Hello all,
Since we are currently seeing a false narrative pushed to argue that Kizaru isn’t going through any character development in Egghead, I figured this thread was necessary.
I always said the Admirals were far more nuanced and complex than your average One Piece fan is capable of understanding, and that rings especially true with Kizaru on Egghead. The purpose of this, from Oda’s perspective, is to subvert the expectation of Kizaru coming to Egghead as the cold, calculating “do his job” Admiral that he was on Shabondy and instead show us a Kizaru who is mentally and emotionally conflicted about his orders. Fans speculated that Luffy and the Straw Hats would get their “revenge” on Kizaru for the events of Shabondy, and Oda subverts this by robbing the Straw Hats of the opportunity to defeat the same cold, emotionless man they faced at Shabondy, instead having Kizaru come to Egghead as a reluctant, remorseful man forced to carry out orders that he doesn’t want to follow.
The ultimate purpose of this character arc is for Oda to illustrate the ultimate point of the EOS: that the “Pirates vs Marines” dichotomy was ultimately just a fiction, and the true evil in the One Piece world are the higher ups of the World Government who have played the two sides of Pirates and Marines against each other for decades or even centuries, allowing them to quietly maintain their evil and oppressive rule.
So anyway, let’s take a look at Kizaru and watch his slow and gradual descent from man-on-a-mission to a man torn between duty and morality.
Kizaru’s character arc begins with a conversation between he and Saturn:
This scene serves a dual purpose. In the one hand, it simply introduces some of the plot elements we’ll see later. On the other hand, it as the dichotomy between who we thought Kizaru was and who Kizaru actually is. Pre timeskip, Kizaru came off as a cold, heartless man who didn’t care about anything but his mission, and this is represented by Saturn who tells Kizaru to ignore a fight with Sentomaru.
Kizaru rejects this idea purely on principal. Again, we are seeing the difference between the cold and calculating man Kizaru seemed to be pre timeskip, and the principled man Kizaru actually is.
This scene also dichotomizes Saturn, an insect demon who cares nothing for human life (who he views as insects) and will kill anyone and everyone to accomplish his mission, and Kizaru who will directly be forced to grapple with being ordered to kill his long-time friends in the coming arc.
So Kizaru of course ignores Saturn’s order and engages Sentomaru anyway:
Right off the bat the tone of this fight is a sporting one between lifelong master and apprentice, not a “I’m going to kill you no matter what” fight. As the fight proceeds, Kizaru is reminded of the time he originally met Sentomaru as a child:
And gets caught up in his emotions.
Kizaru gets downplayed by some for this fight, but again, this wasn’t a bloodlusted Kizaru being ordered to kill a criminal, this was a lifelong master battling his lifelong apprentice on sheer principle. There was zero way Kizaru wanted to kill or seriously harm Sentomaru here.
After this, Kizaru engages Luffy and we get this:
Where Kizaru tells Luffy that he does not want to kill Vegapunk, whom he has explicitly been ordered to kill. We are seeing the beginnings of a man who knows what is expected of him and what his orders are, grappling with the morality of killing someone he has considered a friend for a long time.
This is Oda being as obvious as he can, explicitly telling us that Kizaru is going to do a pretty sloppy job here, because again, Kizaru does not want to follow the orders he has been given, and he is grappling with those orders emotionally.
This continues as Kizaru destroys the Vegaforce One:
We can see the look of remorse on Kizaru’s face as he recalls the joy of seeing the Vegaforce One completed in his youth.
This is where I’m going to ask you guys to read between the lines a little bit. The purpose of Oda drawing Kizaru recalling Vegapunk’s joyful reaction to the completion of this robot, is because to an extent, this is how Kizaru himself also feels about the Vegaforce One. Hence his reaction of sorrow to seeing it destroyed.
Then Kizaru comes across Bonney:
Let us again read between the lines: “Look how big you are now, Bonney…” again, this is Kizaru getting emotional over seeing someone he last new as a young helpless girl now in “adulthood” so to speak.
