第176回：An All-You-Can-Eat Feast for Friends

Kaido’s ultimate attack, Rising Dragon: Flame Bagua once again makes use of the term ‘bagua’ which is a set of eight symbols representing the interconnected aspects of nature, life, and existence. Defining the bagua is no easy task as it has been utilized for many ideas and schools of thought for everything from fortune-telling to martial arts.

Perhaps the simplest way to think of it, the relationship of and between ‘all things’. Yes, even in Japanese, the notion of ‘all things’, the very same term Rayleigh used when he spoke of ‘all things’ are inherently part of the bagua and what it represents.

Kaido may have strived to achieve a level of supremacy that allowed him to become an embodiment of ‘all things’. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to think this is precisely why he clearly has the kanji for ‘eight’ plastered on his jolly roger.

The same eight used in the Japanese term 八卦 or ‘hakke’ which is, in fact, the Japanese word for bagua.

“A world where my friends can eat as much food as they want!!”

There’s a lot behind this declaration. Part of it ties a bow on Luffy’s adventure in Wano but part of it also seems to extend…far…beyond the reaches of what Luffy experienced in Wano.

If we turn back the clock roughly three years in real time to when Luffy first arrived in Wano, we’ll see that his first real impression of Kaido’s negative influence on the land was Tama’s inability to enjoy a simple bowl of rice. While Luffy’s comprehension skills often leave much to desire, what Tama gave up in that bowl of rice wasn’t lost on Luffy when he learned the story behind what a bowl of rice actually means to people living outside the capital.

Luffy’s strong connection to food is often played for laughs but his connection to Rebecca from Dressrosa was based on a simple meal; a connection so strong that he forgave her even after she tried to kill him, all because of a simple lunchbox.


In short, Luffy’s connection to food and friends is nearly inseparable and goes back all the way to Chapter 1 in Makino’s bar. It will be interesting to see how Luffy intends to make a world where his friends can eat their full!

Interesting to consider that the pirate concept of One Piece was conceived of thanks in part to Vicky the Viking. With the above topic in mind, there’s something particularly interesting about ‘vikings’ in Japanese. The Japanese loanword for ‘all-you-can-eat buffet’ is ‘baikingu’, literally ‘viking’. Vikings are commonly perceived of as early pirates so in a manner of speaking, one could say that a ‘pirate’ is a roundabout way of saying an all-you-can-eat feast!