So 1035 is out and once again, people jumped the gun on the spoilers, believing the provider that said Zoro's finisher looked almost exactly like Ryuma's in Monster. Well, no. That was bait. I'm here to examine some of the dragonslaying material we've received, both in and out of canon and it will become painfully obvious that Zoro vs Karyuudon is not the legend we were promised.
First, let's look at the comparison between Zoro, Ryuuma and Karyuudon.
Zoro and Ryuma very clearly decapitated the dragon, with the emphasis on the head flying away from the body, accompanied by a spray of blood effect.
This is clearly not a decapitation. It's a bisection. Zoro obviously cut the dragon lengthwise.
The spoiler provider also baited the community by stating that Zoro's finisher was a three sword version of Hiryuu Kaen, the attack that Kaido dodged earlier. That... is a massive reach. We don't actually know what Hiryuu Kaen looks like post timeskip, and Hiryuu Kaen is specifically a one-sword technique so a three-sword version of it would be... something else entirely. Not the same technique at all.
Members
@Cinera and
@KiriNigiri have done a better job of explaining this, so I'll only touch on this matter briefly, but dragons are seen as a symbol of established authority, a la the Celestial Dragons. Zoro is represented by a Tiger, symbolising a young upstart trying to take the throne from the old guard and rebuild the world anew. This idea was rehashed in the chapter here:
We were promised a new dragonslaying legend, with much emphasis placed on replicating Ryuuma's dragonslaying legend from long ago:
One Piece Magazine specifically depicts the decapitation from Punk Hazard. Which makes sense, seeing as that scene was the first homage to Ryuuma. I've already shown how Zoro cutting Karyuudon was not a decapitation, so where is the second Ryuuma homage, in which Zoro beheads an Eastern dragon instead?
For those of you who do not know, or simply enjoy lumping all Zoro fans together as a hive mind, I have been historically conservative with predicting ZKK. In Cinera's thread, I gave it a 60% chance, and I still stand by my rating. I have doubts about Oda having Zoro kill a person on-panel in such a gruesome way, but it's also very hard to refute the mountain of evidence that points to Kaido's death. I don't assign ZKK the highest probability of happening, but I think 1035 is far too premature to dismiss the theory either, particularly since we still have this massive plot point left unresolved:
We need Kaido to acknowledge that there still exists a monster samurai on par with Oden. This is a massive, massive plot point and the culmination of the samurai faction's arc, for Kaido to admit that despite his best efforts to stifle and disarm them, that great samurai will continue to rise. Kaido did not witness Zoro's fight with King and pretty much underestimated him all the way until he unleashed Ashura for the first time. Yet Kaido once again turned his attention away from Zoro, and did not see a link between Zoro and the way of the samurai he claims to love. With the Shimotsuki plotline still hanging, there is still time for Zoro to discover that he is, indeed a samurai by blood and re-challenge Kaido to prove him wrong. If Zoro does not prove him wrong, then Kaido, the villain, would be right in his assessment of the samurai. And we can't have that.
I will leave you with the last panel, where Zoro's finisher is called Jingoku, a word that evokes the samurai. Knowing Oda, this is almost certainly pointing towards Zoro formally acknowledging himself as one of them. Now where to from here? To which character would it be most relevant that Zoro considers himself a samurai? That's for you to decide.