Kizaru then tells Bonney he doesn’t want to hurt her or anyone else:
Which again is Oda being as obvious as he can that Kizaru was never going to try and earnestly harm Bonney. More on that later, I promise. Stay with me Fujishiro lol.
Then Kizaru comes face to face with Vegapunk:
And we have to remember that for Kizaru, all of these emotional encounters are piling on top of each other, slowly pushing Kizaru more and more into his feelings. First Sentomaru, then Vegaforce One, then Bonney, and now Vegapunk. From Kizaru’s perspective, he is on the opposing side to characters he has known as “friends” for years of his life. Well get into this more later as well.
For the moment, this is Kizaru this is a difficult mission for him and he doesn’t want to draw this out. Some have used this as evidence that Kizaru was earnestly trying to kill Vegapunk quickly, but again this is where that ability to actually read nuance comes in handy.
If you hand a father a gun, and tell him to kill his child, he’s not going to want to draw that out, but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to instantly put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. Because he’s going to struggle heavily with that action, and actually pulling the trigger is going to be very difficult or even impossible. Kizaru’s actions in Egghead are similar. Just because he says “he doesn’t want to draw this out” doesn’t mean he wasn’t struggling with the emotion of what he’s about to do. And we’ll see more of this later.
This is when Nika intervenes and fights Kizaru:
And Kizaru tells us outright that he doesn’t want to fight with Nika. He is still an Admiral, he still acknowledges that he is expected to fulfill his mission, which has nothing to do with battling Nika. Which is why we don’t ever earnestly see Kizaru’s heart in his first ‘fight’ with Nika. Kizaru’s emotions range from comedic to straight up remorseful, never serious or bloodlusted.
And this not only stems from Kizaru stating he doesn’t want to harm anyone, but this also stems from the fact that Kizaru himself is probably a Nika fan as we will see in just a second. It is here that we go into the Kuma flashback and see more from a younger Kizaru:
Two things we see from a younger Kizaru here.
-“I’m here for business, not pleasure.” Again let’s read between the lines here, this implies that Kizaru does often visit Vegapunk for pleasure and not because he’s ordered to. Which we’ll see in a bit.
-Secondly, the line “I’m sorry, it’s my job…” Again, we are seeing that Kizaru even this far back into the past was struggling with the notion of being expected to balance his duty with his morality. And this is fundamentally what makes (most) Admirals so awesome, the way Oda plays with their notions of responsibility and morality like this.
We get a brief glimpse of these so called “pleasure” visits that Kizaru participates in:
Where we see Kizaru interacting with his friends, including a member of the revolutionary army, and doing the dance of the prophesied WG ender. Again I question the cognitive ability anyone who thinks Kizaru ever seriously wanted to hurt Nika when we find out that Kizaru might just be a damn Nika fan lmfao. Again we are seeing that Kizaru is not the heartless “just following all orders regardless of what they are” Marine. Kizaru is probably motivated by an innate desire to do the right thing and to help people, not to advance any kind of World Government agenda. Which I think may very well be a core reason we may see Kizaru betray the Gorosei and the WG this arc. But more on that as we get more chapters I guess.
If I had one criticism of Kizaru on Egghead, other than the fact that Kizaru doesn’t kill Nika and solo all four Yonko and the Gorosei as he is obviously capable of doing, it is the fact that Oda never tries to really sell us on the friendship between Kizaru and the gang that he will soon be ordered to kill. Like so many things in One Piss, this is left to our imagination in the cursed realm of the off-panel. But nevertheless, I do think Oda at least introduced this scene so we wouldn’t see Kizaru clearly as a Vegapunk’s emotional abuse victim, and we would know that Vegapunk does consider Kizaru a friend on some level.
We also do get to see that Kizaru does in fact have good feelings towards Kuma:
Again the look on Kizaru’s face here. It’s clear that he is quite emotionally moved by Kuma’s loving actions for the sake of his daughter, and the fact that he’s willing to kill himself to give her a chance at life.
