Questions & Mysteries So why didn’t the WG catch Luffy sooner?

[Awayeah]

I always wondered why Garp sent Luffy to Dadan, hiding him with bandits, only after Luffy met Shanks and ate the Gomu Gomu. Last minute adition or not, this might turn out to be a reason.

We gotta find out how much Garp really knows. Given God Valley incident, he might really have found out important stuff and maybe changed the way he thought and acted for the government.

 

[Date]

Imu have Alzheimer

 

[M944]

I think it's because OP wasn't planned to be that long
Remember Oda said that OP was mainly the story of someone fighting against Younkos
No he just want to finish the story quickly

 

[Garp the Fist]

This is great logic. The only other problem is the gorosei has known Luffy lineage. Son of Dragon, Grandson of Garp, sworn brother of Ace. You should expect him to pull of the impossible.

That’s why it’s important to have other people having ate the fruit over tge centuries.

If there’s been tons of Gomu Gomu users, some strong, some weak, some Ds, some not, and none of them have been able to awaken it in 800 years then the Gorosei being a bit complacent is fine. They know they should keep an eye out for the fruit, they’re really pissed off that they had it in their grasps and WW lost it, but ultimately they just think of Luffy as one more in a long line of failures. Eight hundred years is a very long time after all. It’s enough to be concerned about- and they were concerned about him since Alabasta- but it’s not drastic panic stations. It’s only when Zunisha also shows up in the middle of a fight with Kaido in Wano that they shit themselves, cause Zunisha + Wano + Gomu Gomu + serious fight = Joy Boy return.

But if Luffy is literally the only other person who has ate the fruit then there’s no way of getting around them being complete idiots.

 

[Mr. Tuna Sandwich]

They didn't capture him because reasons

 

[DonWick]

That’s why it’s important to have other people having ate the fruit over tge centuries.

If there’s been tons of Gomu Gomu users, some strong, some weak, some Ds, some not, and none of them have been able to awaken it in 800 years then the Gorosei being a bit complacent is fine. They know they should keep an eye out for the fruit, they’re really pissed off that they had it in their grasps and WW lost it, but ultimately they just think of Luffy as one more in a long line of failures. Eight hundred years is a very long time after all. It’s enough to be concerned about- and they were concerned about him since Alabasta- but it’s not drastic panic stations. It’s only when Zunisha also shows up in the middle of a fight with Kaido in Wano that they shit themselves, cause Zunisha + Wano + Gomu Gomu + serious fight = Joy Boy return.

But if Luffy is literally the only other person who has ate the fruit then there’s no way of getting around them being complete idiots.

I agree with this.

 

[NAMELESS]

I think the secret about the gomu gomu no mi's true name was lost in time to even the WG,becoming just a legend.Maybe Shanks warned the Gorosei about Luffy.

 

[Sakura no Hiluluk]

Well, they tried, they just couldn’t.

The first the Gorosei are aware of him is after Alabasta. Luffy gies shooting up to Skypiea after that.

Then Aokiji goes hunting him down. He says that’s he’s always paid attention to Luffy (probably because he’s Garp’s grandson) and he’s frightened of his potential. He could have captured Luffy if he wanted, but didn’t.

Then they strike the deal with Robin that she comes in exchange for the Strawhats freedom. Would they have been better just capturing them both, yes. Here’s where it’s important that Luffy is not the only person who has eaten the Gomu Gomu since Joy Boy. If there has been eight hundred years worth of ‘failed’ GG eaters, then it makes sense he’s not a huge priority and they chose to focus on Robin instead.

If there hasn’t been, horrible mistake.

EL finishes, again, Garp and Kuzan don’t do their jobs. Luffy escapes to Thriller Bark, Kuma, again, does not do his job.

Saobody, Kizaru does do his job, but Ray and Kuma get in the way.

ID and Marineford, they try to kill Luffy, doesn’t work. Vanishes for two years. Resurfaces again, in PH Smoker tries to hunt Luffy down but works with him instead. Also couldn’t actually capture Luffy if he wanted to.

