I think I might figure out a thing or two about Zoan devil fruit Awakenings. It's gonna be long so bear with me here.
As we all know from Kaido's statement, awakenings can be triggered when the devil fruit users mind and body can finally harness their fruit potential.
This might be true for all devil fruits, but for the Zoans, I believe there's more to it.
You see, we first saw awakened Zoan devil fruit users from the Impel down arc with the Jailer Beasts. The ones back then looks strikingly different than Rob Lucci that we have here and imo, the reason for that is because there are 3 types of awakening in Zoans.
You guys might have notice that Zoans may very well be harbor animals souls inside of the fruit. This is backed up by one of the five elders statement that Zoan fruits have minds of their own and that when Vegapunk made inanimate objects ate the fruits, they become animals.
Based on that I believe that after the users mind and body reached their potential, Zoan users needs to harness the Zoans souls inside the fruit. And thus triggering the awakening.
The first awakening form, I believe is the transition form. This one gave the users boosts of powers and endurance, but during this time, the users must keep fighting the Zoan souls inside of them. Kinda like a tug of war inside of the body between the two souls, which make this form really taxing. but I think it can be cancelled at anytime to stop the awakening process.
From the Beast Pirates, in my opinion the ones that manage to achieve this form are Who's who, and Kaido. the reason for this is that Hybrid Zoan usually consist of animal upper jaws and human lower jaws.
Who's who as we can see, doesn't have those and neither does Kaido. Now this form in my opinion is also why Who's who doesn't seems to be that creative in utilizing his Rokushiki and actually lose rather quickly to Jinbe.
Kaido is also the same, his awakening is the buffed up hybrid form. And I think
Kaido also get drunk and constantly change form not only to confuse his opponent, but also to manage his awakening form better. Since constantly fighting both his opponent and his Zoan souls is not only really taxing, but one wrong move he's gonna lose to the Zoan.
Post-timeskip monster form Chopper also fall under this category in my opinion. I believe that Chopper's mind and body does not yet reached its potential to harness his fruit power but he can boost it with the rumble ball, albeit just for a short time. Kinda like a dopping.
After that, we have the second awakening form, which I would call the failed awakening form.
This happened when the Zoan souls defeats the fruit users and take over their body. As Shaka said, there are cases where the awakening completely robs the users from their personalities.
This I believe is what happened to the Jailer Beasts, and once this happened, I don't think there's a way to reverse it, unless they get drowned I guess or thrown into the sea.
Perhaps the reason X Drake didn't use any form of awakening is because he knew about this huge risk and decided he would do best with his hybrid and full dinosaur form.
Pre-timeskip Monster form Chopper also fall under this category. Chopper's mind and body are completely overtaken by his devil fruit, but because his body was still too weak, his life was drained.
The third awakening form is what I would call the True Awakening form. It's the one that Rob Lucci manage to achieve. Unlike the beast like features of the failed ones, this one looks more slender, his face are much more human like, and he also got the cloud ring around the neck and shoulder, which I believe is the mark of the true Zoan awakening.
I also think that we currently have 3 characters that managed to achieve true awakening form.
Aside from Luffy and Lucci, we have Yamato.
Why is that? It's because her hybrid form looks really different from the traditional Zoan hybrid and she also got the cloud ring around her.
How about Luffy's Gear 4th then?
Luffy's Gear 4th is also an awakening form imo. But because he didn't know that he was a Zoan, his form is stuck between true awakening and transition awakening, and thanks to that Luffy's souls keeps fighting Nika Zoan souls when he doesn't even need to do it anymore, draining his power more than it should.
As for the other members of the beast pirates, I believe King's and Jack's hybrid form is also a transition awakening.
They looks different than the traditional Zoan hybrid, but it also doesn't looks like either the failed nor the true one. Also like Kaido, King keeps switching between his forms which led me to believe that he's dealing with his awakening the same way as Kaido did.
Queen and Sasaki, I have no idea tbh. Dinosaur Zoan had this weird abilities that is extraordinary.
It's not an innate ability I suppose since X Drake, Page One and Ulti doesn't seems to possess it.
I think that both Queen and Sasaki might also have unlocked the transition forms, but perhaps they're not fond of using it.
Black Maria's smile like form was due to drugs, as Oda confirmed, but does her fire breathing spider head also the result of the drugs? No clue but it might very well be.
That's all from me, here's a potato for TL;DR
Credits to @vivipacificus on Twitter, Rob Lucci's failed awakening form. He's now Minoleopard, one of impel down's jailer beast.