And we see more of that here. Kizaru isn’t heartless like Saturn and the Gorosei are, he is a human with a human heart.
We cut back to the present when Bonney is held in Saturn’s clutches and Sentomaru has been captured, and we see Kizaru react with concern for them:
Clearly he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to them, as he hasn’t yet been ordered to kill either of them, and is just now seeing Bonney in a truly lethal situation for the first time.
This is also around the time where Nika mysteriously receives food. I actually do think it was Augur who gave him the food, but I haven’t completely dismissed the notion that it was Kizaru who gave Nika the food from this panel:
As Kizaru suspiciously changes position right as Nika receives the food. And it would make perfect character sense for Kizaru to do this, as we know he doesn’t want Bonney to die and is also quite possibly a Nika fan.
After Kuma punches Saturn, Sanji kicks him, and Franky shoots him, we see this reaction from Kizaru:
And Kizaru is probably acting out of remorse for Kuma here more than anything else, because he knows at this point he’s probably also going to be ordered to kill Kuma for assaulting a Celestial Dragon.
This is why I think he speaks to the Straw Hats in this manner:
“Show me how much you’ve grown!!”
Why would Kizaru want to see how much the Straw Hats have grown? Why would he care? We have to read between the lines a bit, but given the context, I think it’s reasonable to assume that Kizaru actually wants the Straw Hats to save Bonney, Kuma, and Vegapunk. Because as things stand, Oda has given us absolutely no reason to assume Kizaru wants them dead, and a million reasons to believe Kizaru wants them to make it out of this situation alive.
Just before the final Egghead battle begins, we get this:
And again at this point I just can’t help but question the cognitive ability or honesty of anyone who thinks Kizaru is genuinely trying on Egghead when the man basically says he should have brought darker shades so no one can see him crying. Lol
Just imagine for a minute if Kaido got this treatment in Wano. Like if we found out Kaido was lifelong friends with Oden before they fought, or if Kaido was a Luffy fan and didn’t actually want to kill Momonosuke or Kinemon or any of the scabbards, but he felt compelled to do so out of duty…
We should suddenly see Yonko fans warp from the -13 IQ readers they are into people actually capable of perceiving nuance in narrative, also known as Admiral fans lmfao. It is literally incredible to me that people argue that Kizaru’s feats from this point on should even be taken remotely seriously, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
We see more of Kizaru’s melancholy resolve:
As Kizaru prepares himself for what he knows is coming, that he will be ordered directly by the world’s highest authority to murder his loved ones, including a twelve year old child.
We literally see Vegapunk pleading with Kizaru by name here not to proceed with the destruction of Egghead:
And man…just look at Kizaru’s face here, and imagine your loved one pleading with you not to destroy a place that has this much meaning to you. This is almost like emotional torture for Kizaru.
It’s here where we get one of the more controversial scenes from Kizaru:
Where Kizaru plans to murder father and daughter together, quickly and painlessly. And all things considered, I think this is as merciful a death as Kizaru could have hoped to give them. I would also remind you guys that the Marines have committed literal baby genocide before, Kizaru knows there are darker aspects of who the Marines are and what they do. I think in this circumstance this was about the most painless death he could have given them.
I am not arguing that Kizaru is a perfect or even a good person, I think he and all the Admirals are much more complicated than that, which is partly what makes them by far Oda’s best characters, and even at times characters who are so well written it almost seems like Lolda couldn’t have possibly written them.
This may be a controversial take, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Kizaru lets Nika hit him here:
Given that I think it’s reasonable would’ve subconsciously taken any excuse not to actually kill Bonney or Kuma here.
We see his remorse at the idea of having to kill Bonney here:
It’s clear again from the expression on his face that he takes no joy in this.
Some may assume from Kizaru’s words here that he actually wants to kill Bonney, but what he’s actually telling her is that her situation is just hopeless and that escape from Egghead is impossible. It’s pretty plainly apparent Kizaru doesn’t truly want to hurt her.
