Elbaf has been an island looming in the minds of many for literally decades now. When will the Straw Hats get it? With Oda’s comments about ending One Piece in five years, will we even get a proper Elbaf arc?!?! What will Oda do?!?!
We will absolutely get an Elbaf arc, but it won’t be in a way we expect it. It won’t be an adventure arc, it’ll be a Marineford style arc between the Strawhat Pirates/Allies and the World Government/Marines.
Why? Well there’s a lot of evidence to suggest there’s foul play afoot in Elbaf. Let’s begin.
THE GIANT SQUAD
So one of the coolest, and most unexpected things about Marineford was the reveal that the Marines had a whole squad of giants at their disposal. This isn’t anything grand, but it was a nice surprise regardless. So, where did these giants come from? Afterall not all giants come from Elbaf, as seen from Saul…
They come from Elbaf.
Remember Big Mom’s backstory? There was a brief line of dialogue during the reveal of Mother Carmel being a human trafficker, saying that John Giant was one of her greatest products to the World Government. This means that most likely all of these giants share a similar source of origin. They’re being trafficked straight from Elbaf, and somehow this is being allowed by the rulers of Elbaf.
THE PRINCE OF ELBAF LOKI
This one is going to be a bit of a stretch, but let’s remember that Oda is pretty blunt when it comes to naming his characters and a lot of what I’m about to say is going to fringe on the name of the character.
So in case you forget, we were revealed what went down between Big Mom and her daughter Lola. Big Mom was going to marry Lola with the Elbaf Prince but she turned him down, looking to have a free marriage.
However isn’t this story a bit weird considering what we know about Lola’s character? This is the same person that was wanting to marry a scumbag like Absalom! I mean, Lola really didn’t have any particular standards both morally and visually when it comes to her men. In fact in Thriller Bark, Nami straight up convinced her that she was too good for men like Absalom which caused Lola to grow as a character. So where am I getting at?
Lola denied Loki not because she didn’t want to marry him, but because she knew if she would that Loki would backstab the Big Mom Pirates.
It’s that simple. Loki is the deceiver god in Norse mythology, and you know Oda loves his pop culture references and has likely seen the tricks of Loki from the MCU films. But would a group of giants really be able to usurp Big Mom? Well, no, but somebody else would, and this is where things get interesting…
THE WORLD GOVERNMENT’S INTEREST IN GIANTS
So one of the plotpoints kickstarted in Punk Hazard that hasn’t seen a lot of expansion is the World Government’s experiments in Gigantification, a subject that Big Mom is interested as well. Law even directly explains that the World Government wanted to find a way make all of it’s soldiers into Giants so that they would be “unstoppable.” This same sentiment is proclaimed by Big Mom when she was speaking to Nami and Luffy about Lola’s betrayal; about how if she were to acquire the Giants of Elbaf she would’ve became the Pirate King already.
However these Gigantification experiments have ALWAYS been a failure. Even Dr. Vegapunk couldn’t figure it out and he’s the smartest dude on the planet. So, I think the World Government has an easy solution to this problem.
They’re going to team up with Elbaf. In fact, they probably already have.
We already have seen Cipher Pol agents initiating trades between the World Government and Elbaf institutions of sorts. It isn’t that unlikely that 70+ years later that these relationships evolved over time. Isn’t it weird that we have yet to see what Elbaf looks like in the modern day, and everything we know about it is the “mythical” land of Giants? It’s because Oda is hiding what present day Elbaf is like.
Why would Elbaf team up with the World Government? It’s Loki, the deceiver. In fact they might’ve teamed up with them without the people of Elbaf even realizing it. Yes, Loki is going to be another Orochi type character. We already know he’s going to look stupid judging by his silhouette. This might be disappointing to some but anyone that knows how Oda writes knows how much he loves writing these type of strange characters.
*Theory by bmtrocks
