 Dr. VegaPunk, maker of such things as the pacifista, the dog, gun, and his greatest accomplishment of all, the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review, which when pressed will grant you regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today I think it's well past time that we trained our focus onto one of the most undoubtedly prolific characters in the series, a statement which in and of itself is kind of an understatement because it's actually mind boggling just how much this guy is responsible for, despite the fact that we haven't so much as caught a glimpse of him, and I am of course referring to Dr. VegaPunk. And some of the more casual One Piece fans may even be of the belief that we know next and nothing about this figure, but given the tenure of his name in the series, we actually know quite an astonishing amount about this man who we have never seen, not properly anyway. But do you know what I find to be a very interesting question to ask people? When did we first hear the name VegaPunk? Because he is one of those names that just feels like it's been floating around in the series for like forever. And due to the lack of a direct presence within the story, it is kind of difficult to pinpoint off the top of your head where this enigma began. But it just so happens to be in chapter 433, which was during the return to Water Seven Arc. And there are several reasons why this may not be a particularly memorable event. Firstly, because it's actually a fairly casual name drop, basically, Kobe is speaking to Luffy and Nami is eavesdropping mid conversation. And all we catch him saying is when it comes to technology, Dr. VegaPunk is number one, he's amazing. And then Helmepo cuts in with he really is. Even when it comes to that devil fruit you ate, he discovered how devil fruits confer their powers and even developed a technology where you can feed a devil fruit into an inanimate object. That's his biggest project from last year. And that was it. And when I say that was it, that was actually pretty massive information during the Water Seven era. I mean, the fact that there was someone in this world who had unlocked the secret behind devil fruits. And in retrospect, it's pretty bizarre that this is not a more landmark moment for one piece. But then again, it is embedded in a period full of gigantic reveals. For example, in that very same chapter, the name of the new world was dropped for the first time as well. Significantly more dramatically than VegaPunk was. And in the chapter just prior to this one, well, that just happened to be the one that revealed the existence of the four emperors as well as the fact that Dragon was Luffy's father. So without anything really substantive to grab onto, VegaPunk became something of an afterthought here. As he kind of remains to this very day actually, because we are now balls deep in emperor-related drama as well as beginning to expand on Dragon and the revolutionaries. Meanwhile though, VegaPunk remains just as hidden as ever. Although we were graced with a brief visual during Thriller Bark, which is very different from your classic one piece mysterious introduction, given that VegaPunk was not silhouetted. Instead, what we see here is a fairly normal looking body, really, in a lab coat with a very casually striped shirt. However, the much more intriguing and more standard appearance, shall we say, of Dr. VegaPunk would have to wait until punk has it, where we did receive a brief classic silhouetted shot of him. And what we do see here just kind of boggles the mind. Because what it presents is either a character with an insanely long and tall head, kind of akin to Fukurokuju, the leader of the Oniwabancho Oniwano, or someone like Vice Admiral Strawberry, who has really long, gravity-defying hair and a funky hat to match. It's quite a bizarre silhouette though, and it shows that by this point, Oda had a very clear design in mind. Whereas I'm not so certain that was the case when the Thriller Bark panel was drawn and VegaPunk was portrayed in this more standard manner. But then again, his head was completely cut off and maybe Oda did that for the very reason of masking his weirdly, aubergine-shaped head. But the more important thing about the Thriller Bark panel is what Kuma says about Dr. VegaPunk, which is the following. I was created by the world government's resident genius, Dr. VegaPunk. He possesses the world's most brilliant mind. His scientific prowess is said to be 500 years ahead of mankind. Which is, you know, quite the statement to make, but at the same time, it leads to a lot of the One Piece world falling quite comfortably into place. Because this realm has, and probably always will be, presented as something of an oddity. A curious blending of time periods and technology. In this regard, there's very little consistency to One Piece. For example, you can encounter a race of Nordic giants, but then the very next day, you can run into highly advanced cyborgs that shoot lasers