After Bonney and Kuma “escape” from him, we also see that Kizaru knows that he’ll be in deep shit if he doesn’t start wracking up some heads:
Which again juxtaposes post timeskip Kizaru with pre timeskip Kizaru. Pre timeskip Kizaru also expressed concern at the idea of getting into trouble if he didn’t take Luffy’s head, but Kizaru back then appeared as more of a careerist, wanting to take heads because that was his job. Here things are similar, but with the new context of us getting to see who Kizaru is on a much deeper level.
But then, Kizaru finally does it:
He runs a severely wounded Vegapunk through the chest, and this is just where Kizaru is finished completely. When Nika grabs him, we even see what looks like a tear running down from his eye:
When Kizaru is thrown onto the battleship, we get this:
Where Kizaru describes himself as “deeply wounded”, which is obviously referencing the deep emotional wounds Kizaru has suffered from having to kill Vegapunk, as evidenced by the fact that the Marines can’t seem to find any physical wounds on his body.
And this is where Kizaru’s Egghead character arc ends for now. For anyone who tries to downplay the emotional struggle Kizaru has gone through this arc, or who argues Kizaru’s feats of power are meant to be taken seriously given everything Oda has written to this character, I seriously question how you’ve figured out that food goes into your face hole.
@SakazOuki @Kurozumi Wiwi @The White Crane @Wuuuke @silverfire @scoobie3 @AkainuTheGrimReaper @Apollo @Admiral Mou Bu @ZenZu @Extravlad @kurwa @haxxor @EmperorKinyagi @Blackbeard @Owl Ki @TheKnightOfTheSea @God Buggy @Sentinel @Tyki_Mikk @Veku @Mr. Tuna Sandwich @GoldDiamond @Dragon777 @Weeman @Cadis Etrama Di Urek @Djordje @BaboonMihawk @Negan @The Buddha @Djordje @EvergreenMarine @DarkestKnightofSpoilers
Since we are currently seeing a false narrative pushed to argue that Kizaru isn’t going through any character development in Egghead, I figured this thread was necessary.
I always said the Admirals were far more nuanced and complex than your average One Piece fan is capable of understanding, and that rings especially true with Kizaru on Egghead. The purpose of this, from Oda’s perspective, is to subvert the expectation of Kizaru coming to Egghead as the cold, calculating “do his job” Admiral that he was on Shabondy and instead show us a Kizaru who is mentally and emotionally conflicted about his orders. Fans speculated that Luffy and the Straw Hats would get their “revenge” on Kizaru for the events of Shabondy, and Oda subverts this by robbing the Straw Hats of the opportunity to defeat the same cold, emotionless man they faced at Shabondy, instead having Kizaru come to Egghead as a reluctant, remorseful man forced to carry out orders that he doesn’t want to follow.
The ultimate purpose of this character arc is for Oda to illustrate the ultimate point of the EOS: that the “Pirates vs Marines” dichotomy was ultimately just a fiction, and the true evil in the One Piece world are the higher ups of the World Government who have played the two sides of Pirates and Marines against each other for decades or even centuries, allowing them to quietly maintain their evil and oppressive rule.
So anyway, let’s take a look at Kizaru and watch his slow and gradual descent from man-on-a-mission to a man torn between duty and morality.
Kizaru’s character arc begins with a conversation between he and Saturn:
This scene serves a dual purpose. In the one hand, it simply introduces some of the plot elements we’ll see later. On the other hand, it as the dichotomy between who we thought Kizaru was and who Kizaru actually is. Pre timeskip, Kizaru came off as a cold, heartless man who didn’t care about anything but his mission, and this is represented by Saturn who tells Kizaru to ignore a fight with Sentomaru.
Kizaru rejects this idea purely on principal. Again, we are seeing the difference between the cold and calculating man Kizaru seemed to be pre timeskip, and the principled man Kizaru actually is.
