Imu is very likely Satan. Or at least the One Piece version. Whether as THE devil himself or Model: Akuma remains to be seen.
Latest chapter seals it.
Here are the evidences:
He can grant and take powers including immortality, a "deal with the devil". The outburst of black hellfire when Saturn died. Don't be surprised when Garling becomes immortal and gains a Yokai form.
Gorosei with their demonic pentagram imagery, summoning circles and Yokai forms
No mention of Devil Fruits. How convenient.
A devil tail in his transformed state
Literally eating Sabo's fire
Sabo describing the top of the world as "Hell"
Constant mention of DEVIL fruits, GODS, Sun God Nika, reference to Genesis, Noahs Ark, The Great Flood, Adam and Eve Trees
THE BOOK OF DEVIL FRUITS IS CALLED THE "BOOK OF GENESIS"
Noah
Enemy of Joyboy who is literal Pirate Jesus.
Who would have thought the final villain would be Satan himself...
Maybe his full form is a demonic Dragon, and his hybrid form is like an actual devil. But the point reamins (Satan has also been described as a dragon).
Full Form
Hybrid, the form most of us think he will exhibit.
I agree it has to do with the Devil. Was talking with a friend and thought of how Devil Fruits are basically a deal with the devil in that you gain these powers but lose access to sea! So maybe fruits are like contracts. Makes me wonder how that can play out with Luffy and how BB can maybe "Void" contracts with his fruit.
Nice some people liked it! These are just cooked thoughts guys so dont think too much about it, its been my fun for 10+ years to theorize cooked shit for OP with friends. Each idea doesnt have to agree with the rest. On that note, heres more:
1)lili is eva from the bible, she denied the devil and messed with his plan
2) theres a man vs god theme with the eve tree in mariejois and its roots in fishman island and adam trees growing in other islands away from the holy land
3) maybe the man marked by flames is an elder. this one might be a bit too cooked but bear with me. i think the 4rth poneglyph is in pocession of an elder. shanks picked up this info when visiting them and thats why he was ready to search for the one piece, since he knew he could get the other 3 from kid/law/luffy on way or another. i think an elder traitor makes sense as a long term traitor, a martyr, an old friend of joyboy.
4)i think theres 3 more elders aka ancient weapons aka joyboy friends. all 3 found a way to transcend time. one through fishmen, one through pluto, and one through poneglyphs
5) i do think its gaiocentric vs heliocentric solar system type stuff
6) the original motherflame was in fishman island, in the giant bubble. that was the bountiful tree's energy source
7) the 4 road poneglyphs might be the north/south/east/west marking the X for raftel, which might be below reverse mountain, i know if i wanted to hide sth and i had sea powers, i could hide deep in there. kind of how wano is an empty volcano hiding pluto
Ignoring the theory of BB and his brothers, how would BB get multiple contracts? The second contract (quake-quake fruit) you lose nothing and gain the earthqueake power, would be kinda broken.
It’s probably a soul for a fruit kind of deal. Losing the ability to swim may just be a side effect of corrupting your soul. I think there’s a line somewhere about devil fruit users not being able to swim because Mother Nature is rejecting them.
Under the blanket, he was in his own place where it happened. No one knows how the deal was made, no one else was in the room when it happened. Blackbeard confirmed to be Alexander Hamilton?
I still strongly believe that BB's fruit is special. It deactivates devil fruits and is actually logia. I believe he needed the curtain during marineford to specifically turn fully into darkness (as he cannot be full darkness if exposed to any kind of light, similar to how crocodile worked with water), then as an embodiment of complete darkness under the sheet, he was able to consume the devil fruit ability from within whitebeard while also negating the effect of eating a second devil fruit. I believe Teach always knew this was possible with the darkness fruit and that's why he wanted it. Because it can allow him to eat multiple devil fruits so long as he's completely covered by darkness.