out of their mouths. And the large majority of that latter experience with advanced technology can be attributed directly to Dr. VegaPunk. Not all of it, of course, because characters like Frankie also exist, as well as other prolific scientists such as Vince McJudge, but the large majority of it is VegaPunk's doing. So the Pasifista, for example, are a series of mass-produced cyborg entities that are a bit of a fusion of the physicality of Bartholomew Kuma, the technical prowess of Dr. VegaPunk, and Marine Admiral Kizaru's devil fruitability, which allows him to, amongst other things, produce lasers. VegaPunk took all of this and put it in a neat, little, and highly destructive package, thus delivering an incredible set of weaponry to the world government. In fact, speaking of the world government, VegaPunk is almost certainly one of, if not even the most important figure in their maintenance of domination on this world, because in addition to providing them with advanced pirate fighting weaponry, he also gave them a lot of handy utility developments, and the best example of this would be that VegaPunk is the man responsible for discovering and implementing the process of lining marine ships with sea stone, thus allowing them to cross the calm belt without being noticed by sea kings. And that development is highly underrated because this gives the world government an unparalleled advantage when it comes to travel, because they can now quite comfortably slip in and out of the ground line as they so desire, making it very, very easy to maneuver and muster their forces in any given location deemed necessary, something that no other force in this world has the option of doing. In addition to this, VegaPunk has also been on the precipice of playing God, and he has even very successfully created artificial life, which can be seen in the two living, breathing dragons featured in the Punk Hazard art. They were both created by Dr. VegaPunk and designed to act as guards of the Punk Hazard lab, a role they continue to inhabit even after its destruction. The bigger being of which is named Dragon number 13, a name which was actually given to it by the world nobles in their ever creative wisdom. But this was the first model of dragon to be deemed a success with 12 other prior experiments failing. And meanwhile, this smaller dragon thingy was developed afterwards. However, VegaPunk's probably best known work comes in the form of devil fruits. Now, as I stated previously, VegaPunk is of course the man responsible for delivering such creations as lasso and funk freed, a gun and sword that were somehow imbued directly with the abilities of zoan type devil fruits. And thus once again, effectively resulted in VegaPunk creating a new form of life. Not only that though, VegaPunk even went so far as to develop his own artificial devil fruit, an existence often forgotten by many casual fans, but it is the zoan type that mom and us skate, which turns him into a teeny tiny eastern dragon, the moosh of the one piece world really. But this artificial devil fruit is not to be confused with the smile devil fruits that were developed through a collaboration of Caesar Clown and Dolphemingo because VegaPunk's fruit actually appears to be somewhat functional, giving the user the ability to turn completely into a dragon rather than the smile effect of a random and unpredictable body part. Despite this, VegaPunk's devil fruit was considered a failure for as of yet unknown reasons. But apparently even he was unable to mimic devil fruits entirely, which actually has a pretty big impact regarding any idea that devil fruits were man made at all. Because if this 500 year into the future brain genius can't pull it off, then I don't know what it would take to do so. Maybe a genius who was 501 years into the future. But even if he was not able to achieve creating a full blown devil fruit himself, VegaPunk did solve the mystery behind how they function, which was a cooperative effort actually between himself and another well-known scientist, Vin Smoke Judge, the leader of the German kingdom. Together they discovered what is known as the lineage factor, which I believe is known as bloodline elements in the official translation, but it's basically a blueprint for life very much akin to the concept of DNA, which is present in all living organisms. And the theory behind which has also led to the idea of manipulating life via changing this factor, something that Judge himself was very successful in achieving with his own children, as well as eventually developing an entire clone army. And of course, VegaPunk used his findings to study devil fruits themselves, discovering that the fruit properties manipulate the lineage factor of a living being, thus imbuing them with all of the funky powers that we see in the series. Very fun fact though, VegaPunk was not an agent of the world government. When he and Judge discovered the lineage factor, quite the opposite actually, they were independent rogue