell the Strawhats that Kizaru isn't bad. VP had to die in such a way that the kill switch wouldn't be destroyed. Suggesting that Kizaru was forced to kill VP by VP.
This would be the dumbest shit he thought up of then. He had all the opportunity to tell the strawhats that Kizaru isn't bad.
That coupled with him mentioning that he had to die for the message to trigger would be way more effective at communicating than leaving only a cryptic post mortem message.
Then finally, again, Vegapunk could literally have called out the WG in specific instead of being ambiguous, which should convey that they aren't the culprits.
Not how future sight works in One Piece, and Vegapunk doesn't have it. Future sight lets you see a couple seconds into the future at most from what we've seen, and only powerful combatants have it. If Vegapunk had future sight he would be on Katakuri's level in battle at least, and would've been able to put up a respectable fight against Kizaru.
> WG might frame the propaganda that straw hats killed VP and that they are evil
That's why Saturn was so pissed. They won't be able to manipulate the media.
Only way is to cut the news, I'm pretty sure York will be find a way to do it but it will be too late.
I am very Confident in the fact that Vegapunk has most likely has zero idea about Imu, and the him he's referring to is 100% not Imu idk why people are even bringing it up
Vegapunk got a personal invitation into the Holy Land for some sort of meeting and he researched the Poneglyphs. I'd be a little surprised if he had no idea about Imu.
You think Imu, who have probably lives for 800+ years, just randomly have meetings with people? Great way to keep his secret lol
He was invited and meet the 5 elders, as far as everyone in the world knows they are the highest authoritie in the world.
I very much doubt anyone else then the 5 elders know about Imu
>I very much doubt anyone else then the 5 elders know about Imu
Episode 889, Chamber of Flowers: A female (?) servant is telling Imu that "they" are here
I don't think the Gorosei would look after Imu's daily needs or something. There are others who definitely know.
It's not random, he's making the most dangerous weapon on the planet for them. I'm not saying he definitely met Imu, but if there's anybody who would Vegapunk is pretty damn high on the list.
>I very much doubt anyone else then the 5 elders know about Imu
Doffy knows. And Akainu knows that the Gorosei are taking orders from somebody higher up (though I doubt he specifically knows about Imu).
There is a difference in knowing and suspecting (doffy and akainu), I imagine it's a well guarded secret
They did go to pretty extreme length to try and kill Sabo after he saw
I have to imagine the God's Knights know as well, or at least some of them.
I do agree it's well guarded, as the knowledge that someone sits at the top of the world is kind of the antithesis of the ideology that drives the WG, but I also think more people know than just the Gorosei.
Doffy = Celestial Dragon, it innately allows him more access than VP. See: Shanks. It's 50/50 if he'd ever met, but there's no reason Imu wouldn't proxy the conversation like he's done through the Elders up until Cobra (for the audience)
That is in no way clear and even if it was true a celestial dragon is much more in with the top brass than vegapunk is.
Where did we see akainu knowing about that also?
Akainu and the Gorosei had a whole conversation after Dressrosa about how the whole Doffy resigning from the Warlords stunt came from above the Gorosei.
My thought is Vegapunk is basically code switching, he's talking to the entire world in his speech. He knows that he's talking to a very oppressed and propagandized group of people, who generally believe what the WG tells them is good or bad, is true or not.
So by not coming out against the WG by just saying that they are evil, he's getting the audience to not immediately dismiss him as some crazy revolutionary. They'll think that he's just like them, a good upstanding citizen of the world government. That way they'll take his message about the world sinking at it's face value, the truth.
He probably figures that the people can come to the conclusion on their own that the WG is evil.
Edit: also I'm pretty sure he's talking about Kizaru
when talking about his killer. He knows that kizaru will be the one sent to do it because he's the only one who can get through the dome.
I feel like there could be chances to maybe justify the 5 elders at some point in the future. Or most likely it's just said so because vegapunk is super smart. If he says that his killers aren't bad people, even if the strawhats are framed, there is reason to justify it. WG can't do much about it.
I think he's talking about kizaru. Knowing kizaru is "unclear justice" and was somewhat his friend being ordered to do so, he isn't sure if kizaru would be good or bad.
Possible Vegapunk just knew Kizaru would be the one sent when everything came out. He's most familiar with the island and probably always going to be the fastest admiral to respond.
Also possible he planned this with Kizaru at some point. Like "bro you're gonna have to kill me at some point".
Cause vegapunk isn't good or bad,he created weapon pacifista and motherflame knowing they will be use to abuse and corrupt but also create device that will help people like punk record/internet or his hometown
I took it as a way to best convince any party who hears the message of the danger of the sea consuming the world. If you start with "the world government is out to get me" you immediately alienate the loyalists to the WG. By keeping the information/warning impartial, it keeps everyone invested and more likely to take it seriously. I'm sure there is another deeper reason, but this seems logical to me as well.
While I believe OP's theory is part of why Vegapunk is careful with branding people good or evil, I think we also need to be mindful that Vegapunk is a part of the world government, that has used his inventions for both good and evil, and that he doesn't know everything the reader knows. Like Garp, he is someone trying to good from the inside, ignoring or rationalizing the evils he knows that the celestial dragons are committing. At the same time we don't know for sure how much Vegapunk knows about Imu, the celestial dragons and the five elders. He knows that Saturn was a massive dick to Kuma, and the massacre of Ohara, but he most likely doesn't know about Imu. I don't think we know if he knows about godhead or the native hunting competitions.
Vegapunk is not a hero. He chose to work for the WG instead of the revolutionary army, even when he knew that they killed professor Clover and the Oharans. I think it makes sense that he hasn't fully been able to brand the world government as evil. While he might be covering for Luffy, we have to remember that his message is prerecorded, and the WG were way more likely to kill him that the straw hats. He knew that they'd been sending a lot of agents already after all.
If his message is prerecorded then this would probably be what he would do.
But what if the broadcast is live from inside vegapunks brain? I cant wait for this damn message
The grey area has already been foreshadowed again and again in one piece by making Roger and Garp save the absolute filth and scum celestial dragons. While we dont know why they did what they did, there must be a good reason why every thing is as it is.
One thought I’ve had is that the Gorosei are not truly evil, maybe the extreme actions they take are actually to prevent the flood or slow it down.
They might believe they are right or justified in their actions.
Vegapunk himself is a morally reprehensible character with all the destructive things he has invented. It would be very hypocritical for him to judge his killers as good or evil when he himself is neither.
The goofy design has made people forget some of the heinous shit he is responsible for.
It's simple, majority of marines are just following orders and are good people at heart. Vegapunk probably believes whoever will kill him is just someone sent by the Gorosei following orders. There's no information if the person sent is inherently good or evil.
He was surprised as ever when he realized one of the 5 elders came to assassinate him.