Maybe not, maybe it just requires being active while "consuming" the fruit. Like, he ate it, then kaboom should happen, BB disables it, no kaboom, he's in the clear. It would be like BB to gamble on this, but if this theory is true it would explain Oda setting up that BB's fruit is a logia, the explanation of two fruits causing you to explode, and the thing about Crocodile being weakened by water thus disabling his logia form, all three of these details would become foreshadowing.
Maybe… but if it’s truly a Logia… and we are comparing things to Crocodile/water. Why would BB be able to use his fruit by any measure, in the daylight? Even firelight technically would nullify his power if it touches him then. At least if we are going by previously established precedent. Unless Oda gives us some odd logic and says the opposite of darkness isn’t light. Like I’m not arguing that the kaboom couldn’t be a time limited event post-consumption. That’s actually a very reasonable argument, kind of like the risk of the explosion has a shelf-life. Until we get the actual explanation, it’s going to be a very curious topic to ponder.
Presumably the usual stipulation is that having two devil fruits kills you and Blackbeard has cheated this somehow with some cunning method that will bite him in the ass later.
I guess? If he can somehow have two there's no reason to think he couldn't somehow have three, but we have zero idea what Blackbeard has done or how what he did works because it hasn't been shown or explained yet, so it's all guesswork right now.
The theory ha smany variants but the general idea is that Black Beard has 2 brothers, they're triplets pretty similar, the idea comes from BB jolly roger has 3 skulls and the real story of black beard talks that he had brothers.
So the theory says that One of the brothers has some type of paramecia fruit that allows them to join in one body, similar the suit fruit we saw in dressrossa
, the other brother has the quake-quake and the other has the yami-yami(dark-dark).
This explained until now how did he live without sleeping and why he didn't use the 2 fruits at the same time... but since the BB vs Law we saw that he used both at the same time.
It's not just Faust, though, there are a couple of literary works that parallel the latest chapter, as well. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the one that came to my mind first.
Faustian bargain/Deal with the devil etc. Interestingly enough, what people usually want in exchange of their souls usually is Wealth, Fame, or Power. Yeah. Just like the intro.
What if the existence of devil fruits is because of imu making a mistake and offering someone a contract thats actually benefitial to his enemies(maybe thats what joyboy did before he lost, which resulted in the creation of devil fruits).
Instead of being a contract it may also be the case that Imu is the sea, and somehow ate the devil fruit (which we've seen with inanimate objects). This is why the goal is to take over all the land and increase the sea, why others are powerless in the sea, etc.
For your 1), according to the biblical mythology, before Eve, God created Lilith as a companion for Adam, but she was too self dependent and didn’t need him. It’s who Lilith Fair was named for and Lilith from Evangelion. Lili would most likely be her.
Fruits aren't the contracts. They are the souls that made deals with imu to carry on their desires. Each fruit has a will of its own and seeks a user that can achieve their will. Luffys fruit is special because the fruit is housed by a spirit that did it for pure reasons or something. Luffy has a white aura with his awakening where as everyone else has been black except Yamato who is a guardian spirit so again, pure reasons for the fruit. It could be that the white fruits are his early mistakes he had to make in order to take power or something, idk. But the white fruits are significant threats to Imu.
I was thinking whether or not BB's Power could be like an "Antimatter" to devil fruit Powers.
Like the idea that the Darkness Fruit was created together with the other devil druits and if every fruit was with BB, all fruits would be gone as the "Matter" and "Antimatter" connected.
But then the whole stealing DF doesnt make sense unless theres another Whitebeard fruit that would cancel out Blackbeards "Anti"-Copy lol
If that was the case, couldn't Imu do to any Devil Fruit user what he did to Saturn and instantly kill Luffy, Blackbeard and all other threats who have a Devil Fruit? It doesn't make sense in this regard, so I don't think the Devil Fruits are a by-product of Imu's powers.
My good sir… my fine sir… he turns the corner. Sees 5 elders with gats locked and loaded. Then sees a tall ominous black figure sitting on the empty thrown throw a devil rail through Cobra… what more do you want!!!!
It seems from this panel that Imu was also damaged by the robot's haki. Could this be another reason Imu punished Saturn because, for the first time in a long while, Imu felt pain due to Saturn's failure?