scientists. And then the world government discovered their research and promptly arrested VegaPunk. Although Judge as the leader for world government affiliated kingdom was assumedly spared for that very reason. But then for reasons we can only describe as completely unknown, VegaPunk then began working directly for the world government, which is a curious endeavor because from everything we know about VegaPunk, this doesn't quite add up. But to begin exploring this mystery, there is one other huge piece of information that needs to be laid down first, which is that we know where VegaPunk was born and raised, which is a location called Karakuri Island, home of the future kingdom, Baltimore, which isn't to say that it will be a kingdom. One day it's already a kingdom. It just calls itself a future kingdom because of its access to incredible technology. Once again, thanks to VegaPunk. In his youth, VegaPunk created multiple labs on the island, housing a whole host of unfinished experiments, primarily due to him lacking the skill and finances required to bring them to completion. Although he did, for some reason, successfully convert a whole host of the nation's wildlife into cyborgs, which I suppose would lay the groundwork for his future conversion of Bartholomew Kuma. But the most interesting thing is that according to the residents of Karakuri Island, who knew VegaPunk as a young man, he was described as a very generous individual who genuinely cared for those around him. And this sense of morality does translate into other accounts of VegaPunk, specifically what we know about his interactions with Caesar Clown, when the two of them are working together on Punk Hazard. Caesar being an example of a highly, highly immoral being who focused his research on chemical weaponry, as well as proposing that for the sake of science, they kidnapped children in pursuit of gentrification experiments, after which point VegaPunk dismissed him from the science division, which shows an innate sense of morality, maybe. I mean, however, he might not be the paragon of kindness that the inhabitants of Karakuri Island would paint him as, because looking a bit closer out at his words to Caesar were the following. You're exiled from the science division, Caesar. Your shenanigans have gone far enough and I can't cover for you anymore, which is not the most opposing of statements, really. It sounds more like a superior being frustrated with the antics of an underling, but not necessarily philosophically opposed to what they're doing, which is important to highlight because the elephant in the room is that VegaPunk works for the world government, which is, you know, certainly the largest scale operation of corruption in existence on the One Piece planet. So if VegaPunk did feel particularly strongly about doing what was best for the people, then why would he be associated with the world government? Much less provide them with supreme domineering weaponry. The easier explanation is that he is a selfish scientist who can only truly work with the near infinite resources that the world government is able to offer him, but at the same time, that's unlikely to be the answer either because we do have examples of VegaPunk acting kindly, specifically when it comes to Bartholomew Kuma, who he programmed to guard the Thousand Sunny during the two year time skip at the request of Kuma himself before he was fully converted. Whereas I suspect that a purely selfish man of science would have converted Kuma and then just not kept his word because I mean, why would you? Who's going to hold you to account? Certainly not the dude who you just transformed into an obedient cyborg. So there's this definite sense of gray area when it comes to VegaPunk. He's not the epitome of corruption presented in the world nobles, nor is he the strict lawful absolute justice maniac embodied in Sakazuki or even a purely selfish existence like Caesar. VegaPunk does it somewhere on the scale, but not at any of the extreme points, which only makes him that much more enigmatic. He's a character who has had a hand in shaping this world and these characters as we know it. Without VegaPunk, the series would lose a lot more than you'd think and despite the distance, he has had a fairly incredible direct impact on the straw hats themselves. Whether it be discovering the lineage factor alongside judge that led to Sanji's traumatic childhood, or the fact that Frankie was sent to Karkar Island during the time skip to study VegaPunk's previous work or what I just mentioned before with VegaPunk being practically directly responsible for protecting the thousand sunny for two years. His reach in this story is probably only eclipsed by that of Goldie Roger himself and even that is probably debatable. Dr. VegaPunk is the most important figure in this series that we have never met. A true lurking legend of one piece who I cannot wait to examine hopefully in the near future. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time.