One Piece is incredibly spicy right now. We’re getting lore drops two decades in the making. Almost every living character we’ve ever met has flashed across the scene in the last few chapters. And there are a lot of characters in One Piece. That‘s how you know we’re at a climactic point in the series.
Major spoilers for One Piece up through chapter 1116!
Since Vegapunk started his broadcast, it’s been startling revelation after startling revelation. The entire world of One Piece is sinking into the sea. Thanks to the use of one of the Ancient Weapons (likely Uranus) during the Void Century’s fabled war, the sea level had already risen a whopping 200 meters. Before that, the world of One Piece was made up of large continents.
We’ve learned that Joyboy, the previous wielder of the awakened Gum-Gum Fruit, lived during the Void Century. He was a member of the highly advanced ancient civilization that fought against the twenty nations that would become the World Government. Joyboy was a pirate.
Vegapunk’s broadcast doesn’t even seem to be wrapping up yet. He’s still got more to say! When will we know more? And what has he said so far, again?
How guilty is Vegapunk?
Chapter 1116 alone had some major intrigue. As Vegapunk spoke, we saw Imu staring at a picture of (one supposes) Nefeltari Lily, Vivi’s ancestor who broke away from the World Government at its foundation. Maybe Imu still has the hots for Lily after all these 800 years. I have not stopped thinking about this.
Most intriguingly, we learned that Vegapunk did not willingly give the World Government and/or Five Elders part of the Mother Flame, his artificial energy source. We knew that the Mother Flame was used to power the weapon which destroyed Lulusia. Vegapunk essentially told us that the weapon is indeed Uranus, and the effects of its use are causing the sea level to rise.
It turns out that York—the spy among Vegapunk’s satellite clones—stole the Mother Flame and gave it to the World Government. Surprisingly, Vegapunk was unaware of York’s role. And in the broadcast, Vegapunk acts like he doesn’t know that the Government was the party that used the weapon on Lulusia. Yet he was also able to intuit the government’s response enough to know to create the broadcast message and store its transponder snail in the safest of places—the iron giant.
It also raises a question that Vegapunk himself was clearly struggling with: what responsibility does he bear for creating the technology that enabled the loss of so many lives? It’s a question that Albert Einstein, the clear source of inspiration for the character, also grappled with after the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Vegapunk also revealed to the world something that the Straw Hats (and the readers) learned in the pre-timeskip Saboady arc: Roger and his crew learned all about the Void Century from the Ponegliffs, and possibly from the One Piece itself. Which makes it all the more intriguing that Roger’s first mate, Silvers Rayleigh, opined both then and now that it’s “too soon” for people to know the truth.
What the hell could that mean?
When will we know more?
One Piece‘s schedule has been hard to predict recently. Mangaka Eiichiro Oda took a well-deserved three-week break for most of April. One Piece was back for two weeks, then off for a week at the beginning of May, because all of Shounen Jump was off for Japan’s Golden Week holidays. Then we were back for a week, off for a week, back for two weeks … which brings us to the present.
Usually, One Piece has released on a “three weeks on, one week off” schedule. Now that the schedule seems to be evening back out after all the breaks, you and I alike probably expected that chapter 1117 would drop next week, followed by a break the following week. Unfortunately, we both expected wrong.
One Piece will be off on June 9, 2024. Chapter 1117 will instead be released the following Sunday, June 16. Please remember that any release which pops up before June 16 is an unofficial leak. Even if you engage with the leak, things are so spicy right now that those of us following the official release are begging you not to post about it on social media.
