 kuma the tyrant kuma the pirate kuma the revolutionary kuma the pacifist kuma the father the world government has batholimu kuma in their sights the wanted man being officially given a bounty his bakuni blood making him an absolute terror a one-man army foiling the navy's plans but in a cruel stroke of fate he is now in their grasp hello my nakumatachi this is joy girl and i'm gonna make him an offer that he can't refuse well unfortunately in kuma's case the circumstances that he wasn't going to refuse any offer no matter the consequences and while chapter 1099 was a relatively less heavy less tragic chapter compared to the recent heart thrashing that odor has been serving us you just know this is a setup for more heartbreaks to come because this chapter finally confirmed the deal between kuma and vagapunk that would allow for body to be cured but it also confirmed a lot of things in fact this chapter should be titled everything everywhere all connected because throughout the course of chapter 1099 we witness a lot of details that provide more background more information about practically every detail that we knew about or in relation to kuma moments that make you go and we'll get to all of those but first please subscribe to the channel i want to reach a subscriber count higher than kuma's bounty but how is that possible when it wasn't revealed well that's the beauty we'll just have to keep going higher and higher to make sure we beat it and now that you've subscribed let's talk about this deal so far the promise between vagapunk and kuma aren't to do with him becoming a shichibukai nor him becoming a cyborg the simple deal is that vagapunk will cure bonnie and in exchange kuma will become the blood source of the pacifistas which is also a name that they decide on because kuma describes himself as a pacifist and there is just so much to unpack in all of this firstly the name of that navy cyborg was always a source of intrigue for me precisely because of its irony and now we find out why like i said an aha moment and while this also adds to the duality of kuma the brutal warrior who is only a timid pacifist at heart this conversation between vagapunk and kuma just struck me as very naive perhaps even willfully so by this point both vagapunk and kuma knows what it means to be affiliated with the world government kuma has actively opposed the world government on numerous occasions and vagapunk even says that dragon would kill him if he knew that he was making this deal suggesting that vagapunk knows on some level that what he's doing is wrong so the fact that both of them are being hopeful that these clones will be used for peace and to save innocent people feels a little well as the kids say it a little dilulu it strikes quite close to home and says a lot about our real world particularly the debates about using technology for defensive purposes because wrap it up however you want a machine that can be used for defense can easily be used as an offensive weapon and when vagapunk was explaining his hopes for the cyborgs their laser beams their indestructible body that's exactly what i was thinking in my head i'm going that's a weapon but that's what makes this scene so tragically poignant because the way that i interpret it that exchange is really both of their ways of coping both these men are pacifists in nature who have good intentions at heart but they also have dreams and loves and passions that they hold so dear that they have to bend their ideals and their integrity in certain points for vagapunk it's its yearning for scientific knowledge and advancements in hopes that one day it could lead to true global peace he sees his involvement with the world government as merely a means to an end first for kuma it's his overwhelming love for bunny and the fact that he is sacrificed so much already to save everyone else means that this time he will sacrifice everything to save her throughout the chapter we see him as the warrior the tyrant the king the pirate but ultimately kuma is just the father and as per his own words he's willing to do anything to save her so far kuma has been this incredibly pure and heroic figure but in this chapter or in this section at least he feels very much like a man so much more relatable and so perhaps hearing that it will be his body his appearance that is the physical blueprint for the pacifistas therefore becoming the figurehead of a creation intended for peace maybe this was easier for him to accept than facing the reality of what the cyborgs would be useful under the world government's control because in his mind this is the closest that he'll get to sun god nika which is really tragic because the more we see of kuma's dialogue it seems as if he's never recognized how many lives he's already saved and what made this scene land even harder is the fact that it came right after kuma's exchange with dragon the last thing that kuma says to his former comrade is that once bunny is cured he joined the revolutionaries again but we now know witnessing satan's diabolical planning that this will probably never happen dragon the revolutionaries did his comrade his friend down a path that gave the world government perhaps the greatest naval advantage by that point and this interaction also felt so poignant because i interpret dragon's behavior to have multiple layers first of all it's very choice language used in that dialogue the winds of fate not only does this add further fuel to his wind devil fruit speculations but on first glance these words seem to be quite juxtaposed to his character as the leader of the revolutionaries which is a very principled very organized group relying on the carefree winds of fate seems to be very counterposed to his character but i think this goes to show how inherent the d blood is dragon is still ultimately part of the d clan and he understands the importance of following where your heart wants