Pluton is a construction ship
Pluton is a land displacement machine. It is a ship with the ability to remove land from somewhere and take it to somewhere else. We know little about Pluton, but what we do know is that it has extreme destructive power. I propose that this destructive power is not the purpose of Pluton by itself ; rather, it’s part of the larger process of deconstructing landmass, storing it, transporting it and reconstructing it in a new location.
In this post I will not give a detailed description of what I think Pluton looks like or how it works technically. I actually don’t have a definite idea about that.
Here I will simply provide the arguments for why I believe Pluton is going to be a construction ship rather than simply a battle ship.
1. Without a trace
Pluton is introduced by Crocodile in Arabasta. According to him, using the weapon once is enough to blow away an entire island without a trace.
Despite Pluton representing major stakes for two entire arcs of One Piece, this statement by Crocodile is actually the only time we ever hear about what the weapon does. We don’t know anything about why it was created, or whether or not it’s ever been used and how.
Therefore, I think we should not jump to the conclusion that Pluton is a weapon made for the purpose of war, military rule, or destruction in general. That notion is, as far as we know, only the version pushed by the World Government.
We know the World Government is happy to falsify information and “rebrand” things as dangerous and evil when they don’t like them. See Nico Robin the “Demon child”. And the great danger of the Ancient Weapons is what they use as pretense to forbid any research into the true history.
Let’s just look at the information on the most basic, literal level possible : Pluton is something that can make an island disappear.
Knowing that, I am proposing an alternate interpretation from the one typically thought to be true : Pluton is not a weapon of war, it is a tool for very large scale land remodelling.
The reason why there is no trace of an island that is targeted by Pluton, is because Pluton doesn’t just destroy the island, it takes it away entirely.
2. The weapon is a ship
So when we first hear about Pluton, and think of it as exclusively a weapon, we start to imagine some sort of huge gun or cannon that could be fired at a target.
However, in Water 7, we learn that Pluton is a ship. Iceburg explains in greater detail that Pluton was built by “naval engineers”.
So now, of course, maybe Pluton is simply a ship that is equipped with terrifyingly powerful weaponry. But that doesn’t sit quite right with me. I think the importance of Pluton relies not in any of its parts, its equipment or its materials, but in its design.
The plot of Water 7 revolves around the blueprints to Pluton. The engineers who built the first Pluton left blueprints to it, so that it would be possible to build a second one if the need ever arises. We’ll talk about the “need” part in a second.
First the fact that the blueprints have been held onto, without fail, by shipwrights, to me implies that you absolutely need to be a proper shipwright in order to build it. Meaning, these blueprints can only be used to build a ship. An entire ship, not parts of it.
Think about this, and this is the important part. Let’s say the power of Pluton resides in its mega-powerful laser-beam cannon. Then, by knowing just how to make that cannon, you would essentially have Pluton in your hands already. Wanna go fight the original Pluton at sea ? Or wanna go rule the world with fear ? Just put the cannon on a ship and you’re good. Having the mega-powerful laser-beam technology would be just as good as having the blueprints to the entire Pluton.
But no, the blueprints to the entire Pluton are what was passed down. And you have to be a shipwright to use them. In other words, nothing short of the entire Pluton ship will do.
Now about that “opposing force” business. The blueprints are supposed to be used in the event that the existing Pluton falls into the wrong hands. I propose that the role of the second Pluton is not to destroy the first one, but to cancel out its actions.
If Pluton 1 is used, either by some tyrant or by an “idiot”, to say destroy some islands, then Pluton 2 will allow you to take the land right back to where it was. It won’t rebuild countries by itself or anything, but it will be enough to undo the planet-level damage that was done.
Now. Where does this idea of displacing land even come from ? That would be from Wano Country, of course.
3. Wano Country
You may already agree that the map of Wano looks very unnatural.
The regions of Wano are separated by “rivers” that run from one coast to the other with no apparent source. All the regions have their own separate climate and seasons, a phenomenon that is typical of islands of the Grand Line.
The entire land of Wano really just looks like a bunch of smaller islands pieced together.
And look at how perfectly straight all the rivers are. The regions aren’t just islands that were placed side by side. They were formed like this.
Not only that, but Wano has very suspicious “natural” borders which, along with the mountain-like formation, happen to make Wano the ultimate fortress and prefectly complement the isolasionist policy of the country.
And we know this policy was started by the Kozuki clan 800 years ago in order to protect Wano from an exterior force. It only makes sense that the physical borders would have been built together with the political ones.
As long as it’s physically possible, that is. Well, you’ll never guess what the Kozuki have been holding on to ?
I believe that the land of Wano was created using Pluton, from six originally different islands. Possibly more.
This would have been the result of some form of alliance between the residents of the islands, where they agreed to merge all of their lands together to form one country (“Wano Country” ? Get it ?).
These people, 800 years ago, made the decision to transform the shape of their respective homes completely and make it this extremely hard to attack, fortress-like shape in order to defend against a certain enemy.
Note that it doesn’t have to be completely unrelated islands that randomly decided to get together. Wano might have been an archipelago of islands that were relatively close and shared the same culture already. That’s what Japan is, after all.
This would also mean that Toki’s parents, who were said to be “from Wano”, were born in one of the original islands (probably Kuri, by process of elimination). They were aware of the land transformation process, and they told their daughter about the country that they had never been to (might have not even existed yet), but that they knew was their true home.
Then when Toki started her journey looking for Wano, she might have been looking not just for a geographical location, but also for a time when Wano would exist.
So this makes Wano an example of Ancient Weapon Pluton being used not as a weapon of mass destruction but as a construction machine.
Alright, the point is essentially made now. I believe I’ve shown why I think Pluton isn’t quite a battleship but a “construction” ship. You can stop reading now. That is, if you’re not interested in scope-breaking speculation about the One Piece world based on this idea of Pluton.
Now….. I wonder if we could go a little further and find a second example ?
