So in this thread I am going to theorize and discuss the following points:
I will ask you guys to keep this panels with you as I develop my ideas here, please bear with me.
What is Luffy's real Devil Fruit
Luffy's fruit has rarely being a subject for theories as to what it actually is or it's true nature, but after Chapter 1017 with Who's Who's declaration that Shanks crew stole the Gomu Gomu No Mi from a World Government Ship that was being guarded by CP9 agents whose then failed to protect it and were imprisoned for 12 years, questions started to rise as to why all of a sudden a pretty mediocre fruit was being chased by powerful pirates and guarded by the WG.
Later on we see the GOROSEI talking about the awakening of a legendary Devil Fruit and how it could not happen.
GOROSEI then proceeds to order the kill of Strawhat Luffy, for reasons we don't actually know but we can speculate, it is probably related to this legendary DF awakening that could happen specially in a high class fight between Luffy and Kaido.
For the sake of this theory I will simply assume that the Gorosei were indeed talking about Luffy's DF and proceeded to order his assasination to avoid the legendary awakening of said fruit. If we assume that then it means the World Government has changed the name of another fruit to Gomu Gomu No Mi, which begs the question, what other fruit would have the properties of Gum and Rubber (imune to lightining) but could still be something else? Well for that we have a couple of hints that Oda dropped in the manga, interviews and Colour Spreads as well. Oda is already known to leave hidden messages in his CS, for example, the foreshadow of Ace's death as seen here in chapter 520 when Luffy was still on Amazon Lily:
Here he holds an Ace of spades on his right hand while having a BROOK card on his left one his face is similar to his reaction to Ace's death as well
Here in Chapter 1039 Colour Spread we have a Monkey using a crown pointing at what seems to be some kind of Resin while Luffy looks at it smiling:
Now you are going to ask me, ok but why would a Monkey pointing at a resin matter? Well thanks to Yuderon, a famous japanese One Piece youtuber we know that the word play for chapter 1043 is Jushi Mi (10=Ju, 4=Shi, 3= Mi) and well Jushi Mi would be short for Jushi Jushi No Mi (Resin Resin Fruit). Now this is not enough evidence for you guys to believe this is his fruit and unfortunately as of now I cannot provide any further proof for that. But what I can do is speculate about the Oda interview where he listed his top three favourite scenes from the whole series the ones I showed you guys above and I found something odd that the only scene not connected to Wano in someway is the second one, where Robin puts Mangroove saps in Usopp and he goes to say that he likes this panel because it makes the One Piece world feel real. In this panel we see Robin talking about the natural Resin mangrove secretes, while calling it sticky. This interview was only done in 2020 when Wano was already on it's course and we know how further Oda tends to plan plot points, him saying this specific scene of Robin talking about tree sap (Resin) is one of his favourites must mean something else so for the sake of this whole thread I am going to assume Luffy's fruit is indeed the Resin Resin Fruit.
What happened to Luffy on Chapter 1043
At the beginning of Chapter 1043 - We die together!! we see that Luffy was indeed defeated by Kaido's Bagua and when he falls Oda uses an onomatopeia that means silence indicating Luffy's heart stopped as we see here when he uses the same one with Corazon as we see here:
Only for it to start beating again but in a different rhythm as Zunisha himself states, it now sounds like the 'Drums of Liberation', the SFX used on this scene was the same as the one used in the Campfire with Wolves in Skypiea for the drums:
But why is Luffy's heartbeat in another rhythm all of a sudden? Is Joyboy literally incarnating in his body and taking over?
Well the answer is No, Luffy won't be possesed.
But then we have to answer why did Luffy's heartbeat change and why Zunisha could only hear the drums of liberation only now. And to answer that I will take you guys back a little, more specifically in Ennies Lobby. In chapter 420 we see Rob Lucci give an explanation on how Luffy's Gear 2 works.
With the official translation we know that Luffy is speeding his blood flow and as a consequence his heartbeats needs to be faster to match the blood pressure in return his body gets heated to the point that steams starts to flow through his skin.
Now we know that there is steam coming out of Luffy's body because of the amount of energy that is being produced with his heart and blood pressure being on it's limits.
We can go back to the present time where Luffy is seemingly awakening, in chapter 1043 we see a grin on Luffy's face while his hair is melting along with steam coming out of his body.
So what is happening here is that Luffy is heating up to the point he is melting parts of his body and in order to heat up to this point we know that he has to be producing even faster heartbeats in comparison to Gear 2. To go even further I believe Luffy will develop a new form where he will be almost on fire as it has also being hinted at these past Colour Spreads as we see here:
In the first one we see Luffy literally on fire as Ken for Street Fighter and in the second we can see he wears a jacket with fire-like design around his arms.
