Imu is A MONSTER! With powers unlike we’ve ever seen, but we now have some INSANE, SHOCKING hints at the true powers that revealed he might be an ancient dark god or even the original devil! But that's not all because for the first time EVER one of the Gorosei is dead.
Like what? ? ?
No one expected that and it literally changes EVERYTHING for the future of the story. And we’ll get into all that and more in just a few minutes, but first let’s bring this back to the world’s number one most mysterious character, Imu. Because in chapter one thousand one hundred and twenty five this shady ruler straight up MURDERED Saint Saturn.
And it happened in the most terrifying way imaginable with Saturn’s body literally drying up like a mummy with his skin literally being burned to ash by these evil looking black flames. Which I mean, just wow. What a horrifying scene, but if we actually break this down, there are some clues here that reveal a ton about Imu’s true powers.
Now let’s analyze what we know so far. First, we have suspected that Imu and the Gorosei are actually super old, possibly as old as the Void Century, and this chapter surprisingly confirmed that Saturn is over two hundred years old with this short flashback right here. Which is a crazy thing to just randomly drop in the chapter.
Oda is out here causally dropping lore like Geje bringing back dead characters in JJK. Ouch, too soon? Alright, moving on.
But with this new information, we can reasonably assume that Imu and the other Gorosei have been alive ever since the end of the Void Century eight hundred years ago. So check off that Imu is immortal or at least has eternal youth. Then we the next major bit of info we got about him was the major reveal back in chapter one thousand eighty five where we first saw Imu and the other Gorosei transform into their beast like forms.
And while Imu’s true transformation has yet to be fully revealed, we now know that the Gorosei were indeed giant beasts with mythical powers. So we can assume that Imu will have a similar transformation, just with way, way more power than any of their five subordinates. But the most shocking reveal of his powers came in this chapter where Imu finally showed their most terrifying ability yet!
Because out of nowhere Imu straight up melted the former warrior god of science with these black flames that literally sucked the life out of Saturn. So just, wow! Clearly this is a mind-blowing display of power, but it also reveals that Imu seems to have absolute control over the Gorosei.
And after watching Saturn literally wither away as if his life span were drained from his body, I have to say that I think it is pretty clear that Imu is the one who gave the other Gorosei their Eternal Youth. I mean, if he can take it away so easily then it makes sense that he was the one who gave them the power of long life in the first place. But that still leaves us with the most important question: What is imu’s power?
Is it a devil fruit? Or some other divine ability? Well, let’s imagine that it is a devil fruit.
Then it would clearly be the most busted, broken devil fruit power we’ve ever seen. I mean he seems to be able to summon the Gorosei across incredible distances, take and give eternal youth, and send out these horrible black flames. And that’s not even considering his own beast transformation that we have yet to fully see.
And all that adds up to a devil fruit power unlike ANYTHING we’ve ever seen! It would have to be a god-tier devil fruit at least. And some ideas we’ve had in the past are things like a Dark Moon God fruit or a Sea God devil fruit.
And that last one makes sense with Imu’s naming scheme since Imu in reverse is Umi which means Sea in Japanese. Another option to consider is that maybe Imu ate the Original Devil fruit. Like the very first one that came before all the others.
Which could explain why their powers are so absurdly broken. However, there is some strong evidence that Imu’s powers are not related to devil fruits at all. And honestly, I’m starting to believe in this idea each time we see their powers.
The main piece of evidence to support this is this panel right here. Here we see the transformed Warcury leaping out over the water with absolutely no chance of avoiding the water, which is something that basically no devil fruit user would ever do. This single fact strongly points to the idea that the Gorosei’s and Imu’s powers are not devil fruit abilities at all, but something far, far darker.
Just for example, let me flip this around for a moment and talk about the mythical Sun God Nika. Now we don’t know a whole lot about this legendary figure, but their powers have been passed down at least twice to both the original Joy Boy and now to Luffy. But there is nothing saying that the original Nika powers came from a devil fruit at all.
It could just have been that Nika’s abilities were some god like natural abilities. So to bring this back to Imu, who is to say that their powers can’t be similarly god like without being tied to a devil fruit? Which opens the possibility that maybe Imu is an actual devil himself or he could have awakened a true dark power back in the Void Century.
And we’ll dive deeper into this dark history a bit later on, but now that we’ve discussed Imu’s potential abilities, it’s time to figure out exactly who this mysterious figure is. Who is he? Or she?
Well, actually it's pretty simple. Imu is obviously Nobara from JJK, and that’s because she can't die just like Imu and… Okay, okay I’ll stop. I promise.
