It’s about Karasu, from the Revolutionary Army.
At first I did not think it was likely, but in the meantime I have gathered more information and a lot of material to support this idea so that I actually believe this could be a thing, so I decided to write a serious theory on this. It is most likely going to be completely wrong at the end as usual, but hope you have a nice read nevertheless.
I think it is possible for Karasu to be a powerfull member of the Beasts Pirates and I will present my reasoning why.
First of all, I’d like to point out that his character design, as noticed by many people already, is quite distinct and different from the rest of the remaining RA commanders introduced this chapter.
All of them were wearing Sabo’s googles and all of them had some silly character design very typical to One Piece characters, and were also in good mood to some extent and funny. The one who really stood out of the lot is Karasu tho. His character design looks noticeably more serious and dangerous than our typical friendly character. He is a very large bald man with beard-like features, has a very serious look, wears a mouthguard seemingly inspired on the facial wear of a Plague Doctor:
Second of all, he seems to have a very unusual Zoan Devil Fruit ability. I have a guess on what his Devil Fruit may be, but before I would like to look at what he is capable of doing with his ability.
So far we believe to have seen him on 3 occasions. Giving out the newspaper:
Transporting Sabo:
And finally being formally and more extensively introduced in the last chapter:
Based on all these appearances, we can conclude that his powers involve(but are not restricted to):
- Transforming himself into a murder of crows
- Being able to split himself up and go to various locations
- Being able to communicate through crows
- Being able to control crows from a distance
As crow is an animal it is likely that he is a Zoan. But he is an extremely atypical Zoan as we can see from his abilities, most ‘normal’ Zoans are capable of transforming themselves into the animal, but his skillset seems to be more diversified. He can generate crows and split himself up almost almost as a Logia, he can also communicate through them and he can control them from distance(and remainder that this is not necessarily the only abilities he has through them). There is the possibility that he is a Zoan with an unusual awakening or he ate the ‘murder-murder Fruit'(sounds a bit edgy, but a group of crows is called a murder).
I have another guess, I believe his unusual powers are related to a mythical Zoan, a very rare type of fruit with special abilities. In fact, I believe he is a Karasu-Tengu mythical Zoan. A Tengu according to Wikipedia is a type of mythical creature from Japanese folk, it is a supernatural bird that has both human and bird-like features:
“The tengu in art appears in a variety of shapes. It usually falls somewhere between a large, monstrous bird and a wholly anthropomorphized being, often with a red face or an unusually large or long nose. Early depictions of tengu show them as kite-like beings who can take a human-like form, often retaining avian wings, head or beak.
[…]
Daitengu are often pictured in a more human-like form than their underlings, and due to their long noses, they may also called hanatakatengu (鼻高天狗 tall-nosed tengu). Kotengu may conversely be depicted as more bird-like. They are sometimes called Karasu-Tengu (烏天狗 crow tengu) , or koppa- or konoha-tengu (木葉天狗, 木の葉天狗 foliage tengu)”
I believe that if we take the description of the crow-tengu as an anthropomorphized being which retain avian characterstics, we get a good match with the design inspiration of Karasu:
Mythical Zoan Devil Fruits are very powerful and very rare in One Piece, they come with special set of abilities and so far only 2 people in One Piece have one confirmed so far, the former Fleet Admiral Sengoku and former Yonko Whitebeard First Mate Marco. It is also quite possible that Yonko Kaido also has a Mythical Zoan. I think that Karasu is the strongest one of the commanders, and I also believe that it is possible that he is linked to Kaido.
Third point I would like to point out are the similarities between Karasu and other known Beasts Pirates, particularly Calamity Jack(but the same also applies to Yonko Kaido). Both share similaritities. They are both tall men wearing no shirt but a dark feathered coat, they have very unusual Zoan abilities, and they both get mad fast(all also applies to Kaido). When comparing their introductions, we see also other similarities such as the mouthguard mimicking the mouthguard protection put on dangerous criminals or psychopaths in prison that is being used by both, but also a very serious almost maniacal dangerous look:
Fourth point is that there are some indicators suggesting that there could be a spy in the RA and that crows are deceitful and intelligent animals that are known to be spy animals(Itachi being a double agent, the crows in game of thrones being used to spy or pass secret messages etc. )
Doflamingo told Tsuru that the Celestials would be dragged from their thrones, maybe this had not been an empty bluff or threat but based on information that he actually had from the Beasts Pirates which were his associates:
He also plays with who will betray whom in future, perhaps hinting directly that the celestials being dragged from their thrones could be linked to an act of betrayal.
Fifth and final point to round it up. I believe another reason where it has been implied that Karasu was a bit mysterious was when Sabo was talking to him:
Sabo asks him if he is capable of generating these crows at will, towards which Karasu replies that he can. The interesting part here is not the ability itself in this case, but rather that Sabo himself, as a long-term member of the revolutionary army and second in Command of the Revolutionary army does not know the abilities and powers of Karasu himself. This is an interesting detail, as the 4 commanders were reporting directly to Sabo at the start of the chapter, it appears that even Sabo as a direct upper rank does not entirely know what Karasu is capable of.
And to finish off, I believe that following the ‘card game theory’ upon which Kaido’s crew is based, Karasu is most likely the ‘Rook’.
The Rook is a large bird similar to a crow, the word also means betrayer and liar in its entry on the dictionary
The card game the Rook is a trick-playing card game that was designed in 1906 to serve as an alternative to conventional card games. I believe Karasu, symbolizing the Rook in Kaido’s crew, is the deceitful commander who plays an alternative to the conventional type of commanders.
Whether Karasu is secretly one of the top commanders(Calamities) of Kaido, I don’t know. But the possibility is there that if it were to be the case, his disaster would be the Plague.
I hope you enjoyed the read, it is probably all wrong at the end, but I found a lot of background information on this so hopefully it was interesting.
*Theory by Dr_Dankology