We know strong enough haki can nullify the abilities of DF's and the Elders were literally teleported back to Mariejois due to the intensity of Joyboy's haki. Even Imu felt it.
And in this chapter we saw that Saturn's powers being taken away by Imu.
So either Imu has a DF power which allows them to grant abilities to others hence why Jpyboy's haki affected them as it affected the Elders or some other source of power thats also suspectible to haki.
I think the main reason he punished Saturn because he was the responsable for ordering the robot not to be scrapped 200 years ago, and apparently he kept it a secret. All for the scientific value.
After rereading the second half of Egghead last night I'm inclined to agree and nice catch because it's easily missed due to everything happening in this arc.
When Emeth makes landfall against the Elders; Mars points out that it's the same robot from ~200 years ago implying that he and the other 3 were likely uninformed of Saturn's methods in advancing the technology of the world the last couple centuries.
Which from a certain perspective makes him no less different than York; considering it was his call with Emeth that led to their loss.
I was thinking that Imu's reaction was more of a girl crushing on someone, Imu is most likely a girl that also loved Joyboy, but he chose Vivi's ancestor over her. This panel looks like someone in love getting wind that their crush is back in town
Another interesting point could be the fact that luffy is just like old cartoons in his gear 5th form,meaning that Imu could fight against him in a similar way to stereotypical old devils in cartoons even his supposed tail it’s just like those characters.
kinda want the fight to be reversed from this, Luffy in a cartoon form vs Imu with the drawing style of the likes of Boichi, Murata, Miura and etc… lol
Chapter 1085 is seriously one of my favourite chapters of all time, easily top 5, such a crazy display of the world government, seeing the silhouette forms of the Gorosei was crazy.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Sabo as a whole in the story but he gained heaps of my respect in this chapter, so badass.
Not sure if im overthinking but most of these are Artur's finding and facts based on translation and theorizing. Even one of the pic was from his vid thumbnail i hope you would at least credit the man too. He has a really good youtube channel and not the kind of clickbait most theorytubers would do.
Yeah, all of these are already old news, and people have been talking about it for months now. I've made a couple of posts about it as well: Biblically Accurate One Piece
It looks like OP took the bullet points, and mashed them all together.
Thats true. I just don't want artur's and other good theorist's hardwork be passed over by a diluted version of the theory. I do hope future theorist do take the time and effort to check first then just credit them via a mention with or without source. It would make us a better community to lift each other up.
To keep going with this, Imu was one of Joy's boys' companions. He was in love with Joy boys lover, Vivis ancestor. He, in some way may have created devil fruits to defeat Joy boy. Joy boy when created the sun God devil fruit after that.
If imu is the devil, the devil fruit may be his creation.
And to add to imu being the creator of the devil fruits, maybe he wants the rising sea levels to kill off All the devil fruit users, so the fruits and the powers come back to him aka to the highest point of the World. He could then use the Power of blackbeard to collect the powers of the fruits for himself.
Absolutely, and at the end of one piece, all the current devil fruit users will lose their powers and will be able to bathe in the sea…thus fulfilling the dream of Luffy to have a giant pool party at planet scale !
Defeating will will defeat gorosei and destroy the devil fruits at the same time
Agree heavy - I think that legit, magic in One Piece is real and not just fantasy magic, I mean something you can legit study / learn.
Wano being isolationist and referring to DF as Magic feels like too big of a coincidence when you include stuff like Miss Goldenweeks ( not DF ability ) paintings and sigils affecting people when they touch or see them based on color, the summoning circles, the devil implications, Brook being summoned by a religious sect, etc.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the science Weatheria practices is just legit actual Weather Wizards
Something that doesn't get mentioned often is there's a star pattern on the wall of the Gorosei's room that matches the summoning circle the villagers were using in Brook's timeskip story.
