In One Piece, the world government maintains the status quo by hunting down not only dissenters but their children, erasing inconvenient history and those who seek to learn it, slaughtering rival populations like the Lunarians to a man and allowing slavery for their elites. The reasons they don’t come across as a tired evil empire cliche, I think, are two. First, their status quo is one of peace (or at least low-interference) for most of the world, the only thing stopping kingdoms from being toppled under the pirate onslaught. Second, we always see them through some compelling character perspective like Coby’s idealism in how the government can help people, Smoker’s hardline ideals of justice being challenged or the elder’s devotion to the greater good when talking about wiping islands off of the map instead of an omnipotent “wow, such evil, really hope our heroes beat them soon”.
Anyway, the seraphim are a great climax to the themes of the world government in the story. They finally have perfect slaves which they can program, design and splice the abilities of the most powerful players in the world however they like. Why care about the delicate balance between the territorios of superhuman individuals when you can farm their individuality? Why have marines which might disobey orders like Garp or betray you like Aokiji when the seraphim do everything you asked as exactly as you’ve asked? Why allow populations of nations to exist who might one day raise a pirate flag and set out to sea? There is no longer a reason for the celestial dragons to compromise, threaten or rewrite history. The average world government citizen has outgrown their usefulness.
All of this will make it all the more satisfying when Luffy proves his status as the liberator and gives the seraphim autonomy, showing that freedom can thrive in even the most hopeless of circumstances. I like that Oda has only given us a taste of the seraphims’ personalities, such as S-Snake’s abashed response to Jimbe thanking her, under their usual unchanging expressions, making it seem like there is no humanity in them at all.
My concern is how Oda will have Luffy free the seraphim. There’s no way for Luffy to directly destroy their programming (other than Nika powers I guess, but that feels hand wavy to me). Vegapunk could do it, but the story is about Luffy as the liberator. What are your thoughts?