to go and that in turn fate will carry you on your journey as well and that's important because i think for dragon he lets kuma go despite his top officers in iva and innazuma being captured despite kuma literally being a one-man army someone that he could really use in his organization but he wants kuma to be free and a large part of kuma being free means saving bonnie and so maybe this is also dragon's way of making up for the fact that jini was also his comrade and he wasn't able to do anything to save her it's clear that jini also meant a lot to dragon hence why he wouldn't give bellow betty or anyone her former post and also maybe just maybe dragon is trying to live vicariously through kuma because kuma is making the choice that dragon didn't kuma is choosing his child over the rest of the world whereas dragon left luffy and he chose the greater good and i'm sure dragon feels a slight pang of if not regret at least apologetic towards his child and maybe himself that he's deprived both of them the love and happiness of a father child relationship and so he wants at least kuma to enjoy that in any case i thought having these scenes one right after another fits beautifully and adds another sense of tragedy that kuma wouldn't get to experience his dreams of becoming a revolutionary again for a while we've all been hoping that once we get back to the present timeline kuma will also reach egghead and that he'll get to witness sun god nika that before his ultimate death he would attain some peace knowing that he was instrumental in his idols journey but now on top of this after this chapter i also want dragon to come to egghead and i would just love it if he and kuma could fight again side by side for one more time one last time saving vega punk bonnie and luffy fulfilling kuma's dream to meet the legendary deity but also his dream to one day go back and fight alongside the man that he's so greatly admired and i may be asking for too much here but it does at least seem like kuma's showdown against satan is incoming because at the end of the chapter as we see satan concocting evil plans on how to use the pacifist i'm sure this will lead to kuma working for the world government as one of the warlords himself and ultimately his cyborgification which is a clever piece of foreshadowing when kuma misunderstands vega punk questioning whether his cure for bonnie will turn her into a cyborg which i have to say is also pretty funny because that was a very popular fan theory since the last chapter but of course in a cruel twist of irony it's kuma who becomes cyborgified interestingly satan has had pretty heavy involvement in kuma's story appearing not only at the end of this chapter but also seen reacting to the news of sorbet kingdom's new ruler and now as we approach the climax i suspect that we'll see an extension of their initial interaction back at god valley including how kuma managed to get away from satan which will most likely involve him using his then newly acquired ability teleporting using the powers of the purple fruit and i have to say that saint jegar see a satan being the primary antagonist for kuma's story fits very well especially after the dialogue between vega punk and kuma in this chapter with vega punk referring to kuma as a saint which is ironically a title held by satan a twisted irony that satan and well really this goes for all the gods say that they are the ones referred to as saints while their actions are those of oppression and aggression the exact opposite of sainthood the opposite of saints like kuma being the best example of someone willing to do anything including treating his own freedom and safety and protection for the person he cares about the most and this is a nice contrast to the dark theme of the gore say whose aim is to suppress the people's freedom the biggest example of this being their hiding of the truth from the rest of the world a question i did get from satan's scene was how long has the world government been wiretapping vega punk and when did they stop because this flashback was a number of years ago and we know they recently found out about vega punk's research into the void century via york not via other means and we didn't see them listening into the conversation between shaka and dragon does this mean that vega punk figured out that he was being eavesdropped on at some point and have they been playing a cat and mouse game ever since maybe wiretapping was also only possible because of the lack security around vega punk at that point which in another ah moment oda suggests that this is following seiza clowns poison gas explosion at punk hazard another question is whether the brief dialogue about the buccaneer blood being special will go anywhere will be relevant and important to the story later on we already know that physically this race is stronger but does it relate to an even deeper mystery something that will go to the lore of one piece also when vega punk says that he's been looking for the perfect candidate to base his cyborgs on perhaps this is why kaito the oni and king the lunarian were also captured maybe their lineage factors could have been vega punk's plans for the super genes to base the government cyborgs off the speculations aside something that i loved in the scene between vega punk and kuma were those panels of bonnie and sento maru they were just so cute playing together in the background i mentioned in a recent video of mine that it seemed like sento maru was particularly keen to save bonnie's life and now we know that it's personal speaking of personal kuma having a personal history with the islands that he chose to send the straw hats to is a very nice touch another ah moment i think we all suspected this anyways given how apt each location was for the straw hats but seeing it confirmed on paper and witnessing kuma's backstory in general really makes you appreciate his role in the