Hi
I don't know anything about spiritualities. I don't really care about it and I usually consider "number theorizing" as kind of a shacky ground to say the least... I don't believe any mangaka can pull up such perfect synchronization on a large scale like One Piece. It would feel like cheating. Such person would need an INCREDIBLE precision in planning. Can we really trust Oda with deadlines?.... I played along these hypothesis without according much weight to these often weird cases... So it never cross my mind to really understand the meaning of "888".
But you know me, I believe Carrot to be FAR MORE important that we all think. I've noticed some small yet very weirds narrative choices that together painted a picture so strange, it made me believe for a moment Oda was creating the very basis for a sequel to One Piece with Carrot as a main protagonist. So while watching a reaction to episode 862 today (chapter 888/889), I randomly asked google : "Is there any links between the "sun", the "moon" and the number "888" "
And I kid you not... The FIRST website that popped up had this picture with the title "The Lion portal":
Let me show you the title of chapter 888 for reference:
For this spiritual data in particular, the Lion portal was simply a karmic form of alignments of planets in France, nothing freakinly huge..
----------------------------------
I directly went to "nevermind, it's just coincidental", there is a symbol for anything and it would be logical to see such things pop up. I'm sure I would be able to find funny similarities like that with each chapter number. (I'm trying to control my confirmation bias here people)
But the article was mentionning something about the divinity of the symbolism... (This is why I asked you about it @Blax Blah perhaps you talked about this to me before, but it didn't register).. so I checked on wikipedia and I will not lie, I couldn't really contain my confirmation bias anymore..
Seems like 888 is associated to an interpretation of the name of Jesus. I checked, it doesn't seem to appear in the Bible, but it seems to be highly related to occultist numerology... And the symbolism of the union between the symbol of the moon, the sun, the Dawn and infinity comes back quite often.. For example in the bible:
This 888 Jesus name thing seemed like a very niche knowledge to me and even if there is clearly a form of spiritual representation in Luffy (either boudhist or christian or something else idk), it would be a strange leap to think that Oda even thought about linking that number to his lore specifically for that reason. But we know 888 is not a random chapter, it's heavily linked to Carrot, a character that is a VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE DAWN on a chapter where she takes a Super Sayan 3 meets early Dragon Ball meets Werewolf meets mystical white Nika like transformation.... with the power of the light of the MOON which is the astral body on which is REFLECTED the light of the SUN. Minks becoming "Moon lions" on this moment all while fighting a common representation of Wonder: A genie.
And if I believe google, it's possible that mangakas were heavily influenced by numerology and christic symbols in the 90' with the arrival of Evangelion. So, my first question is "is Oda so much aware of this number that he purposefully made a point to create a VERY SPECIFIC intersection between numerology and his story?"
Now that we know about Imu... creating a parralel between 666 and 888 is not out of the question.... There is a very strong case to be made that Luffy represents the opposite of Imu, and there is a strong case to be made that this prophecy of the end of time mentionned in the verse above, as well as the concept of Ragnarok, are ALL playing a role thematically in the end game of One Piece.
There are already theories mentionning the moon and the sun being blackened by Blackbeard at the end....
But.... WHY is Carrot the center protagonist of this 888 chapter??
Of course Luffy plays a role in it, but the chapter is completely focused on the wonder created by Carrot's transformation, like.. literally:
The design is directly inspired by the entire history of pop culture and etheral/aladdin like mythical creatures of old books and sirens. It is meant to give us an incredible "wow" effect. A wonderous experience that is created (I believe) by the lengh and slowness of the transformation to surpass the effect of any form of Gear pre-Nika. I often explain that while Carrot usually expresses wonder for the world, at this very moment, she becomes the wonder.
So much that I regularily see reactors instantly fall on the Carrot For Nakama train on this 862th episode and ask for goodies..
There is SO MUCH to say about this chapter, alone. I could fill this One Piece section with essays just about this moment and the relationship to Carrot's post as a look-out, but I'm not here for an analysis. I'm write here because I believe that Oda pursposely interesected his story with that precise 888 number in that very SPECIFIC case.
For one reason and one reason only :
What if Carrot was the actual 888?
No. I don't think Carrot is jesus, that would rather be Luffy.
HOWEVER I believe that Carrot can be the missing link between Luffy and Imu, the link between nothingness and the dawn. Darkness and the Sun.
Don't ask me how, I DON'T KNOW.... yet. It's just a gut feeling as always.