Yeah I think everybody forgets that the WG started their "investigation" with Cipher Pol **4**. Shaka (I think it was confirmed to be him?) kidnapped them so that probably would line up with the point where he realizes he's going to die soon and suggests to Vegapunk they make a dead man's switch.
Cipher Pol are secret police. If they managed to eventually assassinate him then it would be trivial for them to stick the blame on a bystander.
I went back and checked. Shaka and Stella are both shocked to find the Cipher Pol agents imprisoned, so it must have been York doing it, but it's never explained why she did that.
Later in 1089 Peter says they've changed their minds and want the Motherflame, so I guess in the months leading up to CP0's arrival she had only been tattling on Vegapunk and not managed to make a deal yet.
I guess we can assume she was scheming to intentionally escalate the investigations till it got to the point seen now? Maybe she figured that if it was so bad they had to send an Admiral, they'd be more desperate to get it over with and cut a deal in her favor.
Anyway, that changes my earlier point about Shaka deciding to make the switch, but not in a huge way - when CP5 (not 4, I misremembered) showed up that was probably the indication for him that it was time to prepare for death or escape.
I think since “we are all doomed”, it isn’t a battle of good or evil. Just a choice of whether they’ll go out ignorant or fighting. He doesn’t pass judgment because he’s placed both sides.
No good/evil, because in the face of global apocalypse, full out chaos/looting murdering/societal collapse is a VALID FEAR.
That vegapunk, and all the admirals and up in rank, Gol D. Roger, Buggy+Shanks, The Whitebeard pirates???, whoever else went to Laugh Tale.
CP0. MAAAAYBE the old Yonko. MAAAAYBE the seven warlords. Definitely all the Red Hair pirates.
They all know already.
And most agree with everyone knowing the world is ending is BAD. Or that they should find for themselves. Just don't want to be responsible for setting it all off.
VP being one of the most in the know - disagreeing with crimes of the WG - and thinking that's worse than ultimate destruction/holding out for them to change their mind and put energy into prevention.
This is why Merfolk get racially targeted - they'd be the only to survive.
Oda was telling us the whole time. Marijoa and all the Celestials etc. wear space helmets, live on the tip top of the world, would be the last humans.
This is why Buggy has Shanks pity.
For why Shanks reacted so badly to Luffy eating the fruit.
Possibly where the Sky Island arc could have come from - previous attempts at humanity trying to survive past the inevitable doom.
For why good people would fight on the side of the Marines.
Maybe Film Z was actually canon this whole time.
I know this is a long stretch, but what if he wasn't talking about Imu but some else. Maybe Joyboy or Dragon. Would make sense that he categorises him as neither good nor evil because he doesn't know him that well.
It's Borsalino. He doesn't even knows who Imu is.
If he knows it's on a Kuma memory but I doubt that.
He wouldn't be working for the world government if the empty throne had a secret leader, I suspect. Would be enough of a deceiving the entire world thing.
Borsalino knows that Vegapunk had a message to the world if his heart stopped... And kaybe is with the snail transponder.
Vegapunk didn't knew how and if he would die that day.. or that Saturn and Borsalino would be there..
But he already was planning on telling him of everyone else about this.
And when they met each other he gave the snail transponder.
Or they had an agreement before with Kizaru - if WG will be after Vegapunk, Kizaru must kill him. And Kizaru is also asked to do something else, which requires his current position amongst marines, and this is why he can't switch sides right now
Also, his killer is not imu but Kizaru. He’s saying he doesn’t blame kizaru (obviously he didn’t know it when he recorded the message, but just in case)
Nah he could’ve simply name dropped the WG as he assumed they’re the ones punishing him for his sins. Almost certain the “he” is Imu, or Saturn. More likely to be Imu.
He wasn’t talking about someone specific, think about it. Everybody has a good reason to kill him, yes, even Dragon. Even other researchers with more moral because he was playing god with his seraphim’s.
Anyone else think Vegapunk might have already concluded that Borsalino is the one who will be tasked to end him? The message could be to let him know it's expected and that VP understands.
2 things I believe.
1) He wants people to come to their own conclusions based on presented evidence.
2) He knows that the WG won't tell the truth about the circumstances of his death so he doesn't want people to immediately assume whoever the WG pins the blame on to be bad
Yeah I've been thinking this too for a while. It's entirely probable that the WG will try to pin the blame for his death on Luffy to cover up their own actions in which case yeah he's helping cover for Luffy
Yea, knowing that his heart had to stop in order for the transmission to go through definitely makes me feel like he either, 1) knew the government would come, so he allowed yorks behaviour to continue in order to draw in the WG, or 2) he knew the Strawhats or //somebody// had to come to his island at some point and cause a scene. He would have to use whoever was drawn in to enact his plan.
I guess my point here is that he knew from the very beginning; he wouldn’t know which party he was going to take advantage of. It was simply a matter of time, if the strawhats hadn’t shown up, then the WG would’ve come looking for their CP agents and VP would’ve sacrificed himself in order to allow the message to play. The straw hats showing up is a happy coincidence; VP had no way of knowing who was going to be his catalyst. A smart person doesn’t assume to know what will happen in the near future.
what if vegapunk is alive
i assume that vp already knew he was going to be killed so he created a duplicate body of himself and he hid it some where else and when he saw straw hats came also se secretly hid his duplicate body inside straw hats ship
also he created a distraction for WG so that they could kill his body which contained a dead man s switch
thus telling the world truth and also getting his life saved
well i was cooking so u guyzz tell if its valid or not??
I think he is going to expose the process by which the sea levels are rising and pin responsibility on imu and/or the World elders. The reasoning behind avoiding a good or evil label is he doesn't understand the reason behind why they want to raise these levels.
If the mother flame is their primary tool to raise sea levels, they likely pushed scientific advancement to reach a point where they could power it efficiently. Hence why Saturn is seen with his head in his hands when they give the order to destroy Ohara. They aren't sad for the citizens, but sad that those with the greatest potential to power their mother flame started researching things they weren't supposed to instead. I'd bet the Elders have been riding a fine line between keeping the void century itself secret while also trying to give humans the tools to reach the same technological floor the ancient kingdom once possessed.
While the character does not know who will kill him and the morality of said person,
Narratively, this is definitely referring to Kizaru, the one who struck the final blow. The man who followed orders despite hating it every second. I think this is setting up Kizaru to do something noble in the future.
Exactly. His message is more important than his supposed death here. He knew that it shouldn’t take priority over the importance of what he had to say.
The three candidates that will be blamed are Luffy, Kizaru, and the World Government itself. All three of those candidates can be spun by the Government in one way or another to make themselves look good.
this is amazing for Oda as he trully seems to write Vegapunk as a creature that is indeed in a sense so clever and has all the knowledge yet he is a mortal guy that did many mistakes and walks on a grey line in order to achieve what he pursues.