Now the possibilities for Imu’s true identity are honestly pretty limited, but there are some truly fascinating theories out there that might actually shock you. First, though let’s get the easy options out of the way. It is technically possible that we’ve actually seen Imu before in the story and just never realized it.
Maybe as a background character or something. And I only mention this as an option because it would be just like Oda to randomly show Imu in the past. Honestly though, I can’t think of a single character who would make sense here, so let’s move on to Imu’s true identity being Nefertari D.
Lili. And this might come as a bit of a shock, but there is some pretty striking evidence, so let’s just lay it all out. First, put on your Egyptian lore hats here because the name Im has many ties to Egyptian mythology.
To start, there is an actual Egyptian god who shares a name with Im, and this god is one of the original gods of creation in ancient Egypt. To take it one step further, their name means "hidden one" in hieroglyphics, which completely fits with Imu’s position as the hidden ruler of the world. Now you might be asking, how does this connect to Lili?
Well, we know Lili was the ruler of Alabasta, which is the kingdom based on ancient Egypt. But that’s not all because remember the Empty throne and the swords the twenty kings placed in front of it to symbolize peace? Well, there are actually only nineteen swords here, and the missing one is of course Lili’s who refused to join the other rulers in Mary Geoise.
At least that’s what we are supposed to think, but we might actually already know where Lili’s sword is. In fact, we can most likely see it here in Imu’s garden. Which is just another piece of evidence that Imu is indeed Lili.
However, there are some pretty strong counter points to this theory though, such as Imu saying that Lili made a grave mistake. Which is a bit weird if they are talking about themselves in the third person, so this theory has a strong chance of being wrong after all. Which just leaves the idea that Imu is just their own person and not secretly anyone else that we’ve heard about.
That means they likely came all the way from the Void Century. And you might have forgotten by now, but we do know that Imu’s family name is Nerona, which was one of the original twenty families who created the world government. So it's possible he was just a normal dude who was part of a great family back at that time.
But that leaves the massive question of what role did they play in the Void Century? Were they the mastermind behind the Twenty Kingdoms defeating the Ancient Kingdom? Did they betray Joy Boy?
Or perhaps did they come from even deeper in the distant past? These are the greatest remaining questions about Imu, so let’s start with what we know for sure. Clearly, Imu has some PTSD about Joy Boy because of something that happened in the past.
They immediately recognized Joy Boy’s haki and had the most intense reaction we’ve ever seen from them. So there is definitely some connection there. And I’ve speculated in the past that Imu was actually a companion or brother to Joy Boy because of clues left in the pirate song Bink’s Sake.
So this reaction to Joy Boy could be because Imu was once Joy Boy’s friend but later betrayed the legendary pirate. So this reaction Imu had to Joy Boy's haki could have been some intense guilt that they felt here. On the other hand, Joy Boy could have given Imu a massive beatdown in the past and now the secret ruler is afraid of that happening once again.
But even with a connection to Joy Boy, that doesn’t explain how Imu came to rule the group that became the world government. So just to speculate for a bit here, if I had to guess I would imagine that Imu was just a regular person from the Void Century who gained some special power. It could even have been from while traveling with Joy Boy.
Because just like it seems that their group found the ancient weapons, maybe Imu found a mysterious power. Perhaps it was the OG devil fruit like we discussed earlier or an even darker power I’ll discuss next. But whatever it was, I’d imagine that this power was a reason Imu could have betrayed Joy Boy.
Perhaps they all discovered this power, but Joy Boy refused to use it, so Imu stole it for himself. That narrative fits nicely with Joy Boy having to use the destructive ancient weapons to stop Imu before ultimately deciding it wasn’t worth the cost. However, that is all just speculation based on the few clues that we know, so before we move on to the insanity that is Figarland Garling in this chapter, let’s jump even further back into history.
Because we already mentioned that maybe Imu is an immortal god like figure similar to Nika, but I didn’t lay out all the evidence for this theory. Because in case you didn’t know there are differences in the world Ancient when describing the Ancient Weapons and the Ancient Kingdom. In reality, the Ancient Kingdom is more accurately translated as the “Great Kingdom” while the Ancient weapons do actually mean that they are ancient.
This leads us to speculate that the ancient weapons have been around far, far longer than the Ancient Kingdom. And since Imu possesses an Ancient weapon it would make sense that they have owned it since way back in time. So just for a minute let’s run with this idea that Imu is an ancient god like creature.
What does that tell us? Well, there are a few possibilities here. First, it is possible Imu was once similar to Nika but then turned dark for whatever reason.
We could even look at the Christian Bible here as a reference because this story would be similar to God casting out the dark angel Satan from Heaven. Which means that Imu could have been causing chaos in the world all this time. Or the idea that I like even more is that this dark god Imu was sealed away for ages and then released during the Void Century.