So “devil” fruits are actually “divine” fruits that the government purposely mislabel. The reason they sink to the ocean if you eat one is because they yearn to go to the sacred land which is submerged in ocean. Too far fetched IMO.
if anything the flower scenes make the satan thing more likely. in the bible satan is described as extremely beautiful and very christlike. that's what makes him so scary, his false holy nature and outward similarity to what is good
Great post, I agree with everything you said. At this point it would be weirder if Imu wasn't the devil, also if Sengoku has the Buddha fruit why shouldn't the Satan fruit exist? Or maybe he's the actual origin of all Devil fruits.
I really like the theory that when Imu transforms he will look like the Devil from Cuphead and would have several transformations just like the one in the game.
He would basically be the evil version of Nika.
Interesting. I like the idea that Imu is also connected to Umi given the inversion of the letters and its appearance being similar to some depictions of Umi as just a black figure with eyes. It would create a nice trick from the manga medium that Imu is not hidden by silhouette but is just a being of darkness and their design isn’t hidden at all.
Actually, the book of Genesis tells the story of foundation of the World Goverment, the book of akumas no mi are called "the encyclopedia of Devil fruits"
Isn't most of the stuffs you talked about here was already mentioned in detail in 'Artur- The library of ohara's ' video? Wouldn't hurt to atleast give him credits while extending your own thoughts on it!
So in fiction & mythology there are 3 candidates who can grant immortality.
It’s bestowed upon a person by a diety or god - see the Greek myth Ganymede.
Aliens - 1963 novel Way Station.
Deal with a Devil.
This is a bit of a hit & miss but I actually think Lunarians are a result of Imu’s species & Humans interbreeding hundreds of years before the void century.
Perhaps Imu is the last of his kind and is some kind of moon devil alien being.
So we deduce human features from lunarians and see what we have left.
The the skin colour is mixed race, take the predominantly white population of one piece away & you would end up with darker skin maybe jet black skin on Imu?
Black wings - nothing holy about that.
It’s also mentioned that King is “believed” to be the last survivor of the race in wano. (Vegapunk then hinted that there was a few left).
Introducing seraphim’s!!! Coming to a scientists lab near you - more attention on lunarians.
Tall height genetics? Or is that just King? - Imu do be lanky.
The world government hunt Lunarians & put huge bounties on them? Why are they so concerned with getting rid of them if they already have the material to create seraphim’s? To cover the traits they share with Imu thus making him even more unknown to the world.
Fire creating & manipulation with no fruit. Sounds like hell & of course there’s the fight with Zoro where he actually went to hell and back.
Queen stated: He can’t beat King...!! That guy’s a remnant of the extinct lunarian tribe!! A monster that can survive in any natural environment. In the distant past, “gods”... That’s what they were called.
Imu was a Lunarians God who thought he was as powerful as the King of Lunarians on the moon and so was cast down to earth to live with mortals.
Final take: I think Lunarians are half god, half human descendants & the original gods got rid of Imu for being a problem. Imu then made life miserable for everyone in the one piece world which resulted in everyone wishing for liberation/saviour/joyboy who Imu knows to be a threat & believes is dead. (Explains the shriek after the haki) & thus creating devilfruits through manifestations of dreams. Imu was also more concerned about joyboy escaping egghead than the actual order/mission he gave to Saturn. Killed Saturn in a rage for letting joyboy escape not for failing the mission because technically he didn’t.
Joyboy sacrificed himself to lock Imu in the confines on Pangea castle perhaps? And that’s where the hatred stems from. The fact that even though Imu controls the world, he/she is the biggest prisoner / has the least freedom to go anywhere.
Also starting to think the one piece is needed to defeat Imu, the one piece is the D. Clans ancient weapon & the D clan are the sworn enemy of the gods (celestials & nobles) who are unknowingly under Imu.
Let me know what you think, feel free to add/criticise :) I’ll reply later going to stroke some trees & touch some grass. 😂
Oh and by the way, I absolutely love this theory of Imu being the Devil the parallel between Luffy being a D. Devil boy & yet has the powers of the Sun god & Imu being an immortal overpowered god who’s been cast out for wavering from divine duties.
Well, this is great theory, but I also noticed few interesting facts.