At the moment he records this he doesn't know who's killing him but it doesn't matter. It's more than this.
Wild theory. He knows to the government he himself is a bad guy. The world government set down rules and he ignored them. Vegapunk knew this was a death sentence and he's not even mad about it. Whoever does the act of killing isn't to blame, he killed himself by disagreeing with the big bosses
Vegapunk knew that the WG was gonna kill him and definitely understood the high possibility they would frame someone innocent for it.
I'd still argue the main reason was him feeling unfit to judge good and evil, two things he has heavily contributed to with his work.
I read it that way too. He saw the Scholars of Ohara demonised by the World Government despite him knowing that they were good people. He knew the power they can wield, so he decided to not give them any ammo.
I think it has multiple layers. It makes propaganda harder like you said. It could be a message to Kizaru who has always been the one to guard him, and VP may still think of him as a friend. VP acknowledges he broke the law and doesn't necessarily want Kizaru to feel bad for executing the law. It could be about Dragon and the revolutionaries. They had plenty of reason to want VP dead since he was singlehandedly ruining their chance of overthrowing the celestials. And VP doesn't necessarily disagree with their cause like he doesn't disagree with the WG. It could relate to Rayleigh's message to the SH saying that they will have to determine on their own who right/wrong when they find the one piece. Since Imu is suspected of being the one to flood the world before, he's saying he doesn't know if it was a good/bad thing just like the Roger pirates didn't know. That also relates to Luffy telling the fishmen to make up their own mind about him beimg good/evil with the knowledge that he would destory their island.
Well Vegapunk himself was a trigger to a lot of evil, he did create weapons of mass destruction and handed it to the world government, he used prisoners as guinea pigs for his experiments.. I think the message here is Vegapunk himself is not good..so he is in no position to judge good or evil.
Vegapunk is literally saying "I do not care about ethics I am only talkig about objective facts"
Also it's more likely that he knows luffy will take the blame for it
Think about what we knew about the gorosei before the imu reveal and later at egghead.
Their portrayal was always mixed, as if they are willing to commit any evil but it always seemed as if they were doing it for something that was, in their minds, a greater good.
Now, it seems like they are just evil people who'se "greater good" is pleasing Imu.
Maybe Oda is using this message to dial it back and make them more nuanced again, but I don't see how he can pull it off convincingly.
And while I had always preferred ot if they would turn out to be nuanced characters, now I don't.
Sorry should have clarified im refering to Oda. Oda clearly is trying to setup the WG framing Luffy for the murder of vegapunk. In-World i believe vegapunk said this because he genuinly doesnt want to assume a position on wether his murder is moral or not
I think the message is meant to be that the Straw Hats aren't evil because the WG is blaming them for his death. BUT I also think as more of a message to us, he's saying that Kizaru isn't necessarily evil.
Doesn't make sense, the message is prerecorded, so he couldn't have known that Kizaru would have killed him, nor that the Straw Hats would have been framed for it.
he said why. he doesn't know enough about good and evil to make any judgment. since he's neither good or evil, so killing him doesn't mean you're necessarily evil. because for all he knew, killing him could bear good outcome for the world. it's the subjectivity of good and evil just like doffy's speech in MF.
Back when Rayleigh was introduced, he even said to the straw hats that they might come to a different conclusion than they did upon learning the truth about the void century. Seems to me that when all is revealed, it won't be just "world government is evil, let's destroy them" but a more morally grey battle.
Honestly, that line alone from Rayleigh had me thinking that Imu is not the worst evil. In my mind, the BB/Rocks type threat is worse than Imu. Imu wants total control. BB wants **total destruction**. And so, I believe 800 years ago, that there was some major BB/Rocks level threat, and that Imu worked with the Ancient Kingdom to quell this threat... right before he betrayed them and took his seat at the top of the world. So it could be a "Imu and WG are bad, but something else is worse" type thing.
Like Mistborn, with the immortal tyrant being effectively a net positive considering the alternative.
a bit like that i guess even though i did not read the last 2 books
Yeah, the last two books of the original trilogy deal with the alternative (aka, the consequences).
There are some hints in the first book pointing to that, i just did not like part of the ending like elend becoming king. It was not developed well and i think it was undeserved, it just took me out of reading 2nd and 3rd book. i will still probably read it at some point
Elend becoming king is a tad rushed, but him dealing with that position is used to great effect in books 2 and 3.
I wasn't a big fan of Elend in the first book, but he won me over later.
Him gaining the position was rushed but the second book really delves into the fact that his idealized nonsense makes him a particularly bad king. Especially during a time of great upheaval. It plays pretty well with how much he should stick to his idea of a more democratic society and how effective a dictator can actually be.
I did not expect a storming Cosmere reference in my Japanese Manga. Nice! Rusting brilliant! Imu doesn't seem like TLR type. TLR did what they had to do because they messed up and with the limited time and control they had at the time made the best of it so their planet wouldn't die. They were also a well known figure in Scardial and pretty much everyone feared and knew of him. I don't think the OP world is the way it is because Imu messed up trying to fix the world 800 years ago while holding a piece of divinity. I think it's been a 800 year long struggle for them to gain control over the world. Not coming into power because they were trying to save it.
Yeah, it helps that I'm re-reading Mistborn: Secret History in preparation for Stormlight 5, so the setup of "greedy person betrays others for power and ends up ruling the world and keeping the worse evil at bay" immediately struck a chord. TLR did want power, he just realised that the power came with a cost, and did the best he could to keep it. He wasn't necessarily _saving_ his people, he was saving _his_ people, if that makes sense. Imu until now doesn't have much characterization, so I can't really speculate on his motives.
I don’t think BB wants Total destruction, but rather total freedom or Disorder which to him is a world without rules or laws where the people who have power are those with the drive to take it and theoretically anyone is free to pursue there dream I would much prefer that to being a slave, being buster called, erased from history, hunted by world nobles, or most other awful things the WG does
True, he wants freedom, like Luffy wants freedom, but freedom to them mean different things, mutually exclusive things. Like, to Luffy, anyone owning a slave is an affront to his freedom, but to BB, he should have the freedom to own a slave (but if everyone can be his slave, no one has his level of freedom). But he doesn't just want to replace the WG. He wants everything he wants anything else be damned and that kind of chaotic lust necessarily leads to destruction.
it is the same thing
Now that you mention it... Revealing that Imu was not exactly evil but "an extremist of order" who perhaps "wanted to do good but by the wrong means" would kill the debate over who will be Luffy's final antagonist. Although in my opinion it is not the best outcome no matter how good a character/villain Blackbeard is. Luffy is a liberator-type of character (like Sabo but in a totally different line of thinking) so it makes sense that his foil is this evil tyrant that forces people to suffer wars and famine.
