Are One Piece’s Five Elders All Mythical Yokai Fruit Users?

one piece five elders

One Piece chapter 1094 is out now, and it came with one of the biggest surprises the series has had yet. Fans have long theorized that the Gorosei – or Five Elders – would end up being some of the toughest antagonists in the series, but it’s been hard to imagine a group of old men that don’t get out much doing anything that threatening.

That has all changed as of the latest chapter as we see St. Jaygarcia Saturn, the Warrior God of Science and Defense, touch down on the surface for the first time in the series, and what could be decades in-universe. This event has left the One Piece fanbase reeling, and theorists are diving deeper than ever before. So what exactly is St. Jaygarcia Saturn’s terrifying new form, and what could this mean for the other Five Elders?

The best theorists in the business have been on the case, and the community at large seems at agree that Saturn has eaten an Ushi-oni Zoan fruit. If I’m to take a wild guess here, this could well be a Mythical Ushi-Ushi Fruit. The Ushi-oni isn’t a regular creature, as the name implies – check the Ushi-oni Wikipedia page for more details. This is a yokai – or demon – from Japanese folklore. The Ushi-oni has the face of an ox, or cow, with large rounded horns, and a large abdomen like a spider, with six protruding legs. This matches what we see of Saturn’s awakened Zoan form, which is complete with rounded horns, a large abdomen, and six legs.

So we’ve got a pretty solid lock on what our known member of the Five Elders is using for an ability. The question now is, what does this mean for the other four Gorosei? Well, all we’ve seen so far is a blurry silhouette – and as we know well enough by now, silhouettes don’t represent characters accurately.

In the silhouette we can see the eyes and horns of the awakened Saturn on the far left, followed next by a haunting face, then a seemingly human body, followed by a dragon or bird hybrid, and finally a silhouette of a monster that may have tentacles.

It’s vague, but from the silhouette of the fourth Gorosei, I think we can perhaps take a stab in the dark and say that this could be Furaribi, another yokai you can find more about on Wikipedia’s Furaribi page. This yokai is depicted as a bird with a dog-like face, often with a long and slender neck. To me the fourth Gorosei silhouette looks a bit more like it has Charizard’s head and a beak, but I still think this could potentially be a solid guess as to what Devil Fruit this Elder has eaten. To take things a step further, I think I can guess which Elder this is.

I say that the one who has eaten the Mythical Furaribi fruit is St. Marcus Mars. Allow me to explain. It’s already pretty well established that the Five Elders are associated with the five planets Japanese astronomers have been aware of for centuries, but these planets are also associated with the five classical Chinese elements, and each planet is named after one of those elements. St. Jaygarcia Saturn is the Warrior God of Science and Defense, which lines up reasonably with the Earth element Saturn is associated with. Furaribi, meanwhile, literally has the Japanese character for fire in its name (ふらり火), the same symbol it shares with Mars (火星).

Admittedly, Marcus Mars being the Warrior God of Environment isn’t necessarily what I’d associate with the element of fire, but I could just be looking into things a bit too far. And yet, I will continue: could the far right Gorosei silhouette actually be Akkorokamui, the octopus-like monster from Ainu folklore? I base this on nothing more than what might – or might not – be a tentacle, but if it is, it would probably be St. Topman Warcury, due to his association with the water star, otherwise known as Mercury.

Are these the ramblings of a crazy person? Perhaps, but I’m confident that Eiichiro Oda is ready to blow us all away with the reveals he has in store for the near future of the series.