Appears on Dressrosa, if Fujitora does his job he’s captured. Instead he… does not.

Then Zou and WCI, out of WG aim, and Wano, where the legendary Mr Go finally has the chance to intervene.

So this is not one of the areas where I’m overly bothered with the reveal. Luffy’s escaped mostly because of Admirals not being mindless slaves to the World Gov (do they even know about Nika) and powerful people protecting him when he was weaker. The only wrinkle is W7 where they chose to focus on Robin instead of him, that can only be explained by them

-not knowing Luffy had the fruit (possible, but makes them incompetent)
-knowing, but not caring because many others have eaten it over the years.

Oda really needs to go for the second option.

To add to that, the WG went and hide the name of the fruit for 800 years. Them having a whole "okay ditch eevrything and capture that one rookie" would have went against that. Plus, it had been 800 years indeed, so they may have believed that it was okay to not prioritize Luffy when there was far bigger players out there and that they may have expected another pirate to fell him.

 

[OEKaneki]

Smoker was after him in Alabasta and they sent Hina and a blockade after him. They sent Garp after him in W7, while Aokiji was right there. They sent Kuma after him. They sent Kizaru and the Pacifista after him, and Kuma showed up again. They left him to the devices of Magellan, a prison warden so effective that the prison he guarded had seen a breakout *one* time inits history. They sent all three admirals after him, and every vice admiral, *and* Garp and Sengoku joined in. Smoker was after him in PH, and they sent Fujitora to aid a Warlord in Dressrosa. They sent a CP0 agent after him, thereby risking the wrath of one of the five stronest people in the world (the other three Yonko and Dragon) to kill him *during that fight*.

"But the could have done more!!!"

Besides what they already did, did it ever occur to anyone that if they sent more than the standard for someone who, at the beginning of the series, was supposedly just a normal rookie with a normal fruit, that daddy, who is quite intelligent based on the fact he runs an entire clandestine operation and hasn't been caught, and who is their mortal enemy and seeks to overthrow them (that without saying anything of his surely monstrous strength), that he might question why the World Government was going so hard for his son, beyond the norm even considering his family?

The answer is, of course, no, becuase the people that were going to hate this were always going to hate this.

 

[Rej]

Plotarmor, also Oda kept his story dynamic until the very end.
Also this plotarmor is legit and we can always imagine that someone like Shanks or Garp were holding back the Gorosei.

 

[R A I T E I I I]

Either plot hole or our boy @Paperchampion23 was right all long

 

[Paperchampion23]

Either plot hole or our boy @Paperchampion23 was right all long

I'm definitely a little less confident on that now considering how info was presented this chapter, but Oda is notorious for things like this and not explaining it until way later.


A big example I can give is Ace going to Wano. This seemed normal until it was revealed that Kaido ruled Wano for over 20 years. So then the question became why Ace didn't die fighting Kaido/subjugated to him or have Whitebeard help him in saving the country. People chalked it up as a major plothole.Until it wasn't and it was reasonably explained.


So I say the same thing here. The Gorosei "act" like they've known everything since the beginning, but because we, the readers, can't determine if they truly did or if they were told this information recently, we can't fully be sure.

All I'll say is that you can see in 1037, they didn't believe that it was true:

The dialogue is intentionally confusing here. We don't know how the conversation started because literally the page before, they are exclusively talking about Robin and capturing her.

 

[Deleted member 10278]

It’s a retcon, simple as that. You can attempt to explain a thousand different ways, but that doesn’t change the reality of what it is. Now there’s good retcons and bad retcons, how the World Government didn’t either know or catch him all this time makes them look nothing short of retarded.

 

[Owari Da]

just wg things, being as incompetent as always.

 

[Paperchampion23]

It’s a retcon, simple as that. You can attempt to explain a thousand different ways, but that doesn’t change the reality of what it is. Now there’s good retcons and bad retcons, how the World Government didn’t either know or catch him all this time makes them look nothing short of retarded.