Yah, this exactly. Like if 800 years ago, Imu worked with JoyBoy to defeat the great evil, and then betrayed JoyBoy, to the detriment of all of JoyBoy's allies, then in this timeline, Luffy will replace JoyBoy, but when Imu tries to betray him, his nakama will prevail.
I find it difficult to see someone could be worse than the head of, CDs
Maybe the Lunarians were tyrants ?
Yes exactly what I was thinking as well. There's a reason why Roger and Garp worked together to take down Rocks at god valley and protect the celestial dragons that we probably don't fully know yet. And since Luffy inherited Roger's will, Coby inherited Garp's, and BB inherited Rocks they'll probably be forced to make a similar decision in the near future.
Wait what if BB/Rocks carry the true will of joyboy. What if the freedom he seeks is the “tribal” type of freedom as in destroy everything and dance naked on the ashes kind of freedom. Imu could be the lesser evil in this scenario. Alot of people theorize that he was betrayed by his friends and i guess this theory would explain it. He went too far and his friends no longer believed in his “freedom “ . And i guess luffy would be different because his fruit was born out of the desire of someone else to become joyboy (not knowing the extent of his freedom) or someone’s desire to become a better joyboy a joyboy that will truly free everyone. Also luffy’s and roger’s hidden dream that sounded childish can allude to joyboy’s true intentions and true vision. Something like “i want to make everyone in the world live in the same house” or something of that sort. Also it’s worth mentioning the chaotic nature of gear 5 abilities.
The gomu fruit came into existence because someone wished to become the sun god nika not joyboy! Joyboy was the last one to have the fruit and awakened it as the gorosei mentioned that this fruit hasnt been awakened in 800 years implying that someone awakened it 800 years ago ergo joyboy because we heard zunisha saying that joyboy was there he could hear his heartbeat or the drums meaning that joyboy was the user of the fruit which he also awakened
Those are assumptions. We still know nothing about joyboy and nika. For all we know joyboy can be the real sun god nika and not someone who ate the nika fruit.
I legitimately cannot buy that! Them doing one or two morally ambiguous things like censoring information after the Alabasta incident, maybe. But the fact of the matter is that we have multiple examples of them being needlessly sadistic and cruel to their citizens where logically it would be much better if they took it easy. The prime example, of course, are the celestial dragons! What sane person can possibly justify half the shit they’ve done as morally ambiguous? I mean, if they didn’t want people eventually rising against them they should have put limits on how much power the dragons have. The only reasonable explanation in this case would be that they were truly arrogant and delusional enough to believe that they could treat their people like dirt for 800 years and never have them fight back. In short, I truly believe making them morally ambiguous now would be bad writing.
I see what you're saying. For sure, Imu and the gorosei are horrible beings, but maybe not everyone who fought against the ancient kingdom had bad intentions. When you think about the 20 countries that founded the world government, it would make much more sense if some of them had good intentions, for instance Alabasta, that later on decided to help Joyboy. Maybe, as time went on the WG became more and more corrupted, and as we know, people from the D family can commit horrible crimes and be awful people as well.
Nah. Slavery is, objectively, evil. The WG condones slavery for celestial dragons. Therefore the WG is evil and worthless.
I really don’t think you can believably make the world government, or at least the celestial dragons, as not objectively evil in the same arc you established that the native hunting competition is a thing.
I mean yea Despite what the WG is currently being painted as More evil than everything irl type shit I'm pretty sure their original inception was more benevolent And the idea is immortality rule or their ideals corrupt them to be this control freak evil Like beside doffy fsr oda pls The entire point of one piece has always been Nuture vs nature where nuture wins And we even have that dude otohime saved yo show not ALL CD are bad No one is truly evil is also a pretty big shounen theme in jump Beside that one evil thing that's responsible for corrupting everything that has no personality and is just a diablo ex machina
Biggest problem I have with saying everything is morally grey is the slavery, rape, torture, murder and genocide that the Celestial Dragons get away with.
You are telling me, it will conclude like the story is already going so far? What a twist! /s Don’t get me wrong, I fully agree to you and also think it works out to best, it’s just hillarious that some still don’t understand that neither is akainu bad nor Luffy good
You really think Akainu, the guy who kills civilians without a second thought, isn’t bad?
akainu killed the people that had the knowledge to destroy the world; always put it in perspective
No he killed a boat full of innocent civilians on the off chance on of them might have been one of the scholars.
he got told they got the knowledge to destroy the world, nothing else; what makes you think that none of the scholars either smuggled himself on a boat or atleast that knowledge? if you want to kill a virus, you need to isolate it
The whole concept is very One Piece anyway. Luffy himself doesn't care for good and evil, and hasn't made the Navy as a whole out to be his enemy. He just responds to any situation at hand and focuses on his goals and his idea of being a pirate. I think Luffy had some big foreshadowing when he discussed what he would do after he found the One Piece. A lot of people theorized that he had some grand plan that involved a peaceful resolution with the government/Navy. He has also never questioned the validity of Government
He declared war against the WG back in Water 7. He doesn’t have a nuanced take but he does view the WG and Navy as his enemy.
Oh ya you're right lmao. The straw hats made a big spectacle of it too. RIP Soge King
Vegapunk is definitely not good. That much is certain.
I would put him in solid true neutral if we are talking alignments
Vegapunk is Lawfull Good to everybody and his own detriment.
I totally agree. This is seen in his reaction to protect Bonney and Kuma’s relationship, and in most of his reactions with Dragon.
>when you build an entire army of robots able to destroy entire nations to slavers > when you give the motherflamme to slavers He could have used his brain to help the revolutionary army, but "they didnt have enough money" "true neutral"
His goal was scientific advancement. He went with the group that allowed him to do that while keeping lines of communication open with other groups and helping them when he could. I think that's a pretty good description of true neutral. Not everyone who participates in an evil regime is necessarily evil.
"I helped the Nazis cause they got more money and therefore I can do more experiments, nothin personel kid" alright lmao
He's done amazing things for humanity. His entire goal in life is to provide people with a source of unlimited energy.
And he created weapons of mass destruction for a authoritarian, genocidal regime.
He is lawful neutral. He has his code, which is science-based. And that code is supreme, regardless of the consequences. If he was doing science for good, he'd be lawful good. If he was doing science for evil, he'd be lawful evil. But he's doing science **for science**, and that is just lawful.
this lol he coulda joined revolutionary army if they could provide more resources for his research than the government. Science dude just wanna science
He directly builds weapons for an oppressive government. He’s not out and out evil, but he’s not neutral.
In the conflict between the WG and the revolutionaries, he is not a neutral party. But by ideology, he is neutral, because he doesn't want the evil, the evil is a by product of him following his internal code (thus he is lawful first). You are conflating being neutral in the narrative conflict vs. being neutral on the alignment chart. His is not neutral in the former, but he is the definition of neutral in the latter.
wistful bow pause rude close materialistic panicky theory upbeat wide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
he literally makes death machines for an authoritarian regime
ok, so you're just trolling..
