Everything You Need to Know About Nerona Imu - A Mega Post
Intro
After 250+ chapters – eight years of real time – we finally got the BIG reveal of Imu’s appearance aaand… it’s pretty much what we expected it to be: Imu is One Piece’s version of “the Devil”.
There was always a bit of a dilemma – at least for me – If Imu is meant to represent God, or the Devil, but his appearance – that of the classical depiction of the Devil – alongside his “The Devil’s Fruit”, now makes it pretty clear.
In fact, I think we all low-balled just how strong the Devil influence would be, because Imu straight up is just Satan a.k.a. Lucifer.
Alexandre Cabanel - Fallen Angel
While his appearance doesn’t tell us the full story, the last time I wrote about Imu, we didn’t even know what he looks like. Now that we do, I think we can piece together the information we have so far in one piece through John Milton’s epic poem, by the name of…
Paradise Lost
“Paradise Lost is an epic poem about the biblical story of the fall of man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. At the center of the story are the themes of free will and the moral consequences of disobedience, addressing questions of predestination, human agency, and the nature of good and evil.”
You might be thinking that this seems random: why would this book specifically have anything to do with One Piece? But Oda is a well-known book nerd, and no stranger to using famous literary classics as inspiration for his own story.
From the names of Whitebeard’s ship (Moby-Dick), Doflamingo’s family name (Don Quixote), to the Fishman Island arc being Oda’s take on Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, and the entire premise of One Piece being the same as that of Around the World in Eighty Days, you can see Oda incorporate some of the most famous literary stories into his own.
You can already recognize the similarities in the themes explored in both One Piece and Paradise Lost (specifically, the “free will” and “human agency”), but what I want to draw attention to is the obvious “biblical influence” surrounding Imu, as well as the latest few arcs of One Piece.
We’ve had things like Treasure Tree Adam and the Sunlight Tree Eve for quite a while now, which are obviously referencing the aforementioned Adam and Eve, and the giant ship Noah, which is a reference to Noah’s Ark. But this goes way further – back to the first time the Straw Hats set foot in Grand Line. To avoid simply listing every single reference, I will stick to what is important.
The (Mu’s) World
Several times throughout the story, Imu is referred to as “the World”, by a couple of different characters (Rocks and Blackbeard Pirates).
To our understanding this is because Imu is – not only the ruler, but also “the creator” (another thing he is referred to as) of this world; and Imu is aiming to change his creation by the means of sinking (flooding) it. We are assuming this to be the case because Imu states his (Mu’s) world is “incomplete”.
This is interesting because the name of the first part of the Grand Line is called “Paradise”, which is self-explanatory as to what it references, while the second one is called “The New World”. What’s additionally interesting about this naming is that “Paradise” is writen in katakana as “Paradaisu”, after the English world itself (and not something like “Tengoku”), while the New World is in Japanese as “Shinsekai”.
To me, this is clearly a reference to Paradise Lost: Satan gets banished from the titular Paradise after his loss in battle with God and, sometimes later, decides to corrupt the “new world” created by God through the corruption of Adam and Eve.
Grand Line’s Paradise represents the “old world” that existed before the creation of the Red Line, while the New World represets, well, the “new world” created after the Grand Line’s separation by the Red Line.
I know there is a long running debate if the Red Line is a natural or artificial creation, and by no means is it confirmed that it’s artificial, but there is a lot of evidence supporting this notion, and it’s pilling on. This is the “Imu’s world”.
The question is why? What is Imu’s goal and why does he want to change the world?
Better to Reign in Hell than Serve in Heaven
When Imu “descends” on Elbaph, he can be seen coughing blood, and clearly in pain. Now, this could be simply due to overexertion – maybe teleporting himself takes a lot of energy and effort; or maybe he is simply sick/wounded. However, the language used by the Gorosei, paints a completely different picture.
Gorosei explicitly said that “descending to the lower world” will have consequences on Imu, implying the mere act of going “down/lower” will somehow harm him, which we see is true when he spits blood.
This is from the OFFICIAL translation of Chapter 1179
The specific wording used for the Chapter title, “descends”, is clearly meant to evoke the imagery of God, or rather an Angel, descending from Heaven (which is how the place where the Celestial Dragons live is referred as). And the usage of “lower”, points towards the altitude having significance. It seems clear that being at low altitude, closer to the sea, physically harms Imu, which is why he lives so high up on the Red Line.
The entire purpose of rising the sea level is an effort to “terraform” the Blue Planet to make it more hospitable for Imu, and that is the reason why “Mu’s World” is not yet complete.
Why does the Blue Planet’s climate harm one of its inhabitants? It’s because Imu is not one of them. Imu is not of this planet…
The Moon
Many have drawn comparison between Imu’s appearance and Hagoromo Otsutsuki from Naruto, and I believe this is intentional by Oda. Not because I think he wants the readers to draw comparison between the two characters, but instead where they come from: the Moon (Space).
Both Imu and Hagoromo seem to take inspiration from the same source – they are these otherworldly, alien figures, and it shows in their designs. On his body, Imu has something resembling the Eye of Rah/Horus (a.k.a. Wedjat-eyes), on the back of his palm, but also these angular lines mixed with circular spots that resembles a circuit board, mixing up the elements of supernatural (Egyptian mythology) and science-fictional (“alien” technology).