Nero can be related to Antichrist. Some theologians pointed the number 666 to Nero, who was the first emperor to have persecuted Christians. Antichrist have dragon/serpent form in biblical apocalypse (and also whole One Piece final war can be a big reference to biblical apocalypse, but this theory is too long, to describe here)
Sumerian gods have very interesting "dingir" determinative. Conventionally transliterated as a superscript ⟨d⟩, e.g. d Inanna.
I don't like this theory. By that I mean that I don't like that the big bad is a Devil allegory or direct parallel, which feels rather hammered in, not that the theory is unlikely cause that's almost definitely what Oda seems to be going for.
The D clan could stand for Deva or Dios, both meaning god. The D clan from the ancient kingdom were probably descendants of Nika and the other gods mentioned in skypeia.
The whole "god's natural enemy" thing was propaganda spread by imu (the devil pretending to be a god) after joy boy's defeat to demonize them
I don't think Imu is the literal devil, but maybe a literal Devil df. The powers that they seem to have are definitely unique and stronger than any regular df we've seen, but Imu doesn't seem to control all the devil fruits, otherwise the WG wouldn't have been struggling to capture the Nika fruit for so long. It might have been like an Apple of Eden scenario where Imu ate the first and most powerful fruit from the "Garden", and the result was that the existence of devil fruits was unleashed on the world as a whole. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how the whole "divinity" aspect of the OP world develops as we approach the end. Because there's VegaPunk's theory theat the fruits come from wishes of humans granted by the goddess of the sea, whether devil fruits actually originate from a devil, Nika the sun god, and other stuff. Hopefully it doesn't go Naruto style in that the gods are aliens or some weird thing like that.
Imu could have possibly gotten the immortality surgery from a previous user of the Op-op fruit, and one of the drawbacks could be that the person that gets immortality can’t be in the sun
At this point one of the plot twists I am expecting is that this is actually alternate or future Earth and it has been radically changed by Imu over time.
Turning the world upside down had been a long lasting wish/goal for Luffy and other big figures.
"Hell" is on top of the world which is wrong and the reason for all the negativity in the world under Hell's reign. Turning it upside down would mean plunging Hell back into the bottom of the world, setting things right.
I don't think Oda is taking everything from Christian folklore.
It's more likely that Oda is grabbing from the Japanese folklore of the Umibozu for Imu. The priest of the sea is said to sink ships for fun, and giving him an offering of an empty barrel confuses him long enough to escape.
In the Shizuoka prefecture in Japan the Umibozu is describe to have long silky black hair hiding the eyes (describes Imu). They can shapeshift to walk amongst humans and enjoy swimming with them (describes Imu). Which is why some say that they destroy the boats to force the sailors to swim with them and don't mean to drown them (describes Imu's plan to sink the islands).
In Uwajima it is said that people who see the Umibozu are blessed with longevity (describes the gorosei).
Then here is a similarity to the Revelations of John: In one of the folk stories The Umibozu are said to be sea dragons that have had their wings clipped.
But they're more so considered priests/monks who have died at sea or drowned and can't rest their spirits.
Also remember that in Japan Akuma or the devil is said to have fiery flames coming out of the head and eyes which describes Gear 5.
In Ohara, the devil fruit tree was talked about and likely sits atop Marijoa in Imu's garden. So I would say the creation of devil fruits is likely by Imu giving humanity their desires in a pact meant to drown them.
The devil fruit is said to be reincarnated sea devils, so it'd make sense that Imu is the source for all devil fruits and that Nika is Satan reincarnated. Also that Luffy's desire is to make all people become pirates.
Imu's red eyes give it validity, the mother flame, the devil fruits that causes the users to sink. But I don't think Imu hands out the devil fruits himself and Vegapunk already theorised how they come to existence and how they behave. Still, OP is cooking .
It's a small idea but if he were a dragon, it's possible Garling would become a vampire yokai.
Dracula as a name means, "son of the dragon" and Satan himself is connected to serpents. Especially with Garling's moon theme, red hair and serving God (as vlad Tepish, the 'original Dracula' was a crussader in the holy wars).