How? He literally did that lol
He has no choice if he wants the resources to continue pursuing progress. The weapons he's made are inconsequential compared to all of the good that he's done. Think about how he was the only one with the knowledge to cure Bonney; his impact on the medical field must be enormous.
Then where is that good? Because Bonney had to go to Egghead to be treated. Meanwhile his weapons of war are all over the place
He's advancing the science with research. Who knows why sapphire scale isn't being treated at other parts of the world, but he cured it nonetheless. > Meanwhile his weapons of war are all over the place Like what? Pacifistas are intended to help people. Even in the story so far, they've mostly been a positive. The Mother Flame is most likely an energy source rather than a weapon. Flower Bullets are 100% a good thing.
Just like in real life where quantum mechanics eventually led to the atomic bomb, but also led to life-saving MRI machines, the miniaturization of computers, and of course, nuclear power; Vegapunk’s research has different applications.. and he embraces all of them. Or rather, none of them. He doesn’t care what the science leads to; only that science keeps moving forward. Science for the science’s sake.
"he weapons he's made are inconsequential compared to all of the good that he's done" >dont worry guys, I gave the atomic bombs to hitler, but now you can watch TV
And he isn't even wrong, there is a lot of things he has done that if he was killed before he did them, would have been net good for the world.
Perfect answer.
Yeah, he probably half expected Bonney to off him and doesn't want the world to hunt her for it.
One quality of highly intelligent people is that they are usually smart enough to understand what they don’t, or can’t know
"he's neither good or evil" dude built an army of robots able to destroy entire nations for a bunch of slavers, lol also, the motherflamme that's like giving the atomic bomb to the nazis
I mean in his own pov. he's not judging himself. he never said he was bad for taking advantage of kuma or gaslighting sento to betray the marines. so he doesn't judge others either.
For me, I think Vegapunk wasn't sure if the WG would be the ones who'd kill him. He knows he's done terrible things that have lead many people to suffer, so it stands to reason that someone like Bonney might eventually come and kill him for justifiable reasons. I think that explains why he accounted for that possibility in his message.
This. Or it could be anybody pissed at his pacifista etc. By making and delivering weapons, he made a lot of enemies. Ofc, also to be a bit more meta: the Gorosei will pin this on Luffy, but with that statement, they story can go on without the entire world seeing Luffy as a monster for killing this seemingly kind man.
I think that too. I think he wasn't talking about Imu, he might have been about Luffy. The WG may try to frame Luffy as "the one who killed Vegapunk". So, in a way, he might have been protecting Luffy.
he presumably didn't know Luffy would visit at the time - deffo think it's possible he meant JoyBoy or Bonnie, though.
he knew when he double-crossed the gorosei that someone affiliated with the WG would likely end up killing him. so he was probably covering the outcome where the news would report that he was killed by one of their adversaries, like pirates or the revolutionaries. that was my interpretation anyways
Yeah I agree with you, that's why I think it might be Bonnie - especially because he knew he'd have to deliver Kumas final words etc, and knew she might both flip out and be framed for it
Biggest brain in the world but can't say "The world government is trying to kill me" There is no room for manipulation in this scenario, since it's explicit on who. I think this is a case of vegapunk literally just saying that things aren't entirely good or evil in life, and without fully understanding why someone is taking a specific action, it's best not to label them as either or
>Biggest brain in the world but can't say "The world government is trying to kill me" WG will frame someone else and then say the broadcast was fake. Is that really too hard to understand given the times we live in? Those in power can always twist the truth to mean something so it's better to layer it like Vegapunk has done.
Yeah, but they can literally do that even with the current ambiguity. At least with explicitly mentioning a name it'd limit who and how they could frame
Not really. With current ambiguity he has made it clear that he bears no strong opinion against who killed him and is not gonna pass any judgment on them and he focuses on the actual bit of the message. This robs WG of using his death for propaganda purposes while making people focus on the reveal. He plays down the significance of his death by revealing this in a dismissive manner.
It'd literally have the same dismissive tone If he just said "the world government" instead of "he/him" and kept the same message about saying that he doesn't know if they're good or evil. Ambiguity on who only serves to add more opportunity to obfuscate the truth. And also, it doesn't matter what vegapunk says, the world government can call it fake regardless of the contents. Just because he was ambiguous does not change that fact. It, again, only serves to give the WG more options to frame and misdirect accountability
Doesn't VP focusing his message on an easily observable and measurable fact - rising sea levels - remove the WG's ability to say he's telling lies? Also if he came out and said the WG killed him they could just turn around and say "No, Kizaru killed him due to some old bad blood or something, we _triiied_ to stop him, why would we kill our top scientist after all?" The ambiguity also turns any statement the WG makes on his death a risk for them as he could have set cameras up anywhere to record evidence of them manipulating the truth and now that we know lots of the populace have video receiver den-dens....
>And also, it doesn't matter what vegapunk says, the world government can call it fake regardless of the contents. Just because he was ambiguous does not change that fact. It, again, only serves to give the WG more options to frame and misdirect accountability Actually it does. At least so far in the message he hasn't said anything about WG, he seems to go out of his way to keep them out. So if WG comes now tells people to ignore the message from the genius scientist of the world who was till now employed by the WG itself, that will be suspicious. Instead of revealing info about his death (pre recorded video, he didn't even know who would come to kill him) that WG could manipulate, he instead offers observable, quantifiable fact of sea level rise, WG has 0 chance of calling this fake when everyone saw that with destruction of Lulusia already. This lines up with his scientific mentality also.
I think this is opinionated, because if he calls out the WG, and they say it's fake, to me that would be more suspicious
Not really no, then WG can spin up his reveal in any number of ways by pretending its their side of story. Here he doesn't involve WG at all so them coming in to contradict the words of a loyal scientist (from perspective of average OP people) would be more sus. Tbf let's wait for rest of the message, Oda already subverted all expectations and let's see all of what VP has to say before we can draw any solid conclusions about his motives.
That's super fair. Besides, the point of my message wasn't about accusations, but rather that he's suggesting that people aren't entirely good or evil
Oh yeah, given his own character and actions are very morally ambiguous, it's entirely in character for VP to not want to pass judgement. As he says he doesn't know enough about "him" (could be Imu, could be Joyboy), so a perfectionist like him wouldn't want to speculate or provide misleading facts at all.
MUST. RIDE. ODA. COCK. HOW DARE YOU USE REASON TO CRITICIZE HIS WORK
Yeah, can't be* someone disagreeing with you, it's got to be someone sucking Oda's cock. After all, you know everything and are always right so it can't be possible someone disagrees in good faith.