This scene also dichotomizes Saturn, an insect demon who cares nothing for human life (who he views as insects) and will kill anyone and everyone to accomplish his mission, and Kizaru who will directly be forced to grapple with being ordered to kill his long-time friends in the coming arc.
So Kizaru of course ignores Saturn’s order and engages Sentomaru anyway:
Right off the bat the tone of this fight is a sporting one between lifelong master and apprentice, not a “I’m going to kill you no matter what” fight. As the fight proceeds, Kizaru is reminded of the time he originally met Sentomaru as a child:
And gets caught up in his emotions.
Kizaru gets downplayed by some for this fight, but again, this wasn’t a bloodlusted Kizaru being ordered to kill a criminal, this was a lifelong master battling his lifelong apprentice on sheer principle. There was zero way Kizaru wanted to kill or seriously harm Sentomaru here.
After this, Kizaru engages Luffy and we get this:
Where Kizaru tells Luffy that he does not want to kill Vegapunk, whom he has explicitly been ordered to kill. We are seeing the beginnings of a man who knows what is expected of him and what his orders are, grappling with the morality of killing someone he has considered a friend for a long time.
This is Oda being as obvious as he can, explicitly telling us that Kizaru is going to do a pretty sloppy job here, because again, Kizaru does not want to follow the orders he has been given, and he is grappling with those orders emotionally.
This continues as Kizaru destroys the Vegaforce One:
We can see the look of remorse on Kizaru’s face as he recalls the joy of seeing the Vegaforce One completed in his youth.
This is where I’m going to ask you guys to read between the lines a little bit. The purpose of Oda drawing Kizaru recalling Vegapunk’s joyful reaction to the completion of this robot, is because to an extent, this is how Kizaru himself also feels about the Vegaforce One. Hence his reaction of sorrow to seeing it destroyed.
Then Kizaru comes across Bonney:
Let us again read between the lines: “Look how big you are now, Bonney…” again, this is Kizaru getting emotional over seeing someone he last new as a young helpless girl now in “adulthood” so to speak.
Kizaru then tells Bonney he doesn’t want to hurt her or anyone else:
Which again is Oda being as obvious as he can that Kizaru was never going to try and earnestly harm Bonney. More on that later, I promise. Stay with me Fujishiro lol.
Then Kizaru comes face to face with Vegapunk:
And we have to remember that for Kizaru, all of these emotional encounters are piling on top of each other, slowly pushing Kizaru more and more into his feelings. First Sentomaru, then Vegaforce One, then Bonney, and now Vegapunk. From Kizaru’s perspective, he is on the opposing side to characters he has known as “friends” for years of his life. Well get into this more later as well.
For the moment, this is Kizaru this is a difficult mission for him and he doesn’t want to draw this out. Some have used this as evidence that Kizaru was earnestly trying to kill Vegapunk quickly, but again this is where that ability to actually read nuance comes in handy.
If you hand a father a gun, and tell him to kill his child, he’s not going to want to draw that out, but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to instantly put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. Because he’s going to struggle heavily with that action, and actually pulling the trigger is going to be very difficult or even impossible. Kizaru’s actions in Egghead are similar. Just because he says “he doesn’t want to draw this out” doesn’t mean he wasn’t struggling with the emotion of what he’s about to do. And we’ll see more of this later.
This is when Nika intervenes and fights Kizaru:
And Kizaru tells us outright that he doesn’t want to fight with Nika. He is still an Admiral, he still acknowledges that he is expected to fulfill his mission, which has nothing to do with battling Nika. Which is why we don’t ever earnestly see Kizaru’s heart in his first ‘fight’ with Nika. Kizaru’s emotions range from comedic to straight up remorseful, never serious or bloodlusted.
And this not only stems from Kizaru stating he doesn’t want to harm anyone, but this also stems from the fact that Kizaru himself is probably a Nika fan as we will see in just a second. It is here that we go into the Kuma flashback and see more from a younger Kizaru:
Two things we see from a younger Kizaru here.
