第186回：What’s New is Old and What’s Old is New Again

Wait a second… Has it happened?!?! Is a grown human woman in ONE PIECE expressing interest in…robotics?!

I was laughing in tears as I saw Revolutionary Deputy Commander Ahiru making sound effects for her robotic arm…canon? While I can’t be certain yet, I think this infers that while her arm is a fully-functional weapon, the fact that she appears to be manually manipulating the arm’s position *and* making sounds for it (while it clearly does make separate and different sounds) this means that she’s totally into the cyborg/mecha mindset of the boys of the Strawhat Crew! I wonder if Franky could cook up a fully-functioning arm for her one day!

Noooo! Not T Bone!!! I mean…if he’s really gone, that makes me super sad and I hope that Buggy gets his comeuppance but I doubt that will happen because I have reason to believe T Bone is alive and well! Given his penchant for good deeds, I believe that T Bone felt he could perform a good deed, saving the impoverished family, by faking his own death at the man’s hands and allowing them to reap the reward. This falls perfectly in line with his over-the-top dedication to his white knight persona and also explains why such a diminutive man was ‘able’ to best a warrior with the epithet ‘Ship-cutter’!

The symbol of the Celestial Dragons and their mark of domination resembles a dragon claw and while I do think dragons (or dragon-themed Ancient weapons) may play a role in the story, I wonder if the so-called ‘Hoof of the Soaring Dragon’ is a desecration of an older image. For example, if we transpose the triangles of the symbol we’ll end up with…

A symbol that looks stunningly similar to the sun, a symbol we’ve seen used throughout the series albeit slightly different. Alabasta, Skypiea, and Wano have all used symbols of the sun surrounded by circles.

Did Wano and Alabasta pay tribute to the original pointed sun symbol and avoid upsetting the World Government by substituting circles for triangles? It would essentially be a hidden symbol of protest.

Skypiea certainly wouldn’t have had a reason to hide the nature of the symbol but perhaps that form was taught to them by the Shandians!

If this turns out to be even partially true, it’s a fitting twist of fate for the Fishmen Pirates who replaced the symbol of the claw with their own variation of a symbol for the sun, essentially returning the symbol to its roots!