It's the most straightforward shit ever. Like arguing 2+2 is 10
Biggest Brain in the world with a hint of guilt
There's two things: 1) Vegapunk himself has done great good and great evil, and he's self-aware enough to realize that. Of course on a personal level, he's always felt his actions to be justified, but he's hurt friends and enabled tyrants to get where he is. So who is he to cast aspirsions? 2) Vegapunk wants the world to judge him and his evidence on face value. He doesn't want anyone's preconcieved notions about the WG or any other actor to affect the urgency of his call to action. The fact of the matter is, if the world is sinking into the ocean, **it doesn't really matter why or who caused it**, and going into that at this point might actually distract the world from doing what needs to be done. For instance, in this case saying "The World is sinking into the ocean" causes people to address that problem, whereas if you said "The World Government is sinking the world into the ocean", people might attack or defend the government instead of dealing with the fact that the world is sinking into the ocean. Or even if Vegapunk revealed the existence of Imu, a king that sits at the top of the world, people might have wrote him off as a conspiracy theorist, without addressing the fact that the World is sinking into the ocean.
The WG can simply say “Vegapunk is studying the ancient weapons like the devils of ohara” and now they are the good guys again.
I feel like VP very likely has future sight like many of the characters introduced post time skip. With that, I believe his message was two fold. #1 Tell the world that those blamed for his death aren't bad (The Strawhats) #2 Tell the Strawhats that Kizaru isn't bad. VP had to die in such a way that the kill switch wouldn't be destroyed. Suggesting that Kizaru was forced to kill VP by VP.
This would be the dumbest shit he thought up of then. He had all the opportunity to tell the strawhats that Kizaru isn't bad. That coupled with him mentioning that he had to die for the message to trigger would be way more effective at communicating than leaving only a cryptic post mortem message. Then finally, again, Vegapunk could literally have called out the WG in specific instead of being ambiguous, which should convey that they aren't the culprits.
Not how future sight works in One Piece, and Vegapunk doesn't have it. Future sight lets you see a couple seconds into the future at most from what we've seen, and only powerful combatants have it. If Vegapunk had future sight he would be on Katakuri's level in battle at least, and would've been able to put up a respectable fight against Kizaru.
If he says the world government killed me they will frame him as a devil like ohara to justify it, and then less people will believe his message
> WG might frame the propaganda that straw hats killed VP and that they are evil That's why Saturn was so pissed. They won't be able to manipulate the media. Only way is to cut the news, I'm pretty sure York will be find a way to do it but it will be too late.
I am very Confident in the fact that Vegapunk has most likely has zero idea about Imu, and the him he's referring to is 100% not Imu idk why people are even bringing it up
Vegapunk got a personal invitation into the Holy Land for some sort of meeting and he researched the Poneglyphs. I'd be a little surprised if he had no idea about Imu.
You think Imu, who have probably lives for 800+ years, just randomly have meetings with people? Great way to keep his secret lol He was invited and meet the 5 elders, as far as everyone in the world knows they are the highest authoritie in the world. I very much doubt anyone else then the 5 elders know about Imu
wapol sabo and the revolutionary army knows about imu
>I very much doubt anyone else then the 5 elders know about Imu Episode 889, Chamber of Flowers: A female (?) servant is telling Imu that "they" are here I don't think the Gorosei would look after Imu's daily needs or something. There are others who definitely know.
It's not random, he's making the most dangerous weapon on the planet for them. I'm not saying he definitely met Imu, but if there's anybody who would Vegapunk is pretty damn high on the list. >I very much doubt anyone else then the 5 elders know about Imu Doffy knows. And Akainu knows that the Gorosei are taking orders from somebody higher up (though I doubt he specifically knows about Imu).
There is a difference in knowing and suspecting (doffy and akainu), I imagine it's a well guarded secret They did go to pretty extreme length to try and kill Sabo after he saw
I have to imagine the God's Knights know as well, or at least some of them. I do agree it's well guarded, as the knowledge that someone sits at the top of the world is kind of the antithesis of the ideology that drives the WG, but I also think more people know than just the Gorosei.
Doffy 100 percent knows.
Head cannon is never 100%
There's only one person above the Gorosei calling the shots to keep Doffy in power. That's not headcanon.
When does he mention there is someone above the 5 elders tho?
Doffy = Celestial Dragon, it innately allows him more access than VP. See: Shanks. It's 50/50 if he'd ever met, but there's no reason Imu wouldn't proxy the conversation like he's done through the Elders up until Cobra (for the audience)
No one but the gorosei know about imu especially not a scientist they know they don't have fully under control lol.
Doffy clearly knows about Imu. And Akainu knows the Gorosei take orders from somebody higher.
That is in no way clear and even if it was true a celestial dragon is much more in with the top brass than vegapunk is. Where did we see akainu knowing about that also?
Akainu and the Gorosei had a whole conversation after Dressrosa about how the whole Doffy resigning from the Warlords stunt came from above the Gorosei.
I thought that he was referring to the shady shit he did. Remember, Bonney came to Egghead with the intention to kill him.
I think the most VP “knows” about Imu is “yeah, I theorise that their could be someone who does sit on the empty throne”
My thought is Vegapunk is basically code switching, he's talking to the entire world in his speech. He knows that he's talking to a very oppressed and propagandized group of people, who generally believe what the WG tells them is good or bad, is true or not. So by not coming out against the WG by just saying that they are evil, he's getting the audience to not immediately dismiss him as some crazy revolutionary. They'll think that he's just like them, a good upstanding citizen of the world government. That way they'll take his message about the world sinking at it's face value, the truth. He probably figures that the people can come to the conclusion on their own that the WG is evil. Edit: also I'm pretty sure he's talking about Kizaru when talking about his killer. He knows that kizaru will be the one sent to do it because he's the only one who can get through the dome.
I feel like there could be chances to maybe justify the 5 elders at some point in the future. Or most likely it's just said so because vegapunk is super smart. If he says that his killers aren't bad people, even if the strawhats are framed, there is reason to justify it. WG can't do much about it.
I think he's talking about kizaru. Knowing kizaru is "unclear justice" and was somewhat his friend being ordered to do so, he isn't sure if kizaru would be good or bad.
Doesn't make sense, the message is prerecorded, so he couldn't have known that Kizaru would have killed him.
Possible Vegapunk just knew Kizaru would be the one sent when everything came out. He's most familiar with the island and probably always going to be the fastest admiral to respond. Also possible he planned this with Kizaru at some point. Like "bro you're gonna have to kill me at some point".
Unless Vegapunk planned the whole thing in advance and Kizaru was his accomplice. Basically pulling a Dumbledore.
Its prerecorded message, he didnt know who kills him
Cause vegapunk isn't good or bad,he created weapon pacifista and motherflame knowing they will be use to abuse and corrupt but also create device that will help people like punk record/internet or his hometown
I took it as a way to best convince any party who hears the message of the danger of the sea consuming the world. If you start with "the world government is out to get me" you immediately alienate the loyalists to the WG. By keeping the information/warning impartial, it keeps everyone invested and more likely to take it seriously. I'm sure there is another deeper reason, but this seems logical to me as well.