Carrot has this particularity to be a direct representation of the Dawn. In fact, she is so much of that representation, that you could make a case that this it was a BIT too much represented. It's like Oda was trying to say all over Whole Cake and Zou "did you get it yet ?" "did you get it now ?" after 30 parrallels.... Like YEA I get it man... jeezz. Oda HAMMERED Carrot's character with so many representations, symbolism and references that it would be ignorant to ignore the fact that he was specifically trying to make a narrative point of importance about this side character.
It's invisible for the casual eye, but I spent month trying to dissect Zou and Whole Cake. It's everywhere.
Anyway... when I see people being dissapointed because Oda left her on zou... yeah, sorry mate, not to me. It's a nothing burger event. Carrot is a traveller, she will stay a traveller, Wonder is in her blood, she only seeks danger. Oda is just trying to make us forget her and it's working for 99.9% of the fanbase. In fact he even confirmed that point himself with the Queen cover page.
(yeah, LOOK AT THE FREAKIN TITLE over this cover page)
Another point... Do you think Oda created a specific drug for the mink JUST for Bepo to Bop BlackBeard and run? Again... Not to me.
Oda has a PLAN for his story. And if there is one thing to retain from the last chapter (1192) and Usopp's word, it's to have faith in the deep understanding of the characters from Oda. He KNOWS his stuff. It might not please everyone, but he understand the characters he writes.
As such, he FULLY understands Carrot. He understands the importance of Perospero's speech. He understands Carrot's journey. He understand the possible dissapointment. And he plans on making her return.
----
To me, 888 needs to be understood as the link between night and day rather that simply the name of "Jesus". In that configuration, Carrot would act as a form of central force, perhaps a sacrificial one (there are reasons to thinks that), perhaps as a future strawhat... perhaps as a form of "queen" or princess.
In a form of event where the Moon becomes deemer and the Sun black.. A moment perhaps, where the new Sulong Ball could be of help perhaps?
Now... As I mentionned, Carrot is both the Sun and the moon. We talked about the Moon Lion... But could there be another form of transformation?
The Sun Lion?
Nothing is clear, it's all but vague speculation with a strong gut feeling. But please, keep all that in mind. It could be meaningfull one day. (I wrote this thread half asleep, don't mind me if it's not very rationnal)
I don't know anything about spiritualities. I don't really care about it and I usually consider "number theorizing" as kind of a shacky ground to say the least... I don't believe any mangaka can pull up such perfect synchronization on a large scale like One Piece. It would feel like cheating. Such person would need an INCREDIBLE precision in planning. Can we really trust Oda with deadlines?.... I played along these hypothesis without according much weight to these often weird cases... So it never cross my mind to really understand the meaning of "888".
But you know me, I believe Carrot to be FAR MORE important that we all think. I've noticed some small yet very weirds narrative choices that together painted a picture so strange, it made me believe for a moment Oda was creating the very basis for a sequel to One Piece with Carrot as a main protagonist. So while watching a reaction to episode 862 today (chapter 888/889), I randomly asked google : "Is there any links between the "sun", the "moon" and the number "888" "
And I kid you not... The FIRST website that popped up had this picture with the title "The Lion portal":
Let me show you the title of chapter 888 for reference:
For this spiritual data in particular, the Lion portal was simply a karmic form of alignments of planets in France, nothing freakinly huge..
----------------------------------
I directly went to "nevermind, it's just coincidental", there is a symbol for anything and it would be logical to see such things pop up. I'm sure I would be able to find funny similarities like that with each chapter number. (I'm trying to control my confirmation bias here people)
But the article was mentionning something about the divinity of the symbolism... (This is why I asked you about it @Blax Blah perhaps you talked about this to me before, but it didn't register).. so I checked on wikipedia and I will not lie, I couldn't really contain my confirmation bias anymore..
Seems like 888 is associated to an interpretation of the name of Jesus. I checked, it doesn't seem to appear in the Bible, but it seems to be highly related to occultist numerology... And the symbolism of the union between the symbol of the moon, the sun, the Dawn and infinity comes back quite often.. For example in the bible:
This 888 Jesus name thing seemed like a very niche knowledge to me and even if there is clearly a form of spiritual representation in Luffy (either boudhist or christian or something else idk), it would be a strange leap to think that Oda even thought about linking that number to his lore specifically for that reason. But we know 888 is not a random chapter, it's heavily linked to Carrot, a character that is a VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE DAWN on a chapter where she takes a Super Sayan 3 meets early Dragon Ball meets Werewolf meets mystical white Nika like transformation.... with the power of the light of the MOON which is the astral body on which is REFLECTED the light of the SUN. Minks becoming "Moon lions" on this moment all while fighting a common representation of Wonder: A genie.