Now, One Piece is no stranger to aliens: Skypieans, Birkans and Shandians are all confirmed to come from the Moon, and we even have other type of aliens in Enel’s Cover Story.
There are even theories that Lunarias come from the Moon, due to their namesake (Luna = Moon). However, we need to think BIGGER – further, because I believe Lunarians, and Imu, come from outer (deep) space (it would explain the advance technology said to be used by the Ancient Kingdome).
There has been some debate if Imu’s dark skin color, mixed with the white hair, is because he is a Lunarian, or simply due to his “The Devil’s Fruit” making his skin red (which shows as dark gray in black and white format). I, however, am positive, regardless if his skin color is red or brown, that he is indeed a Lunarian, or related to Lunarians (e.g. Imu is the progenitor of the races on the Blue Planet, and is to Lunarians what Ancient Giants are to Giants).
The reason for this is two-fold:
First, the less important one is that in the 1000+ Chapters of the Manga, King, a Lunarian, is THE ONLY character to ever be drawn using a different shade for his skin.
The shade varies depending on the scan quality, but King is indeed a darker shade than other characters.
Not even the brightly colored Oars (Red) and Oars Jr. (Yellow) were shaded differently.
This is mostly because Oda has stated that using shaders is time consuming and hard. The only other example of Oda using shaders is for Shanks’ red hair (I guess now Shamrock, as well).
The other reason is a much more important one: a big part of the Devil’s lore is that Lucifer/Satan is seen as a Fallen Angel (in Christianity and Islam).
The Fallen Angel, Imu
Lunarians are very obviously meant to be One Piece’s representation of Angels – Seraphs (or Seraphim), to be more precise: the highest order of Angels, known as “the burning ones”.
Angels (Middle), Seraphim (Right), Cherub (Left): Byzantine Orthodox Art
The Warlords clones (SSG), which incorporate Lunarian DNA/Lineage factor in their creation, are even called Seraphim, after the very angels they are meant to embody.
Usually, when Lucifer gets banished from Heaven, he also symbolically, and quite literally, loses his angel wings. We can even briefly see Imu seemingly “growing” wings when he is about to teleport to the surface, and again we can fully see them in Chapter 1180.
Additionally, Gunko grows a pair of bat-wings when she gets possessed by Imu.
The ring with eyes on Imu’s back also looks similar to Ophanim a.k.a. wheels a.k.a. “the many-eyed ones”: the Angels second closest to God. As their name suggests, they take an appearance of wheels with many eyes, similarly to Imu’s “halo”.
Back when Luffy’s real fruit was yet to be revealed, I theorized that Enel was attempting to emulate Son God Nika, due to his “final form” resembling the so-called “Wisdom King” (it’s how Hyougorou called Luffy’s Gear 4th form).
The idea was that Enel, being the explorer he is, learned a lot about the unknown history, and the involvement of the mythical figure known as the Sun God, and then tried to emulate him. After all, Enel has a tiny bit of a God Complex. However, with Imu in the fray now, it seems way more likely that he was trying to emulate Imu.
Enel is a Birkan who removed his wings (for yet unknown reason) and in their stead put a ring/circle with drums that have Tomoe on them. This ring/circle resemble the one Imu has.
If you really want to push it, and evoke the Naruto comparison, the Tomoe drums could be a representation of the eyes that Imu has on his ring, since that is what Sharingan is in Naruto.
Reading about a God from olden times – a possible Lunarian who had his wings clipped and in their stead put this circle with eyes on it, might’ve inspired Enel to do the same.
What Is The Giant Shadowy Form I?
I’ve seen some confusion regarding the giant, shadowy form Imu assumes during Sabo’s confrontation in the Throne Room. If Imu ate “the Devil’s Fruit”, and assumed the humanoid form we see him in, then what was this all about?
This is because the Devil takes many forms:
- Although he is not named specifically in the Book of Genesis, Satan is often identified as the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
- In the Book of Revelation, Satana appears as a “Great Red Dragon”
- In the Quran, Iblis (Shaitan), the leader of the devils (shayāṭīn), is made of fire.
- Satan's appearance is never described in the Bible, but, since the ninth century, he has often been shown in Christian art with horns, cloven hooves, unusually hairy legs, and a tail, often naked and holding a pitchfork. These are an amalgam of traits derived from various pagan deities, including Pan, Poseidon, and Bes.
- Satan also frequently appears in Christian literature, most notably in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, where he is depicted as a giant, three-headed beast.
The point is that, due to the nature of the Devil, we can expect Imu to take many forms, and the one we currently see him in is only one of them.
Imu's Magic
Lastly, we have Imu's abilities. I won't dwell too much on it as I have seen a lot of people already cover this. In short, the hand-signs that Imu use when casting "Omen" are called "Mudra" ("seal", "mark", or "gesture"): a symbolic or ritual gesture or pose in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.
What I do want to dwell on is that I believe this power – this ability – does not come from Imu's Devil Fruit. I believe that magic is real in One Piece's world, and that Imu is one of the rare people that knows how to use it. After all, multiple people seem to know what a "magic circle" is when Imu casts his spells.
Maybe he combines it with the power of his Devil Fruit for the abilities we see him use, but I do think magic is something others can use as well. It's about time for Oda to introduce a new ability...