-“I’m here for business, not pleasure.” Again let’s read between the lines here, this implies that Kizaru does often visit Vegapunk for pleasure and not because he’s ordered to. Which we’ll see in a bit.
-Secondly, the line “I’m sorry, it’s my job…” Again, we are seeing that Kizaru even this far back into the past was struggling with the notion of being expected to balance his duty with his morality. And this is fundamentally what makes (most) Admirals so awesome, the way Oda plays with their notions of responsibility and morality like this.
We get a brief glimpse of these so called “pleasure” visits that Kizaru participates in:
Where we see Kizaru interacting with his friends, including a member of the revolutionary army, and doing the dance of the prophesied WG ender. Again I question the cognitive ability anyone who thinks Kizaru ever seriously wanted to hurt Nika when we find out that Kizaru might just be a damn Nika fan lmfao. Again we are seeing that Kizaru is not the heartless “just following all orders regardless of what they are” Marine. Kizaru is probably motivated by an innate desire to do the right thing and to help people, not to advance any kind of World Government agenda. Which I think may very well be a core reason we may see Kizaru betray the Gorosei and the WG this arc. But more on that as we get more chapters I guess.
If I had one criticism of Kizaru on Egghead, other than the fact that Kizaru doesn’t kill Nika and solo all four Yonko and the Gorosei as he is obviously capable of doing, it is the fact that Oda never tries to really sell us on the friendship between Kizaru and the gang that he will soon be ordered to kill. Like so many things in One Piss, this is left to our imagination in the cursed realm of the off-panel. But nevertheless, I do think Oda at least introduced this scene so we wouldn’t see Kizaru clearly as a Vegapunk’s emotional abuse victim, and we would know that Vegapunk does consider Kizaru a friend on some level.
We also do get to see that Kizaru does in fact have good feelings towards Kuma:
Again the look on Kizaru’s face here. It’s clear that he is quite emotionally moved by Kuma’s loving actions for the sake of his daughter, and the fact that he’s willing to kill himself to give her a chance at life.
And we see more of that here. Kizaru isn’t heartless like Saturn and the Gorosei are, he is a human with a human heart.
We cut back to the present when Bonney is held in Saturn’s clutches and Sentomaru has been captured, and we see Kizaru react with concern for them:
Clearly he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to them, as he hasn’t yet been ordered to kill either of them, and is just now seeing Bonney in a truly lethal situation for the first time.
This is also around the time where Nika mysteriously receives food. I actually do think it was Augur who gave him the food, but I haven’t completely dismissed the notion that it was Kizaru who gave Nika the food from this panel:
As Kizaru suspiciously changes position right as Nika receives the food. And it would make perfect character sense for Kizaru to do this, as we know he doesn’t want Bonney to die and is also quite possibly a Nika fan.
After Kuma punches Saturn, Sanji kicks him, and Franky shoots him, we see this reaction from Kizaru:
And Kizaru is probably acting out of remorse for Kuma here more than anything else, because he knows at this point he’s probably also going to be ordered to kill Kuma for assaulting a Celestial Dragon.
This is why I think he speaks to the Straw Hats in this manner:
“Show me how much you’ve grown!!”
Why would Kizaru want to see how much the Straw Hats have grown? Why would he care? We have to read between the lines a bit, but given the context, I think it’s reasonable to assume that Kizaru actually wants the Straw Hats to save Bonney, Kuma, and Vegapunk. Because as things stand, Oda has given us absolutely no reason to assume Kizaru wants them dead, and a million reasons to believe Kizaru wants them to make it out of this situation alive.