Which led to his evil influence entering the world once again until Luffy can defeat him. That’s a nice cyclical narrative that I really enjoy personally. But that’s enough about the unknown past.
Let’s talk about this ABSOLUTE VILLAIN right here. Look, I know he’s an evil dude who has done many terrible things. But that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the massive balls it takes to walk in on the Gorosei and tell them what’s up.
And as he just casually sits down and proclaims himself the new Warrior God of Science, the other Gorosei are SHOCKED. In fact, this reaction leads me to believe that this has NEVER happened before. For the first time in the history of the World Government, one of the Gorosei is killed and replaced.
Which doesn’t necessarily have to be true, but since we now know they are long lived it makes the most sense to me. And I think I can safely say NO ONE in the community predicted Saturn getting murked like he did in this chapter. It was pretty much in everyone’s mind that the five Gorosei we started with would be the ones that the Straw Hats would have to over come in the final battle.
But nope, throw that out the window because now EVERYTHING has changed. Because who's to say now that the others can’t also be replaced? Who knows, maybe we’ll have a brand new set of Gorosei before the final battle.
And if you know anything about anime power scaling logic then of course the new Gorosei will absolutely be stronger than the old ones. Which is a serious problem for Luffy because he could barely handle Saint Saturn, who appeared to be the weakest of the Gorosei on Egghead Island. However, before talking more about Garling’s future role, we have to clarify why Imu took such a dramatic step in killing Saturn.
Because Saturn thought they accomplished most of their objectives on Egghead except for Vegapunk’s message, but clearly Imu does not care about any of that! The only thing they focused on was that they let Joy Boy escape. So as punishment, Saturn got the life literally drained out of him.
Clearly, Imu is worried about the new Joy Boy. But what does that mean for Garling? Will he inherit Saturn’s demonic beast powers?
Or will he get his own new powers? Because one thing we don’t know for sure is how Imu has such total control over the Gorosei. Remember, Imu can speak in their heads and take their life away from half way around the planet.
That sure seems like absolute control if you ask me. So the question is: will Imu have the same control over Garling? I would have to imagine he would, but clearly Garling is not immortal like the other Gorosei.
We’ve seen him age from a young man on God Valley to his current old age. All this makes me think that Garling might have to go through some dark ritual to receive power from Imu which would also place Garling under the evil ruler's control. Or maybe he has to eat a piece of some dark devil fruit to transfer the powers.
Either way, I can’t imagine that Imu would name Garling as a new member of the Gorosei without having complete control over the elder Figarland. Honestly, I can’t wait to see what happens with Garling. Please, Oda, give me a Shanks versus Garling showdown.
I’m begging you. The power levels would be off the charts. However, that’s not the only insane power that was hinted at in this chapter because we also saw Punk Records float off into the sky with the help of the island cloud machine.
And honestly, this part of the chapter was a mix of disappointment and excitement for me. I was disappointed that after the emotional scenes with Lilith in the last chapter we now find out that all the other Vegapunk alters are still alive and have reformed into a new body. Which kinda killed the hype around Lilith being the last Vegapunk, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about Oda bringing back characters who were dead.
Silly me. On the other hand, with Punk Records now floating around and the other Vegapunk satellites back in action, we have the insane potential of a technological breakthrough relating to Joy Boy. Because if you paid attention to the person the Vegapunk’s called at the end, then you’ll notice that this guy is the same guy that showed Nami the weather knot technology back during the time skip.
Which is super important because as we just saw with Emeth, you can store some pretty darn powerful stuff inside of knots. So if the Vegapunks and the Weatheria scientists can find a way to learn the haki weaving knot technology that Joy Boy gave to Emeth, we might have a new super powerful technology to use in the fight against the world government. That's not the only problem they could solve though because they could also work on a solution for Drgon’s fears at the end of this chapter.
As Drgon says here the fear of a flood will spread across the entire world, and people will naturally start to fight over higher land and resources. So it will be an insanely clutch development if the Vegapunks and Weatheria scientists can figure out a way to create new island clouds to rescue people from a flood. Of course, Imu might just be able to wipe them all out with his flying ancient weapon anyway, but they have to try something to save the world.
Honestly though, there is one question from all this that I am dying to know the answer to. What happened between Joy Boy and Imu? It’s clear they knew each other, or at least fought each other, but somehow Joy Boy could not defeat Imu.
Or maybe the real answer is he did not want to. Which would make perfect sense if the secret I discovered hidden in Bink’s Sake lyrics is true, and if you want to know the true relationship between Joy Boy and Imu you can watch this video right here. As always, thanks so much to all of our patreons, and I will see you in the next one!
