Powers & Abilities Imu's possession ages the vessel

[milluki]

Gunko goes from this

to this

Apart from the eyes, the most striking difference is the length of the hair. Many try to somehow connect this to Lily.
In Gunko's memories, her old self has longer hair that looks like it does now.

Imu taking over your body must strain it. If there was no downside, he would do it more often. It must be like the Energy Steroids from Fishman Island

Hody and his crew grew alot stronger, but they paid a big price for it. The pills were called the National Treasure of Fishman Island. Imu is of course the National Treasure of Maryjoa, Doffy was talking about.

That would explain why some Elders, especially the latest member, and some Knights like Super Sommers look so much older than others with the immortality. They were possessed by Imu more than the rest.

Imu's perfect vessel would then be someone who doesn't age anymore

made a video on that 2,5 years ago already

 

[Natalija]

OR makes the vessel look more like Imu?

 

[OykotsTreasure]

I don't think that makes sense? I guess we'll see, though.

Gunko seems to have known Brook back when she was a kid. Brook is currently 90 years old. That means Gunko is most likely pushing at least 60. Assuming that Gunko actually lived through all that intervening time and there wasn't some sort of "time travel" or "cryogenics" stuff happening in between. She looks good for her age!

If being possessed by Imu made you age faster, she'd...well, she'd basically look like Brook does now, frankly. Gunko seems to have had one eye "possessed" by Imu this entire arc, since one was "white" and the other "black". If anything, it seems like being possessed by Imu actually slows your aging, rather than accelerates it.

I think something else is going on. Notice that Gunko's hair seems to be longer in her flashback when she's calling out for her father. I'm starting to think that Imu's power might be tied to memories. "People die when they're forgotten" (Chapter 145). So, taking the reverse of that...if Imu remembers them...does that mean they cannot die? I think this might just be how Imu "remembers" Gunko. It might also explain Gunko's apparent memory loss. Maybe Imu takes a memory to give people powers? I don't know, I'm still kind of mulling this one over to see if it makes sense.

But, I could very well be wrong about all of this. We should get another clue next chapter.