straw hats journey overall it's also one of those moments i wouldn't mind if the anime extended these series of panels and added in some filler of kuma's own adventure during his travels like when he got to kuragaina for example was it already deserted did he try and seek help from the human drills did they try to copy his devil fruit ability a more significant a heart moment is that we finally got the background as to why kuma's epithet is kuma the tyrant and as many of us suspected he wasn't really the tyrant king of sorbet kingdom and this title was just the result of a fabricated story and i'm of two minds about this on one hand i'm glad the sorbet kingdom knew the truth and everyone who actually knew kuma recognized him for the gentle soul that he was especially after the last couple of chapters i'm not sure my heart could have taken much more of a beating like if we had some misunderstanding on the scale of king rikku at dress rosa but at the same time this was the most straightforward and non-dramatic explanation so i did find it slightly underwhelming but i think that's what happens when you devise elaborate head cannons and backstories in your head and i have to say that the surrounding backstory of kuma means that this simple misunderstanding does add a lot to his character as this sweet and pure soul whom to the rest of the world is a cold and burly killing machine because i also imagined that as we witness him becoming a shichibukai he may just very well live up to his tyrant nickname besides there was still plenty of tragedy when you read between the lines for me the fact that the tragedy and damage that resulted from the burning of the goa kingdom extended beyond the borders of the small east blue island and affected other citizens and far away lands because it was the source of inspiration for the likes of king bikori to do the same in sorbet kingdom makes that incident so much more horrific it makes you wonder how many other cruel kings had the same idea and how many more innocent civilians suffered as a result this also adds to the it's all connected theme because this is an incident that we knew from all the way back in the marine food arc and it's also an incident that is very important to central characters including dragon and sarbo who also have personal relationships with kuma similar to what i said about satan as the secondary antagonist to kuma story king bikori is a great contrast to kuma someone who unlike kuma is physically weak but is willing to do evil deeds and thinks it's necessary to be evil to attain happiness while kuma is blessed with strong physical attributes whose actions to create a free world are driven by his pure heart it's such a classic comic book trope that i think works really well for kuma story i find it particularly meaningful that king bikori uses his army to kill innocent civilians avoiding direct or literal blood on his hands whereas kuma who chooses to protect people ends up with blood on his hands such as in this chapter with bikori ordering his guards to shoot a handful of people and kuma then raging on them we also find out how bunny acquired her toshi toshi no mi which was via accident to the point that she didn't even realize she ate it until she and others realized its effects which if you ask me is a pretty damn near identical reflection of what happened to luffy and his double fruit what did i tell you about this all being connected we even see bonnie teaching herself how to use her abilities like we witness for luffy and both of them declaring that they want to set out to see and although it's for slightly different reasons both of them are motivated by the desire for freedom luffy the freedom of adventure whereas bonnie thinks she'll finally be free to step out into the real world and if this doesn't scream straw hat material then i don't know what does but we have been wrong before this parallel with luffy is about one of the only things that saves me from feeling quite dissatisfied about how bonnie got her devil fruit because we don't even know what it was doing there in the first place and it just felt very convenient but the nature of the devil fruit itself is very apt for bonnie's character and causes a lot of different emotions i felt to pull my heartstrings when bonnie used the fruit to be 10 years old so that she can finally travel the world with kuma as per their promise while kuma understands the sad truth of what this really means for a chapter that isn't as sad as say 1098 seeing the small panel of kuma crying when he's close to giving up on a cure is such a small detail that's so so sad and there's a great sense of bittersweet in the knowledge that for kuma perhaps in some quiet moments as he reflects on bonnie's devil fruit maybe he would think to himself at least i got to see bonnie reach the age of 11 her 20s and even older even if it is artificial and the result of her devil fruit and not because she's actually survived her disease but the fruit also resulted in some comical moments as well which i did appreciate perhaps the funniest one being the fact that she looks like nami but in all seriousness moments like kuma holding up konnie the dowager queen being constantly mistaken for bonnie did make me chuckle and here we get another explanation another ah so that's what happened biggest bonnie just happens to look like konnie when she ages herself up to that age which could again be argued to be somewhat underwhelming or convenient especially because this means konnie isn't actually blood related to bonnie as many had suspected since bonnie used this disguise at the reverie first of all the name sound very familiar with only one letter difference and when bonnie was disguised as konnie she did really look like an aged up bonnie but i do have to hand it for oda for throwing around these red herrings and being able to thwart all sorts of crazy speculations that we've had