And if I believe google, it's possible that mangakas were heavily influenced by numerology and christic symbols in the 90' with the arrival of Evangelion. So, my first question is "is Oda so much aware of this number that he purposefully made a point to create a VERY SPECIFIC intersection between numerology and his story?"
Now that we know about Imu... creating a parralel between 666 and 888 is not out of the question.... There is a very strong case to be made that Luffy represents the opposite of Imu, and there is a strong case to be made that this prophecy of the end of time mentionned in the verse above, as well as the concept of Ragnarok, are ALL playing a role thematically in the end game of One Piece.
There are already theories mentionning the moon and the sun being blackened by Blackbeard at the end....
But.... WHY is Carrot the center protagonist of this 888 chapter??
Of course Luffy plays a role in it, but the chapter is completely focused on the wonder created by Carrot's transformation, like.. literally:
The design is directly inspired by the entire history of pop culture and etheral/aladdin like mythical creatures of old books and sirens. It is meant to give us an incredible "wow" effect. A wonderous experience that is created (I believe) by the lengh and slowness of the transformation to surpass the effect of any form of Gear pre-Nika. I often explain that while Carrot usually expresses wonder for the world, at this very moment, she becomes the wonder.
So much that I regularily see reactors instantly fall on the Carrot For Nakama train on this 862th episode and ask for goodies..
There is SO MUCH to say about this chapter, alone. I could fill this One Piece section with essays just about this moment and the relationship to Carrot's post as a look-out, but I'm not here for an analysis. I'm write here because I believe that Oda pursposely interesected his story with that precise 888 number in that very SPECIFIC case.
For one reason and one reason only :
What if Carrot was the actual 888?
No. I don't think Carrot is jesus, that would rather be Luffy.
HOWEVER I believe that Carrot can be the missing link between Luffy and Imu, the link between nothingness and the dawn. Darkness and the Sun.
Don't ask me how, I DON'T KNOW.... yet. It's just a gut feeling as always.
Carrot has this particularity to be a direct representation of the Dawn. In fact, she is so much of that representation, that you could make a case that this it was a BIT too much represented. It's like Oda was trying to say all over Whole Cake and Zou "did you get it yet ?" "did you get it now ?" after 30 parrallels.... Like YEA I get it man... jeezz. Oda HAMMERED Carrot's character with so many representations, symbolism and references that it would be ignorant to ignore the fact that he was specifically trying to make a narrative point of importance about this side character.
It's invisible for the casual eye, but I spent month trying to dissect Zou and Whole Cake. It's everywhere.
Anyway... when I see people being dissapointed because Oda left her on zou... yeah, sorry mate, not to me. It's a nothing burger event. Carrot is a traveller, she will stay a traveller, Wonder is in her blood, she only seeks danger. Oda is just trying to make us forget her and it's working for 99.9% of the fanbase. In fact he even confirmed that point himself with the Queen cover page.
(yeah, LOOK AT THE FREAKIN TITLE over this cover page)
Another point... Do you think Oda created a specific drug for the mink JUST for Bepo to Bop BlackBeard and run? Again... Not to me.
Oda has a PLAN for his story. And if there is one thing to retain from the last chapter (1192) and Usopp's word, it's to have faith in the deep understanding of the characters from Oda. He KNOWS his stuff. It might not please everyone, but he understand the characters he writes.
As such, he FULLY understands Carrot. He understands the importance of Perospero's speech. He understands Carrot's journey. He understand the possible dissapointment. And he plans on making her return.
----
To me, 888 needs to be understood as the link between night and day rather that simply the name of "Jesus". In that configuration, Carrot would act as a form of central force, perhaps a sacrificial one (there are reasons to thinks that), perhaps as a future strawhat... perhaps as a form of "queen" or princess.
In a form of event where the Moon becomes deemer and the Sun black.. A moment perhaps, where the new Sulong Ball could be of help perhaps?
Now... As I mentionned, Carrot is both the Sun and the moon. We talked about the Moon Lion... But could there be another form of transformation?
The Sun Lion?
Nothing is clear, it's all but vague speculation with a strong gut feeling. But please, keep all that in mind. It could be meaningfull one day. (I wrote this thread half asleep, don't mind me if it's not very rationnal)
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