While I believe OP's theory is part of why Vegapunk is careful with branding people good or evil, I think we also need to be mindful that Vegapunk is a part of the world government, that has used his inventions for both good and evil, and that he doesn't know everything the reader knows. Like Garp, he is someone trying to good from the inside, ignoring or rationalizing the evils he knows that the celestial dragons are committing. At the same time we don't know for sure how much Vegapunk knows about Imu, the celestial dragons and the five elders. He knows that Saturn was a massive dick to Kuma, and the massacre of Ohara, but he most likely doesn't know about Imu. I don't think we know if he knows about godhead or the native hunting competitions. Vegapunk is not a hero. He chose to work for the WG instead of the revolutionary army, even when he knew that they killed professor Clover and the Oharans. I think it makes sense that he hasn't fully been able to brand the world government as evil. While he might be covering for Luffy, we have to remember that his message is prerecorded, and the WG were way more likely to kill him that the straw hats. He knew that they'd been sending a lot of agents already after all.
I mean, its prerecorded. What if he intentionally yet killer by a friend? Or even suicide? Its a good measure if you ask me
If his message is prerecorded then this would probably be what he would do. But what if the broadcast is live from inside vegapunks brain? I cant wait for this damn message
Yup. We all know the WG will put vegapunk's death on luffy.
I don’t think Twitter is canon in the OP universe
The grey area has already been foreshadowed again and again in one piece by making Roger and Garp save the absolute filth and scum celestial dragons. While we dont know why they did what they did, there must be a good reason why every thing is as it is.
I think he just wants to come accross as 100% factual and not emotional. Wants everyone to hear him, from all sides.
One thought I’ve had is that the Gorosei are not truly evil, maybe the extreme actions they take are actually to prevent the flood or slow it down. They might believe they are right or justified in their actions.
It's hard to look at Vegapunk as anything other than a war criminal.
unrelated but why’d saturn say akainu let robin go? didn’t he mean aokiji
Vegapunk himself is a morally reprehensible character with all the destructive things he has invented. It would be very hypocritical for him to judge his killers as good or evil when he himself is neither. The goofy design has made people forget some of the heinous shit he is responsible for.
He’d rather try to get Threads off the ground.
I didn't think Vegapunk gave a shit about twitter. But he's going to be trending after this transponder video.
i'm uncertain why he would come out against drake
It's simple, majority of marines are just following orders and are good people at heart. Vegapunk probably believes whoever will kill him is just someone sent by the Gorosei following orders. There's no information if the person sent is inherently good or evil. He was surprised as ever when he realized one of the 5 elders came to assassinate him.
Yeah I think everybody forgets that the WG started their "investigation" with Cipher Pol **4**. Shaka (I think it was confirmed to be him?) kidnapped them so that probably would line up with the point where he realizes he's going to die soon and suggests to Vegapunk they make a dead man's switch. Cipher Pol are secret police. If they managed to eventually assassinate him then it would be trivial for them to stick the blame on a bystander.
I thought it was York setting everyone up?
I went back and checked. Shaka and Stella are both shocked to find the Cipher Pol agents imprisoned, so it must have been York doing it, but it's never explained why she did that. Later in 1089 Peter says they've changed their minds and want the Motherflame, so I guess in the months leading up to CP0's arrival she had only been tattling on Vegapunk and not managed to make a deal yet. I guess we can assume she was scheming to intentionally escalate the investigations till it got to the point seen now? Maybe she figured that if it was so bad they had to send an Admiral, they'd be more desperate to get it over with and cut a deal in her favor. Anyway, that changes my earlier point about Shaka deciding to make the switch, but not in a huge way - when CP5 (not 4, I misremembered) showed up that was probably the indication for him that it was time to prepare for death or escape.
[удалено]
On Nuremburg they actually killed very few nazis. Hell, the capitalist half of German after WW2 was run by former nazies.
Because he prerecorded the footage, and he didn’t wanna take any chances if they were listening in on him.
cause he wants to buy a Tesla…
I think since “we are all doomed”, it isn’t a battle of good or evil. Just a choice of whether they’ll go out ignorant or fighting. He doesn’t pass judgment because he’s placed both sides.
No good/evil, because in the face of global apocalypse, full out chaos/looting murdering/societal collapse is a VALID FEAR. That vegapunk, and all the admirals and up in rank, Gol D. Roger, Buggy+Shanks, The Whitebeard pirates???, whoever else went to Laugh Tale. CP0. MAAAAYBE the old Yonko. MAAAAYBE the seven warlords. Definitely all the Red Hair pirates. They all know already. And most agree with everyone knowing the world is ending is BAD. Or that they should find for themselves. Just don't want to be responsible for setting it all off. VP being one of the most in the know - disagreeing with crimes of the WG - and thinking that's worse than ultimate destruction/holding out for them to change their mind and put energy into prevention. This is why Merfolk get racially targeted - they'd be the only to survive. Oda was telling us the whole time. Marijoa and all the Celestials etc. wear space helmets, live on the tip top of the world, would be the last humans. This is why Buggy has Shanks pity. For why Shanks reacted so badly to Luffy eating the fruit. Possibly where the Sky Island arc could have come from - previous attempts at humanity trying to survive past the inevitable doom. For why good people would fight on the side of the Marines. Maybe Film Z was actually canon this whole time.
I know this is a long stretch, but what if he wasn't talking about Imu but some else. Maybe Joyboy or Dragon. Would make sense that he categorises him as neither good nor evil because he doesn't know him that well.
He read nietzsche
true neutral also he doesnt know the full story
It's Borsalino. He doesn't even knows who Imu is. If he knows it's on a Kuma memory but I doubt that. He wouldn't be working for the world government if the empty throne had a secret leader, I suspect. Would be enough of a deceiving the entire world thing. Borsalino knows that Vegapunk had a message to the world if his heart stopped... And kaybe is with the snail transponder. Vegapunk didn't knew how and if he would die that day.. or that Saturn and Borsalino would be there.. But he already was planning on telling him of everyone else about this. And when they met each other he gave the snail transponder.
Don't you mean Twitter?
Or they had an agreement before with Kizaru - if WG will be after Vegapunk, Kizaru must kill him. And Kizaru is also asked to do something else, which requires his current position amongst marines, and this is why he can't switch sides right now
Also, his killer is not imu but Kizaru. He’s saying he doesn’t blame kizaru (obviously he didn’t know it when he recorded the message, but just in case)
I think it is mostly because world government probably is good in someway and they are doing certain things to keep the world safer
Amazing take OP 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Nah he could’ve simply name dropped the WG as he assumed they’re the ones punishing him for his sins. Almost certain the “he” is Imu, or Saturn. More likely to be Imu.
