The following contains spoilers for One Piece Chapter 1074, “MK. III,” by Eiichiro Oda, Stephen Paul and Vanessa Satone, available in English from Viz Media.
A lot has been established about Dr. Vegapunk York since her debut. The kanji for her name reads “greed,” she’s responsible for the bodily needs of the Satellites, and she’s a fairly carefree and easygoing girl. However, one fact that’s oddly eluded One Piece readers since her debut has been her height.
Many fans assumed that York was about the size of an average human; much of the fan art for the character suggested as much. However, it was recently confirmed that she’s much taller than that. As for why this wasn’t clear based on her previous appearances, it has to do with how she’s been presented in the manga thus far.
What Made Determining Vegapunk York’s Height So Difficult?
York has only appeared on-screen a handful of times, and few of them properly displayed her next to another person. The few people she was shown next to couldn’t quite be called normal-sized, either. Most of them were Egghead’s lab assistants or Vegapunk Edison; these characters are already short, so they didn’t make for a reliable metric. York was also shown to be larger than Vegapunk Pythagoras when engorged, but that was unreliable for another reason.
Even though York was shown to be huge after eating a lot of food, this wasn’t necessarily an indicator of her base size. Plenty of characters in One Piece enlarge themselves by eating and then shrink down once they’ve properly digested or passed the food; Luffy does it all the time. For all anyone knew, she returned to human size after processing everything she ate. There was no way to say for sure whether she was big because it was her natural size or because she was stuffing herself.
She’s also rarely seen standing upright. In most of her appearances, she’s either sitting or lying down. The one other time she was shown standing and walking around in Chapter 1065, “Six Vegapunks,” there wasn’t anybody to anything that could be used for comparison. Thus, her true size remained a mystery.
York’s height was made most apparent in Chapter 1074, “MK. III.” It was in a panel where all of the Straw Hat Pirates and most of the Satellites were together in one place, York included. Not only was she taller than the average person, but even tall characters like Brook and Jimbei only came up to her waist if that. Her height is much more comparable to Vegapunk Atlas, the other gigantic Satellite.
How Did Perceiving Vegapunk York Change With Chapter 1074?
Chapter 1074 was the first time Vegapunk York’s height could be properly ascertained. She was in her skinny state, she was standing upright and walking around, and she was around normal-sized people. Nobody could be faulted for not knowing how big she was until this point.
This doesn’t change too much about the overarching story, though it does bring her ability to stay on the Sunny back into question. If she’s still supposed to board the ship with the rest of the Satellites as intended, she won’t be able to stay in the women’s quarters like it seemed like she would; she’ll be lucky if she can fit through the door or even the hallways. She and Atlas are going to have to find another place aboard the ship to crash for the night. Luckily, York isn’t picky about where she chooses to sleep.