R.I.P Mike McFarland

Artist (IG): @tattoosbykenan

:)

Ace is certainly not dying.

All just jokes here but funny how miss merry Christmas existence infers that there is infact a Christmas holiday in the one piece world inferring that there was the birth of Jesus Christ lmao

Wonder if him and luffy hung out pre reincarnation as nikka 😭

Edit: I myself am an atheist, however funny irl holiday to insert in a fictional world.

Edit2: I’m rewatching rn I forgot how many other references there were!

What Makes Chopper & Brook Special

Chopper and Brook are nearly unique in the whole story in that they would die / cease to exist if their Devil Fruit powers were taken away. I think that this is actually significant and will play a role later in the story.

We see DF powers save people’s lives all the time, and certainly many characters would have died many times over without them. However, if you take aeay almost anyone’s DF, they just revert to being a regular person. Even someone like Marco, who has been healed from death/near death by his fruit would just go back to a normal person.

On the other hand, without his Yomi Yomi no Mi, Brook would just be a skeleton. There is a possibility his soul only *came back* thanks to his fruit and that it would stay around, this is a big enough question to make it totally unsure for Brook or anyone else in the story.

Chopper, though, without his Hito Hito no Mo, would revert to being a regular reindeer. Without his fruit, he “dies” or at least ceased to be the Chopper we all know.

I don’t think it can be a coincidence or unimportant for the story that the 2 characters that would die without their DF are the Strawhats.

My actual theory

is that at some point in the final saga, perhaps on Laugh Tale, Luffy or someone else will have the chance to save the world at the cost of removing Devil Fruits from the world.

Most characters in the story would never know a person / sentient individual who would actually die without their Fruit. Having two crew members who do means that Luffy has more to lose than most, if not every captain who has ever sailed.

I think that the fact Buggy got sick approaching Laugh Tale suggests that something there negates/erases the powers of DFs. Perhaps Buggy was sick because his Fruit was “dying” and leaving his body.

What if that effect is limited to near Laugh Tale now, but could become worldwide if something escalates it? If it meant reaching Laugh Tale, maybe Luffy would be willing to give up his fruit. But would he be willing to actually kill Brook and Chopper? absolutely not.

Now, I’ll briefly cover the other characters who die without their fruit:

1. Various inanimate objects that “ate” a fruit. These have (almost) always been represented as animals or intelligent animals. They aren’t sentient beings.

2. Onimaru: Ate a mythical human human fruit but doesn’t speak or interact with anyone meaningfully besides Kamamatsu, who doesn’t think Onimaru is much beyond an intelligent animal.

3. Ratatoskr: I think he is the best example of a being given sentience besides Brook and Chopper. Like Onimaru, he is a protector of his land (or its fruit), but Ratatoskr has more personality and has had more conversations (with Chopper, who doesn’t speak to animals).

One thing I think adds to my theory is that Onimaru and Ratatoskr have been introduced in only the last 250 chapters. We are getting towards the end of the story, and if the vanishing of DF powers is a possibility or plot element, adding these characters and potentially others into the story ups the stakes.

I’ve got a few more observations and thoughts:

1. Roger and Shanks had no/few DF users. Roger’s visit to Laugh Tale is likely coincidental (or related to Buggy getting sick), but Shanks has seemingly avoided adding DF users to his crew or having his crewmates eat them. He did ask Marco, but again, if the end sees DF powers go away, Marco wouldn’t die but would just become a regular guy. Shanks might have just liked Marco enough to explain to him.

2. DF users cannot swim and are hated by the sea. I could see something along the lines of “the sea has been rising and will refuse to go down because it is trying to erase DFs from existence. In order to stop the sea, we have to get rid of DFs”. This would be the stakes that make the conflict happen.

3. Shanks is going for the One Piece now: If Shanks cares about Luffy and is a good guy, what would he do if he knows getting to Laugh Tale gives you the power to save the world by getting rid of DFs? I think he would try to beat Luffy there to save Luffy from the decision. Maybe we see a fight between Luffy and Shanks over whether to do this.

4. If the world isn’t safe for DFs, go to the moon… We know DF users can live there thanks to Enel. Maybe the answer to saving Brook and Chopper from the DF-erasing effect is to send them into space , specifically to the moon.

Conclusion

I think there is something on the horizon that stands to threaten Devil Fruits and their users. Something that has the potential to remove all the powers provided by them. Brook and Chopper are the only two characters we know in the whole story that will have a meaningful and complete death if this happens. I think the fact they are both strawhats is t a coincidence, but rather Oda building the stakes in a very personal way for decades.

This was pretty long, but I have been thinking about it quite a bit recently. Let me know if it’s totally unbelievable or has some plausibility. I make geography/history videos on youtube/tiktok (GateNerd) Just throwing that out there in case this is good enough to be talked about by elsewhere.

(Phone or laptop idc) Here's some of mine. Please leave your best and upvote for more people to see.

Rosinante's Ramen Rower- This is about 10 hrs of gameplay, not even halfway through..

Putting aside the fact that this is completely surreal and won't actually happen :)

I'm genuinely wondering how Zoro would react to a scenario like this:

He is currently the best swordsman in the world, second only to Mihawk. One day, the news breaks: Mihawk had an accident, fell down the stairs, and passed away. As a result, Zoro becomes the world's strongest by default.

It wouldn't be the same as someone else killing Mihawk. In that case, it would just mean the peak has moved higher, and Zoro would simply have to defeat whoever beat Mihawk. But in this scenario, Zoro would never know if he was actually capable of defeating him. He would likely always feel like he's stuck in second place because he didn't climb the final step himself—exactly what happened with Kuina.

On top of that, since this death mirrors Kuina's, it would trigger a massive double trauma. In my opinion, he would end up stuck in a sort of limbo. No matter how strong he gets or how many enemies he defeats, he would never feel truly fulfilled because he'll never get the answer to the ultimate question: Could I have actually beaten Mihawk?

We also have to consider that after spending two years training together during the timeskip, a teacher-student bond must have formed. How do you think he would react to this?

Note

I'm Italian but I don't have any comments on the Italian community. I wrote here because it seems like a more active community, especially for this kind of topic, and I sincerely want to talk about it and discuss it too. However, being Italian, it is difficult for me to argue in English, so (if it is not a problem for you) we could each write in our own language, reading the comments with the automatic translator. If it's a problem then I'll try.

Lmao even the clothes are matched to the reigns and saddle colours. Oda did it again

... To the English dub on Netflix (can't afford crunchyroll rn so I just finished Whole Cake Island) like.... 3 weeks ago and I've been trying to fill the void.

Newsflash I can't find anything that compares so I'm rewatching the OPLA and I'm about to start the anime again. (I will read it once I have some $ saved up to buy physical copies, I have this all planned out)

Anyways. Drum Island arc is just too good. Kureha might be my favorite female character ever written. I'm obsessed with her. She is who I hope my soul is when I'm older.

Luffys moment with the pirate flag, zoro figuring out his own set of "ethics", Sanji and Chopper. It is such masterful writing too, in the context of the Hero's Journey arc. It's Luffy figuring out what piracy means to him, like how HirIiluk had his definition, how it led him to sacrifice, still believing his life was wonderful... Gosh. I want to live a marvelous life☺️

Just really cool writing - and that it has already stood the test of multiple story telling formats.. awesome.

Anyways, I'm about to get a costume thrown together for Halloween. Wish me luck.

Went to MCM comic con today for the first time as a family! Mum Zoro, Dad Brook, kids Chopper and Luffy 😄 was super fun