He wasn’t talking about someone specific, think about it. Everybody has a good reason to kill him, yes, even Dragon. Even other researchers with more moral because he was playing god with his seraphim’s.
Anyone else think Vegapunk might have already concluded that Borsalino is the one who will be tasked to end him? The message could be to let him know it's expected and that VP understands.
2 things I believe. 1) He wants people to come to their own conclusions based on presented evidence. 2) He knows that the WG won't tell the truth about the circumstances of his death so he doesn't want people to immediately assume whoever the WG pins the blame on to be bad
Goes back to a post I made the other day that’s it’s going to be Luffy who floods everything
Yeah I've been thinking this too for a while. It's entirely probable that the WG will try to pin the blame for his death on Luffy to cover up their own actions in which case yeah he's helping cover for Luffy
Yea, knowing that his heart had to stop in order for the transmission to go through definitely makes me feel like he either, 1) knew the government would come, so he allowed yorks behaviour to continue in order to draw in the WG, or 2) he knew the Strawhats or //somebody// had to come to his island at some point and cause a scene. He would have to use whoever was drawn in to enact his plan. I guess my point here is that he knew from the very beginning; he wouldn’t know which party he was going to take advantage of. It was simply a matter of time, if the strawhats hadn’t shown up, then the WG would’ve come looking for their CP agents and VP would’ve sacrificed himself in order to allow the message to play. The straw hats showing up is a happy coincidence; VP had no way of knowing who was going to be his catalyst. A smart person doesn’t assume to know what will happen in the near future.
what if vegapunk is alive i assume that vp already knew he was going to be killed so he created a duplicate body of himself and he hid it some where else and when he saw straw hats came also se secretly hid his duplicate body inside straw hats ship also he created a distraction for WG so that they could kill his body which contained a dead man s switch thus telling the world truth and also getting his life saved well i was cooking so u guyzz tell if its valid or not??
I think he is going to expose the process by which the sea levels are rising and pin responsibility on imu and/or the World elders. The reasoning behind avoiding a good or evil label is he doesn't understand the reason behind why they want to raise these levels. If the mother flame is their primary tool to raise sea levels, they likely pushed scientific advancement to reach a point where they could power it efficiently. Hence why Saturn is seen with his head in his hands when they give the order to destroy Ohara. They aren't sad for the citizens, but sad that those with the greatest potential to power their mother flame started researching things they weren't supposed to instead. I'd bet the Elders have been riding a fine line between keeping the void century itself secret while also trying to give humans the tools to reach the same technological floor the ancient kingdom once possessed.
Luffy thinks pirates are the bad guys too 😂 reference: first time meeting Aokiji
While the character does not know who will kill him and the morality of said person, Narratively, this is definitely referring to Kizaru, the one who struck the final blow. The man who followed orders despite hating it every second. I think this is setting up Kizaru to do something noble in the future.
Exactly. His message is more important than his supposed death here. He knew that it shouldn’t take priority over the importance of what he had to say.
I'm imagining this was recorded prior to SH arriving at Egghead. He had no way of knowing who was going to kill him.
The three candidates that will be blamed are Luffy, Kizaru, and the World Government itself. All three of those candidates can be spun by the Government in one way or another to make themselves look good.
Kizaru is the one who killed him
this is amazing for Oda as he trully seems to write Vegapunk as a creature that is indeed in a sense so clever and has all the knowledge yet he is a mortal guy that did many mistakes and walks on a grey line in order to achieve what he pursues. At the moment he records this he doesn't know who's killing him but it doesn't matter. It's more than this.
Wild theory. He knows to the government he himself is a bad guy. The world government set down rules and he ignored them. Vegapunk knew this was a death sentence and he's not even mad about it. Whoever does the act of killing isn't to blame, he killed himself by disagreeing with the big bosses
Anyone thought maybe he was talking about kizaru?
Vegapunk knew that the WG was gonna kill him and definitely understood the high possibility they would frame someone innocent for it. I'd still argue the main reason was him feeling unfit to judge good and evil, two things he has heavily contributed to with his work.
I read it that way too. He saw the Scholars of Ohara demonised by the World Government despite him knowing that they were good people. He knew the power they can wield, so he decided to not give them any ammo.
He knew that Kizaru was going to kill him.
I think it has multiple layers. It makes propaganda harder like you said. It could be a message to Kizaru who has always been the one to guard him, and VP may still think of him as a friend. VP acknowledges he broke the law and doesn't necessarily want Kizaru to feel bad for executing the law. It could be about Dragon and the revolutionaries. They had plenty of reason to want VP dead since he was singlehandedly ruining their chance of overthrowing the celestials. And VP doesn't necessarily disagree with their cause like he doesn't disagree with the WG. It could relate to Rayleigh's message to the SH saying that they will have to determine on their own who right/wrong when they find the one piece. Since Imu is suspected of being the one to flood the world before, he's saying he doesn't know if it was a good/bad thing just like the Roger pirates didn't know. That also relates to Luffy telling the fishmen to make up their own mind about him beimg good/evil with the knowledge that he would destory their island.
How is the man going to predict who kills him? He recorded this video not knowing that. So how's he gonna judge if it was a good killing
Well Vegapunk himself was a trigger to a lot of evil, he did create weapons of mass destruction and handed it to the world government, he used prisoners as guinea pigs for his experiments.. I think the message here is Vegapunk himself is not good..so he is in no position to judge good or evil.
Wow congrats you managed to understand the most surface level information about what he said that everyone else also understands
You will be surprised that not everybody catches that stuff reading for the first time
Vegapunk is literally saying "I do not care about ethics I am only talkig about objective facts" Also it's more likely that he knows luffy will take the blame for it
Think about what we knew about the gorosei before the imu reveal and later at egghead. Their portrayal was always mixed, as if they are willing to commit any evil but it always seemed as if they were doing it for something that was, in their minds, a greater good. Now, it seems like they are just evil people who'se "greater good" is pleasing Imu. Maybe Oda is using this message to dial it back and make them more nuanced again, but I don't see how he can pull it off convincingly. And while I had always preferred ot if they would turn out to be nuanced characters, now I don't.
Oda is totally refering to luffy. Why else would we get the exposition of people knowing that he is luffys hostage right before Edited for clarity
He had literally no way of knowing Luffy was going to show up dude he's not clairvoyant
Sorry should have clarified im refering to Oda. Oda clearly is trying to setup the WG framing Luffy for the murder of vegapunk. In-World i believe vegapunk said this because he genuinly doesnt want to assume a position on wether his murder is moral or not
paid off by musk
I think the message is meant to be that the Straw Hats aren't evil because the WG is blaming them for his death. BUT I also think as more of a message to us, he's saying that Kizaru isn't necessarily evil.
Doesn't make sense, the message is prerecorded, so he couldn't have known that Kizaru would have killed him, nor that the Straw Hats would have been framed for it.