Devil fruit is the name as pirates. Imu did probably not make ”devil fruits”. So I think Imu is not satan. More like religious alien who hate the world.
I had commented this somewhere else already. But I personally believe he is the very first person to create/manifest devil fruit Powers and he taught others how to manifest those powers, hence becoming the devil sharing his fruits with the world.
And his devil power is literally that of the devil like in your theory
Actually makes sense. That why we have ‘devils’ fruit aswell. Maybe he is the creator of these fruits who he defeated and finally defeated the sun god to store them as fruits.
This is where we get connection to King, where we get to know that gods live in top once. IMU defeated them.
It’s likely that defeating imu will fulfill luffy’s dream
So it is not the elder being immortal and stuff, they are conserved to stay alive and as Imu ended the connection; Saturn got old in a rush and went to „dust“ or skeleton (for the optics).
It's interesting that Imu's room and the empty thrown at are the very top of the Palace (good picture in OP's post) atop the red line. Imu literally lives further from the sea than everyone else on the surface. A devil fruit after all makes the sea your enemy.
Just a theory but is that another reason why Robin has such a high bounty? I get that she's the only one who can read poneglyphs but her fruit also has this demonic version. Is it some connection as well cause when I first saw the demonic form of Robin I thought it made no sense.
This is what excites me most about Garling joining the elders other than that dope entrance he made. It gives Oda the opportunity to show Imu grant Garling his yokai form and revealing a little bit more about that power. Assuming it hasn't happened already off screen which I hope isn't the case but I could see happening.
Now Nika is actually God but duebto either oda dont wanted to put the translator, Toei and the comunity (since he did know One Piece Is international now) into am heresy upsidedown situation likely he went with the whole Nika the good sub with blend perfect with also another international character Sun WukongSon Goku Ra
Good theory, but I still think IMU's devil fruit is literally a celestial dragon zoan. Even if it's a more demonic form of dragon, I think it makes sense that he named it celestial
Wait. He is the devil. He can grant people demon powers. They call the things people eat to get powers devil fruits.... What if Imu made all the devil fruits and he can just make whatever kind of devil fruit he wants. Maybe he creates them subconsciously if he just thinks about something too much because it makes no sense for him to make that fruit. he heard all these stories about Nika and accidentally makes the one fruit that can defeat him.
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u/Tsourtsou_Senpai Sep 07 '24 edited Sep 07 '24
I agree it has to do with the Devil. Was talking with a friend and thought of how Devil Fruits are basically a deal with the devil in that you gain these powers but lose access to sea! So maybe fruits are like contracts. Makes me wonder how that can play out with Luffy and how BB can maybe "Void" contracts with his fruit.
Nice some people liked it! These are just cooked thoughts guys so dont think too much about it, its been my fun for 10+ years to theorize cooked shit for OP with friends. Each idea doesnt have to agree with the rest. On that note, heres more:
1)lili is eva from the bible, she denied the devil and messed with his plan
2) theres a man vs god theme with the eve tree in mariejois and its roots in fishman island and adam trees growing in other islands away from the holy land
3) maybe the man marked by flames is an elder. this one might be a bit too cooked but bear with me. i think the 4rth poneglyph is in pocession of an elder. shanks picked up this info when visiting them and thats why he was ready to search for the one piece, since he knew he could get the other 3 from kid/law/luffy on way or another. i think an elder traitor makes sense as a long term traitor, a martyr, an old friend of joyboy.
4)i think theres 3 more elders aka ancient weapons aka joyboy friends. all 3 found a way to transcend time. one through fishmen, one through pluto, and one through poneglyphs
5) i do think its gaiocentric vs heliocentric solar system type stuff
6) the original motherflame was in fishman island, in the giant bubble. that was the bountiful tree's energy source
7) the 4 road poneglyphs might be the north/south/east/west marking the X for raftel, which might be below reverse mountain, i know if i wanted to hide sth and i had sea powers, i could hide deep in there. kind of how wano is an empty volcano hiding pluto