One Piece’s Final Boss Transforms into Second Form — 5ch: ‘I Can’t Tell What’s Different From Before’

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The story

The final boss of One Piece transformed into a second form in the story, sparking a wave of reactions on a 5ch thread. Posters weighed in from every angle — confusion over him calmly surviving a sword through the gut, speculation about Im-sama’s true identity, and opinions on the character design.

What people said

3AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:16
The first form looked like a burdock root (gobo — the long, thin brown vegetable), didn't it
4AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:17
There's just no competing with the kind of designs Nagano draws
5AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:17
Whoaaaa!! No way!! He looks strong!! Can the Straw Hats even beat this thing!?
10AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:18
He got stabbed with a sword and he's still alive?
That's exactly the problem, Oda.
19AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:23
Re: #10
Apparently even he doesn't know why he's still alive

22AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:26
Re: #19
The dialogue doesn't match the art
There's zero sense of him being winded
20AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:24
Whoaaaa!!! Im-sama's true identity, whoaaaa!!!

45AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:40
Re: #20
Man, he really loves dropping hints
68AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:58
Re: #20
Wait, why did they make up?
24AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:27
Re: #22

25AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:30
That's straight-up elementary schooler taste — 'let's just slap a skull on it!'
It's genuinely lame, does the editor never say anything?

29AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:33
Re: #25
'You dare defy meee?' (Im-sama's odd, childlike speech quirks)
41AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:39
Re: #25
That's basically Dhalsim (the stretchy-limbed Street Fighter character)
36AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:37
It gets bashed every single time, so why is it still going?
39AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:38
Re: #36
Well it's always near the top of the reader surveys, so there's no way it's getting cancelled
46AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:43
The original black one seemed to have better regeneration
it came back even after being blown to pieces

51AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:45
You've been alive this whole time — what have you even been doing?

58AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:50
I can't tell what's different from before

66AnonymousAug 24, 2026 07:56
Re: #58
Now they don't have to draw the polka dots on his arms anymore
69AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:00
Is this getting cancelled?
76AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:03
Re: #69
Here they somehow beat Im-sama
Back at the Holy Land, Blackbeard's already wiped out the Five Elders and the whole Navy
Shanks dies too, one way or another
Everyone gets launched by Kuma's power and arrives at Laugh Tale
Final showdown with Blackbeard at Laugh Tale


and that's a perfectly fine way to end it
70AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:00
'Hey, his appearance changed!' — do we even need that line?
72AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:02
Re: #70
If they don't draw it in, you wouldn't know what changed
75AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:03
Re: #72
Do we even need to know?
You yourself keep changing into some 'demon god' form for no clear reason
107AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:25
Re: #75
That's not a transformation, that's just a move
Are you even reading this properly?
78AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:06
What's even the point of beating this Blackbeard guy?
82AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:10
Re: #78
It's what the old-school fans want
Blackbeard's just a scrub anyway
80AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:10
He can recover that fast?
84AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:13
Re: #80
Well, he'd been stockpiling food
Guess it pays to live right
88AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:15
Re: #80
Just from this panel, Hajrudin looks exactly like Loki, lol
94AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:18
Hurry up with Im-sama's sad backstory already
96AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:19
Re: #94
It's gonna be long, that okay?
99AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:22
Re: #96
Wasn't it that he got dumped by the founder of the Nefertari family or something?
104AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:24
Re: #96
Still better than crappy battles and endless hint-dropping
101AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:23
Guess he loses once, then it's training-arc time
108AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:25
Re: #101
Even if he loses here, there's no rematch
It's Blackbeard who beats Im-sama anyway
115AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:33
What's with the final boss of a pirate manga being a god?
They could've just kept it simple with Blackbeard
116AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:34
Re: #115
Being a god is fine, it's just that it has nothing to do with him becoming Pirate King
118AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:36
Wait, is this the final boss?
Does beating this mean One Piece is finally over?
120AnonymousAug 24, 2026 08:40
Re: #118
Real talk, Luffy doesn't care what happens to the world
Even if he beats him, he'd just get thanked for it
Blackbeard's gotta be the real final boss after all

Background and Key Points

One Piece has run in Weekly Shonen Jump since 1997 and is now in its advertised “final saga,” which began after the Wano arc concluded in 2022. Im-sama (Imu) sits on the Empty Throne in Mary Geoise, the hidden seat of power above even the Five Elders who nominally run the World Government; the character was only formally shown starting around 2021 and has spoken and acted on-panel just a handful of times since, making every new appearance a major continuity event. Weekly Shonen Jump also runs reader popularity surveys that directly influence which series continue, which is the “top of the reader surveys” comment referenced in the thread — a structural fact of Japanese weekly manga publishing that has no real equivalent for a foreign audience used to fixed-run Western comics.

The thread wasn’t split on plot mechanics so much as on the redesign itself: several posters dismissed the new skull-faced form as a lazy, “elementary schooler” edit compared to the original black, polka-dotted silhouette, while others were simply impressed by the raw visual power-up. A second axis of disagreement was who actually counts as the story’s final antagonist — Im-sama, or Blackbeard, who posters note is quietly wiping out the Five Elders and the Navy in a parallel storyline.

What’s easy to miss without manga context is that Im surviving a sword wound without visible pain isn’t necessarily sloppy writing — Oda has historically withheld a character’s exact power set for arcs at a time, and posters here are speculating, not reporting confirmed lore, since even the story itself hasn’t explained it yet.

*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread「One Piece’s Final Boss Transforms into Second Form!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!」.

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