It's not a retcon until we know context. We don't know if they knew the fruit was Nika the WHOLE time. Read 1037....they denied it was possible until they convinced themselves it might be

 

[Rednick]

Ok i really dont wanna be mean but i swear, so many people in this forum have bad comprehension skills.
The answer to your question is in chapter 1037. The gorosei thought of the nika fruit as a mere myth. So they werent even sure if this mythical fruit was real or not. Why to hunt sth that its possibly not real?
The gorosei also said that the fruit hasnt allegedly been awakened for 800 years. So even if the nika fruit wasnt a myth, the possibilities of luffy awakening should be extremely low. At that point wg had much bigger threats to deal with rather than luffy. The 4 yonko and the existence of nico robin for example.

 

[Garp the Fist]

Ok i really dont wanna be mean but i swear, so many people in this forum have bad comprehension skills.
The answer to your question is in chapter 1037. The gorosei thought of the nika fruit as a mere myth. So they werent even sure if this mythical fruit was real or not. Why to hunt sth that its possibly not real?
The gorosei also said that the fruit hasnt allegedly been awakened for 800 years. So even if the nika fruit wasnt a myth, the possibilities of luffy awakening should be extremely low. At that point wg had much bigger threats to deal with rather than luffy. The 4 yonko and the existence of nico robin for example.

The problem is Who’s Who.

Even if they thought it was a myth, they obviously still took it seriously enough to hunt down the fruit, and imprisoned a talented agent with bags if potential as punishment for using it.

And Who’s Who was aware that it was Luffy who ate the fruit.

So it obviously shows that the Gorosei took the threat of the Gomu Gomu seriously to at least some extent, and if WW was aware that it was Luffy that had eaten the fruit, then the Gorosei certainly should have been aware as well.

The idea that the didn’t take the potential of Luffy’s fruit seriously is the only good answer, but even that has it’s problems- why on earth did they not take a D, the son of Dragon, grandson of Garp, associate of Rayleigh, wearing a Strawhat like the one in Mariejois, caused chaos from the minute he started sailing, seriously?

Which is why it really needs to be the case that other, impressive, people have eaten the fruit in the centuries since and all of them have failed to awaken it.

 

[Celestial D. Dragon]

There was never any lack of trying to capture Luffy in the series.

The question you guys want to be asking, is how come we were never told about the World Governments interest in the Gomu Gomu no Mi.

The answer is extremely simple. The author simply didn't want the audience to know there was anything special about the Devil Fruit, until he was ready to reveal it. Say, he had planned from the beginning to reveal the secret behind the Gomu Gomu no Mi on Wano. He's not going to deviate from that. Same reason he doesn't reveal anything about the Void Century, or the One Piece, or the countless other mysteries. He has a clear cut vision of where and when these plot points are going to be addressed. Any competent author isn't going to sacrifice their vision in lieu of upsetting a bunch of keyboard critics, who couldn't write a coherent story if they had a gun to their head.

 

[Finalbeta]

Same reason why Kizaru failed to kill Luffy after he was ordered too and had a clean shot yet missed

Rationalizing Oda san is simply impossible sometime.

In fact I expect some new PIS scenario to come into place soon enough, no matter how concerned the Government was supposed to be for centuries.

 

[PurpleSwordsman]

There was never any lack of trying to capture Luffy in the series.

The question you guys want to be asking, is how come we were never told about the World Governments interest in the Gomu Gomu no Mi.

The answer is extremely simple. The author simply didn't want the audience to know there was anything special about the Devil Fruit, until he was ready to reveal it. Say, he had planned from the beginning to reveal the secret behind the Gomu Gomu no Mi on Wano. He's not going to deviate from that. Same reason he doesn't reveal anything about the Void Century, or the One Piece, or the countless other mysteries. He has a clear cut vision of where and when these plot points are going to be addressed. Any competent author isn't going to sacrifice their vision in lieu of upsetting a bunch of keyboard critics, who couldn't write a coherent story if they had a gun to their head.

This is the total opposite of a "competent author" lmao.
Super Copium.