And as you have probably already guessed, Zunisha only heard the 'Drums of Liberation' now because as the GOROSEI talked, this fruit hasn't been awakened for centuries and the most likely scenario is that only the original Joy Boy managed to do it. Which is why Zunisha couldn't hear this distinguishble heartbeat for 800 years and is now hearing as the fruit has awakened.
Basically making Luffy the new holder of the Joy Boy title and not making him being possesed or taken over from some sort of spirit.
I was also going to speculate on why Kaido is so obsessed with Wano but realized there isn't much to prove on the manga on this subject, but my whole idea would be that since Kaido came to the realization that he wasn't Joy Boy when he went to Wano he changed his objective as he became some sort of gate keeper for the title of Joy Boy. He knew the liberator would need to go through Wano in order to reach Laugh Tale so he set himself up as the real ruler of the country waiting to see what really is so special about this Joy Boy guy. Kaido was awaiting for Joy Boy as much as Roger but with different purposes.
- What is Luffy's real DF
- What is happening to Luffy in 1043 and what it means for the drums of liberation being heard again (Will Joyboy take over Luffy?)
I will ask you guys to keep this panels with you as I develop my ideas here, please bear with me.
What is Luffy's real Devil Fruit
Luffy's fruit has rarely being a subject for theories as to what it actually is or it's true nature, but after Chapter 1017 with Who's Who's declaration that Shanks crew stole the Gomu Gomu No Mi from a World Government Ship that was being guarded by CP9 agents whose then failed to protect it and were imprisoned for 12 years, questions started to rise as to why all of a sudden a pretty mediocre fruit was being chased by powerful pirates and guarded by the WG.
Later on we see the GOROSEI talking about the awakening of a legendary Devil Fruit and how it could not happen.
GOROSEI then proceeds to order the kill of Strawhat Luffy, for reasons we don't actually know but we can speculate, it is probably related to this legendary DF awakening that could happen specially in a high class fight between Luffy and Kaido.
For the sake of this theory I will simply assume that the Gorosei were indeed talking about Luffy's DF and proceeded to order his assasination to avoid the legendary awakening of said fruit. If we assume that then it means the World Government has changed the name of another fruit to Gomu Gomu No Mi, which begs the question, what other fruit would have the properties of Gum and Rubber (imune to lightining) but could still be something else? Well for that we have a couple of hints that Oda dropped in the manga, interviews and Colour Spreads as well. Oda is already known to leave hidden messages in his CS, for example, the foreshadow of Ace's death as seen here in chapter 520 when Luffy was still on Amazon Lily:
What happened to Luffy on Chapter 1043
At the beginning of Chapter 1043 - We die together!! we see that Luffy was indeed defeated by Kaido's Bagua and when he falls Oda uses an onomatopeia that means silence indicating Luffy's heart stopped as we see here when he uses the same one with Corazon as we see here:
Only for it to start beating again but in a different rhythm as Zunisha himself states, it now sounds like the 'Drums of Liberation', the SFX used on this scene was the same as the one used in the Campfire with Wolves in Skypiea for the drums:
Well the answer is No, Luffy won't be possesed.
But then we have to answer why did Luffy's heartbeat change and why Zunisha could only hear the drums of liberation only now. And to answer that I will take you guys back a little, more specifically in Ennies Lobby. In chapter 420 we see Rob Lucci give an explanation on how Luffy's Gear 2 works.
Now we know that there is steam coming out of Luffy's body because of the amount of energy that is being produced with his heart and blood pressure being on it's limits.
We can go back to the present time where Luffy is seemingly awakening, in chapter 1043 we see a grin on Luffy's face while his hair is melting along with steam coming out of his body.
So what is happening here is that Luffy is heating up to the point he is melting parts of his body and in order to heat up to this point we know that he has to be producing even faster heartbeats in comparison to Gear 2. To go even further I believe Luffy will develop a new form where he will be almost on fire as it has also being hinted at these past Colour Spreads as we see here:
In the first one we see Luffy literally on fire as Ken for Street Fighter and in the second we can see he wears a jacket with fire-like design around his arms.
And as you have probably already guessed, Zunisha only heard the 'Drums of Liberation' now because as the GOROSEI talked, this fruit hasn't been awakened for centuries and the most likely scenario is that only the original Joy Boy managed to do it. Which is why Zunisha couldn't hear this distinguishble heartbeat for 800 years and is now hearing as the fruit has awakened.
Basically making Luffy the new holder of the Joy Boy title and not making him being possesed or taken over from some sort of spirit.
I was also going to speculate on why Kaido is so obsessed with Wano but realized there isn't much to prove on the manga on this subject, but my whole idea would be that since Kaido came to the realization that he wasn't Joy Boy when he went to Wano he changed his objective as he became some sort of gate keeper for the title of Joy Boy. He knew the liberator would need to go through Wano in order to reach Laugh Tale so he set himself up as the real ruler of the country waiting to see what really is so special about this Joy Boy guy. Kaido was awaiting for Joy Boy as much as Roger but with different purposes.
