Now that we’re in Onigashima, I think we have an even clearer picture of Wano’s nature. I feel like the little island being consisted of the ridiculously big skull of a creature and it’s equally enormous katana more or less validated the theories on Wano being artificially created by bringing lands from all over the world together by a creature from the continent puller race oars belong to. Oars body being frozen in Wano was already making this possibility more prominent, but seeing the skull of something even bigger almost confirmed it.
Why Wano Is Made:
With other clues surrounding the isolationist nature of Wano, World Government’s lack of influence around the region, and the geographical structure of the place being in a huge lake elevated on top a steep mountain gives me the impression of this act of creation being a protective one in nature. Wano is made to withstand until the dawn arrives. It’s a haven for the relics, peoples, areas of the world that need to present in the dawn to come.
We know that the characters more in the know of what’s going on like Toki and Oden display overprotective behaviour about Wano and its people’s survival. No matter how much they lost personally, like people they loved, their reputation, their titles and finally their lives, they almost display a sort of calm acceptance with the knowledge of what’s at stake. We feel like all regions in Wano and its people hold some sort of importance and they are meant to be protected until the dawn of the world, until the day new Joy Boy arrives.
If this is indeed true, that this creation process wasn’t just because of a whim of the continent puller itself or it didn’t have some malicious intent behind it, it’s reasonable to assume the only person that can give such an order at the time was the fallen sovereign of the world, the Joy Boy of his time.
The Oni Legacy:
Kaido’s obsession with the Oni legacy was pretty much established. His renaming of the island to Onigashima, the way he names his plan for supremacy also based on Onigashima already proved his interest in the subject. But this chapter (1025) him berating Yamato and talking about what it means to be an Oni and how an Oni should behave really nailed the point home. His choice of words referring to a past where either himself or his kind was seemingly betrayed as a result of people’s fear of perceived strength was also telling.
He sees humankind as his inferiors, so I don’t think he is happy with the part that his ancestors’ played and their eventual fate. I think the way his ancestors went out marked their whole legacy and that legacy was shameful. So, I don’t think Kaido’s obsession with the importance of how you die didn’t start with Rocks as many claimed. It started with his people’s history.
In that case, what’s the relationship this has with the nation of wano? Why is upholding that legacy something that can only be done there? And more importantly how did Kaido come to know how special Wano is?
Villains of Wano:
All villains in One Piece really stand for an idea. What they represent clashes with Luffy’s values, and through that conflict Oda makes whatever point he wants to make in the grander scheme of things. As things stand now, Wano seems to have two different villains with two separate back stories and possibly constructing different themes. But that’s not how One Piece works usually. As arcs come to a close, all of the separate ideas going about before that point elegantly come together.
Orochi is one half of the source of Wano’s current plights. This is a revenge story (which is rarer in One Piece than you’d think). What kickstarted his crusade against Wano was the injustices done by the supposedly good guys of the story. People of Wano viciously persecuted anyone belonging to the Kurozumi bloodline. As a proponent of the idea that Tama is a Kurozumi and this family feud ending with Momo apologizing to her, I want to reiterate what I said in my previous theory: I think Kurozumis are one of the peoples that needs to be there for the dawn, and through them, we’re exploring the case of inner conflict between the people that meant to survive together but cannot because of faults within them as humans.
What does Kaido have to do with this? He is someone coming across as much more in the know than people like Orochi. Kaido sounds pretty convinced that you shouldn’t trust samurai. I think that’s because the tainted legacy of the Oni happened at the hands of the same people, but way back when Wano was getting pieced back together. And through the part his kind played in that creation and what followed, Kaido knows about things very few are privy to. The Oni fell victim to the same close mindedness and fear that was about to burn mink dukes at the stake. Maybe as a side effect of the isolated life they had to endure, they feared the Oni and turned on them in the same way.
One half of Wano’s plight was born from the atrocities of the people in Oden’s time, and the other half was born from the atrocities of the people in Toki’s time. And these two villains actually are the two sides of the same story. If Kaido has a tie to the times of Wano’s creation, the next question would be what was the nature of that relationship?
Descendants of The Continent Pullers:
Although there are a few possibilities about this part, one interesting fact is the many similarities between the Oni and the ancient giant race who we presumed to build Wano itself. Visually, their teeth and horns have pretty much the same shape. Beyond that, Kaido called the castle he built inside an ancient giant skull, Onigashima, Den of Oni. So we could speculate, he might be a descendant of the continent pullers directly.
There seem to be a few differences though. Kaido is almost 10 times smaller, and seems like he is a lot smarter to go with it. His daughter/son combo is even smaller. Yamato does have horns, but seems even less like the ancient giants. But interestingly, Kaido doesn’t outright state they are Oni. He mentions having the blood of The Oni instead. Was Yamato’s parents human? Was either of Kaido’s parents human? If this is the case it makes Kaido’s stake in Wano stronger than most. We can’t be sure, but they got cast out of the safe haven they built or have some rightful place in.
One thing we can be more sure of, is that the answer to these questions will tie back to a third loose end we have in the story: Toki. She still has her story to tell, and it seems like there’s a decent chance her origins might be closely related to Kaido’s. What did she escape from? What was the reason that made her hate her fate?
Either way, just like we have a chance to mend the wrongs done to Kurozumis through Tama, through Yamato, Wano and the Oni will have a chance to repair the harm they’ve done to each other.
What does Kaido Want?
Let’s try to bring it all together. Kaido knows why Wano was created, and he knows exactly what needs to happen for that purpose to be fulfilled after 800 years. Kaido seems exceedingly interested in that future event. With possibly two purposes: either to get vengeance on the reappearing Joy Boy or people of Wano for what happened to their kin, or die an epic death while trying to achieve that in an impossible fight. An epic death will redefine the final legacy of Oni and the way they went out in the world. That’s why he sought the country. He conquered it with a sense of purpose and his interest was way bigger than just creating weapon factories, which he could get from anywhere else.
I believe the story is quickly moving towards a flashback that will serve as the context for Kaido, and context for Wano, and fill us in on the Toki’s mysterious origins, bringing many of the active plot threads together at once.
Theory by fakalitt (https://www.reddit.com/user/fakalitt)