As we all know from Kaido's statement, awakenings can be triggered when the devil fruit users mind and body can finally harness their fruit potential.
This might be true for all devil fruits, but for the Zoans, I believe there's more to it.
You see, we first saw awakened Zoan devil fruit users from the Impel down arc with the Jailer Beasts. The ones back then looks strikingly different than Rob Lucci that we have here and imo, the reason for that is because there are 3 types of awakening in Zoans.
You guys might have notice that Zoans may very well be harbor animals souls inside of the fruit. This is backed up by one of the five elders statement that Zoan fruits have minds of their own and that when Vegapunk made inanimate objects ate the fruits, they become animals.
Based on that I believe that after the users mind and body reached their potential, Zoan users needs to harness the Zoans souls inside the fruit. And thus triggering the awakening.
The first awakening form, I believe is the transition form. This one gave the users boosts of powers and endurance, but during this time, the users must keep fighting the Zoan souls inside of them. Kinda like a tug of war inside of the body between the two souls, which make this form really taxing. but I think it can be cancelled at anytime to stop the awakening process.
From the Beast Pirates, in my opinion the ones that manage to achieve this form are Who's who, and Kaido. the reason for this is that Hybrid Zoan usually consist of animal upper jaws and human lower jaws.
Who's who as we can see, doesn't have those and neither does Kaido. Now this form in my opinion is also why Who's who doesn't seems to be that creative in utilizing his Rokushiki and actually lose rather quickly to Jinbe.
Kaido is also the same, his awakening is the buffed up hybrid form. And I think
Kaido also get drunk and constantly change form not only to confuse his opponent, but also to manage his awakening form better. Since constantly fighting both his opponent and his Zoan souls is not only really taxing, but one wrong move he's gonna lose to the Zoan.
Post-timeskip monster form Chopper also fall under this category in my opinion. I believe that Chopper's mind and body does not yet reached its potential to harness his fruit power but he can boost it with the rumble ball, albeit just for a short time. Kinda like a dopping.
After that, we have the second awakening form, which I would call the failed awakening form.
This happened when the Zoan souls defeats the fruit users and take over their body. As Shaka said, there are cases where the awakening completely robs the users from their personalities.
This I believe is what happened to the Jailer Beasts, and once this happened, I don't think there's a way to reverse it, unless they get drowned I guess or thrown into the sea.
Perhaps the reason X Drake didn't use any form of awakening is because he knew about this huge risk and decided he would do best with his hybrid and full dinosaur form.
Pre-timeskip Monster form Chopper also fall under this category. Chopper's mind and body are completely overtaken by his devil fruit, but because his body was still too weak, his life was drained.
The third awakening form is what I would call the True Awakening form. It's the one that Rob Lucci manage to achieve. Unlike the beast like features of the failed ones, this one looks more slender, his face are much more human like, and he also got the cloud ring around the neck and shoulder, which I believe is the mark of the true Zoan awakening.
I also think that we currently have 3 characters that managed to achieve true awakening form.
Aside from Luffy and Lucci, we have Yamato.
Why is that? It's because her hybrid form looks really different from the traditional Zoan hybrid and she also got the cloud ring around her.
How about Luffy's Gear 4th then?
Luffy's Gear 4th is also an awakening form imo. But because he didn't know that he was a Zoan, his form is stuck between true awakening and transition awakening, and thanks to that Luffy's souls keeps fighting Nika Zoan souls when he doesn't even need to do it anymore, draining his power more than it should.
As for the other members of the beast pirates, I believe King's and Jack's hybrid form is also a transition awakening.
They looks different than the traditional Zoan hybrid, but it also doesn't looks like either the failed nor the true one. Also like Kaido, King keeps switching between his forms which led me to believe that he's dealing with his awakening the same way as Kaido did.
Queen and Sasaki, I have no idea tbh. Dinosaur Zoan had this weird abilities that is extraordinary.
It's not an innate ability I suppose since X Drake, Page One and Ulti doesn't seems to possess it.
I think that both Queen and Sasaki might also have unlocked the transition forms, but perhaps they're not fond of using it.
Black Maria's smile like form was due to drugs, as Oda confirmed, but does her fire breathing spider head also the result of the drugs? No clue but it might very well be.
That's all from me, here's a potato for TL;DR
Credits to @vivipacificus on Twitter, Rob Lucci's failed awakening form. He's now Minoleopard, one of impel down's jailer beast.
