Most of us have been under the impression that Awakening is a somewhat vague concept that follows the lines of “Your powers can affect your surroundings if that makes sense, otherwise just make it a cool new power”.

With the following, my position is that, as of today, there is a rule that is followed by every known Paramecia Awakening. Putting simply, I’m going to present my case in defense of the original definition as it was told us by Doflamingo back in Dressrosa.

The definition of Awakening.

Doflamingo: “It’s very rare, but some powers can awaken and affect objects aside from the wielder”.

At the start of One Piece, the basic idea of Devil Fruits was that eating the fruit transforms your body in a certain way. Know how people keep explaining their powers like “I’m a rubber man”, “I’m a smoke man”, “I’m a wax man” etc? A Devil Fruit is supposed to do something to your body.

Well, Doffy is telling us that with Awakening, whatever property your body has gained can be given to other things that are not your body.

Now of course that starting definition for Devil Fruit powers has been stretched quite a lot along the series, and a lot of powers clearly are just “ability to do something”, which would seem to defeat our hopes of a consistent rule. Luckily for us, Law’s Ope-Ope fruit’s is one of these more convoluted powers, and his Awakening has been demonstrated to us. So now, we will put Law’s efforts to good use and make it make sense.

It’s important to note that the idea of Awakening, as presented to us by Doflamingo, isn’t that “You can use your power on more things than before”, nor “Your powers get stronger” and certainly not “You get a cool brand new power”. Rather, it’s “Some property that was true for your body, can now be made true for other things”.

We have got 4 explicit examples of Awakening in the series so far: Doflamingo’s Ito-Ito fruit, Katakuri’s Mochi-Mochi fruit, Kid’s Jiki-Jiki fruit and Law’s Ope-Ope fruit. It’s possible we’ve seen Awakening from other Devil Fruit users, but those are the only confirmed ones.

The first three I think are pretty straightforward, and the above explanation works pretty well.

– Doffy could create controllable strings out of his body, now he can make controllable strings out of everything.

– Katakuri could turn his body into Mochi and mold it at will, now he can turn everything into Mochi and mold it at will.

– Kid could make his body a magnet, now he can make something else a magnet.

So what about Law?

Law’s Awakening.

The Ope Ope fruit did not modify Law’s body. It granted him abilities: the ability to create a Room, and the ability to perform operations within it. “Operations” being a general name for all the swaps, cuts, and more precise moves such as Gamma Knife and Injection Shot.

I propose that in Law’s case, the “special property” can be given through Awakening is the “ability to operate within a Room”.

Let’s look at what Law does in Chapter 1030.

Law, for the first time, makes a room that isn’t a sphere, and most importantly that he isn’t in. Instead, he puts it around his sword. I believe at this moment, Law “gives” his sword the ability to operate within the room.

In normal use, Law is the “operator” of his room. He can make operations by doing specific gestures, such as moving his fingers, slashing with his sword and so on. And he’s the only one who can do that.

Kroom, then, is a room that doesn’t have Law as its operator. It’s a room that is “programmed” to do certain things. The Kroom from Chapter 1030 either has the sword as its operator, or doesn’t have an operator (and the sword simply serves as an anchor point).

Notice how after casting anesthesia (that would be the act of anchoring Kroom to the sword), Law doesn’t make any of his gestures that he always does when performing operations. That’s because he’s not the one operating. He has set up an autonomous operation to be performed on Big Mom from his sword, once it’s inside her body.

There you have it. That’s what it means for Law’s “ability-type” Devil Fruit to be Awakened : you can set up instances of your ability to be activated independently from you.

Let me rephrase once more : Law’s normal ability is to create a room where the operator is himself. Law’s Awakened ability is to create a room where the operator is not him.

The “special property” that was true about Law’s body is that he’s the one in control of the room. So, in accordance with the general rule, that property can now be transferred to something else with Awakening.

The Immortality Operation.

A possible consequence of what I’ve explained could be that effects can persist after the death or incapacitation of the user. The reasoning is that if an ability has been set up to work without the user’s action, maybe it doesn’t need the user at all.

We all understand that effects of Devil Fruit powers, even remote ones, normally only remain active as long as you’re conscious (Sugar, Van Der Decken, etc). It’s like those active effects tap into your energy to keep running, or at least they rely on you somehow. Well, if Awakening can make an effect autonomous, then perhaps it doesn’t need you to be around at all.

Don’t you find it strange that the Ope-Ope fruit, on top of everything it can already do, also gets the power to grant immortality? What does that have to do with anything? How does that “operation” work? Sure, with the Ope-Ope fruit you can reorganise organs, stitch things back together and generally perform all kinds of surgery, but surgery is only good for healing people. You can’t heal someone before they’re hurt.

Thus, to keep someone perpetually alive with surgery, you’d need to keep your surgery going forever. But you can’t do that if you’re dead… Unless…?

I then propose that the Immortality Operation is actually the culmination of Awakening for the Ope-Ope fruit, in which you set up an autonomous surgery room inside the recipient’s body to keep operating them forever.

Going one step further, we can imagine that other Devil Fruit Awakenings could also create effects that keep going forever, at the price of the user’s life. Imagine that the user’s life force or soul is required as some sort of fuel for the effect to become eternal.

Alright, that’s it! I’d like to say this can be extended to all similar “ability-type” Devil Fruits, but the truth is we need more examples of Awakening before we can make a statement like that. However, I hope I’ve shown that as it stands, we still have a good idea of what an Awakening should be, and what to expect from Awakenings that are yet to be revealed.

Theory by SalmyGondy (https://www.reddit.com/user/SalmyGondy).

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