it also makes sense that because sorbet kingdom is a relatively small and poor kingdom people didn't catch the difference between bonnie and konnie at the reverie and that's how she got away with it i do wonder whether konnie and king bulldog were also present during the reverie because does that mean they also witness kuma's horrific state the good news is that if people were recognizing bonnie as the dowager queen that means that bulldog must still be enthroned so king bakori is gone for good hopefully and he didn't try yet another attempt to retake power i mean how many thrashings does one take before they finally learn and because no chapter would be complete without switching my head into overthinking speculation mode something that struck me about bonnie was her fighting prowess the fact that bonnie is very physically capable has me thinking more deeply about her heritage by this point i have come to the opinion that we don't need to find out who bonnie's biological father is but then oda includes a detail like this and it sends me spiraling and while it's not necessary revealing bonnie's lineage may be important because it could be a significant key to what happens to her after this arc or to be more specific after this whole ordeal that she's involved with finishes because i think her relevance to the story will extend beyond this egghead island arc similar to law's involvement with the straw hats lasting multiple arcs because if we think about the current situation bonnie is still a child and at the end of this all she will need to be taken in the care of someone now you could say that she could return to the life of piracy but now that we know her real age and the circumstances around her character you could argue that maybe she was only able to survive in the pirate world against stronger foes without having any notable powerful crew members because she is by blood a celestial dragon or related to a shichibukai and i'm just gonna assume an entirely baseless scenario that it was part of kuma's deal with the world government to allow bonnie to travel the world as per her dreams but that they would act as an umbrella of safety for bonnie wherever she goes maybe even her bounty wasn't because she committed any heinous pirate activities but more because the government placed it on her head because she was a celestial dragon imagine if it's similar to the sanji situation where bonnie's unseen bounty poster has only the word alive on it maybe that's what sakazuki meant about her getting away from the marines because she made it hard for them to keep track and protect her the bounty being a way to make sure that she would come again under their care anyways going back to what happens to bonnie after everything is resolved unlike momonosuke and the scabbards who have a country that they can stay in and all the other people that the straw hats have saved in the past bonnie has no clear place to go the closest companion we know she has is vagabond who is currently being hunted by the world government and aked island is unlikely to be safe and so another of course is that she joins the straw hat pirates in their journey and she becomes a fitting crew member being a follower of the sun god nika which is something that i'm sure kuma would approve of but what if she doesn't end up joining the crew what other choice would she have now imagine the scenario if bonnie is a celestial dragon from a well-known family and coincidentally that families assumedly figurehead also just happened to be introduced in the same arc and yes by that i am talking about garling figureland because normally a stented celestial dragon is physically weak but what if bonnie is the daughter of garling figureland making her the daughter of a god's night and not just any god's night but its supreme commander it would kind of make sense right first off let's get the most obvious feature out of the way and that's their hair because bonnie's hair is pink whereas garlings is red but this could be easily resolved based on the comments about bonnie made in this chapter she looks very much like jini suggesting that they may even share the same hair color which isn't confirmed but in either case from the shading we know that jini's hair is light so that mixed with garlings vibrant red could produce the pink hue of bonnie's hair and aesthetics aside and more importantly i think the fact that bonnie is a proven good fighter for her young age despite not being shown to have anyone to have trained her sparks the idea that perhaps bonnie's physical prowess is owed to a lineage being the daughter of a fighting celestial dragon and i know some of you will argue that kuma most likely trained her and maybe he did but did he really because there's not a single panel of kuma training bonnie to be a fighter in their flashbacks and all the moments they've shared together a wholesome bonding time also kuma was gone for a while searching for her cure being a pirate and that was really when we saw bonnie train in combat also just personally i don't think fighting is what kuma intended for bonnie so imagine then if bonnie does travel with the straw hats and if elba is in fact the next island that we go to next bonnie would now be in the land of her family as elba falls part of shanks's territory so imagine if bonnie even stays behind at elba instead and she doesn't join the straw hats this would be a very impactful we've come full circle journey because it would mean that bonnie the abandoned child of the figurelands is now protected by his descendant and look if we've gotten to this point this deep in the speculations that's a clear sign that we should wrap it up so thank you all for listening to another one of my ramblings make sure to subscribe make sure to like leave a comment below and thank you to our patreon and channel members for all of your support this is droid girl and i'll see you again soon