Just before the final Egghead battle begins, we get this:
And again at this point I just can’t help but question the cognitive ability or honesty of anyone who thinks Kizaru is genuinely trying on Egghead when the man basically says he should have brought darker shades so no one can see him crying. Lol
Just imagine for a minute if Kaido got this treatment in Wano. Like if we found out Kaido was lifelong friends with Oden before they fought, or if Kaido was a Luffy fan and didn’t actually want to kill Momonosuke or Kinemon or any of the scabbards, but he felt compelled to do so out of duty…
We should suddenly see Yonko fans warp from the -13 IQ readers they are into people actually capable of perceiving nuance in narrative, also known as Admiral fans lmfao. It is literally incredible to me that people argue that Kizaru’s feats from this point on should even be taken remotely seriously, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
We see more of Kizaru’s melancholy resolve:
As Kizaru prepares himself for what he knows is coming, that he will be ordered directly by the world’s highest authority to murder his loved ones, including a twelve year old child.
We literally see Vegapunk pleading with Kizaru by name here not to proceed with the destruction of Egghead:
And man…just look at Kizaru’s face here, and imagine your loved one pleading with you not to destroy a place that has this much meaning to you. This is almost like emotional torture for Kizaru.
It’s here where we get one of the more controversial scenes from Kizaru:
Where Kizaru plans to murder father and daughter together, quickly and painlessly. And all things considered, I think this is as merciful a death as Kizaru could have hoped to give them. I would also remind you guys that the Marines have committed literal baby genocide before, Kizaru knows there are darker aspects of who the Marines are and what they do. I think in this circumstance this was about the most painless death he could have given them.
I am not arguing that Kizaru is a perfect or even a good person, I think he and all the Admirals are much more complicated than that, which is partly what makes them by far Oda’s best characters, and even at times characters who are so well written it almost seems like Lolda couldn’t have possibly written them.
This may be a controversial take, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Kizaru lets Nika hit him here:
Given that I think it’s reasonable would’ve subconsciously taken any excuse not to actually kill Bonney or Kuma here.
We see his remorse at the idea of having to kill Bonney here:
It’s clear again from the expression on his face that he takes no joy in this.
Some may assume from Kizaru’s words here that he actually wants to kill Bonney, but what he’s actually telling her is that her situation is just hopeless and that escape from Egghead is impossible. It’s pretty plainly apparent Kizaru doesn’t truly want to hurt her.
After Bonney and Kuma “escape” from him, we also see that Kizaru knows that he’ll be in deep shit if he doesn’t start wracking up some heads:
Which again juxtaposes post timeskip Kizaru with pre timeskip Kizaru. Pre timeskip Kizaru also expressed concern at the idea of getting into trouble if he didn’t take Luffy’s head, but Kizaru back then appeared as more of a careerist, wanting to take heads because that was his job. Here things are similar, but with the new context of us getting to see who Kizaru is on a much deeper level.
But then, Kizaru finally does it:
He runs a severely wounded Vegapunk through the chest, and this is just where Kizaru is finished completely. When Nika grabs him, we even see what looks like a tear running down from his eye:
When Kizaru is thrown onto the battleship, we get this:
Where Kizaru describes himself as “deeply wounded”, which is obviously referencing the deep emotional wounds Kizaru has suffered from having to kill Vegapunk, as evidenced by the fact that the Marines can’t seem to find any physical wounds on his body.
And this is where Kizaru’s Egghead character arc ends for now. For anyone who tries to downplay the emotional struggle Kizaru has gone through this arc, or who argues Kizaru’s feats of power are meant to be taken seriously given everything Oda has written to this character, I seriously question how you’ve figured out that food goes into your face hole.
@SakazOuki @Kurozumi Wiwi @The White Crane @Wuuuke @silverfire @scoobie3 @AkainuTheGrimReaper @Apollo @Admiral Mou Bu @ZenZu @Extravlad @kurwa @haxxor @EmperorKinyagi @Blackbeard @Owl Ki @TheKnightOfTheSea @God Buggy @Sentinel @Tyki_Mikk @Veku @Mr. Tuna Sandwich @GoldDiamond @Dragon777 @Weeman @Cadis Etrama Di Urek @Djordje @BaboonMihawk @Negan @The Buddha @Djordje @EvergreenMarine @DarkestKnightofSpoilers
Last edited:
