Highlights
- Bartholomew Kuma joined the World Government as a Warlord of the Sea to save his daughter’s life from a rare and deadly disease.
- Kuma made a deal with Dr. Vegapunk to find a cure for his daughter in exchange for allowing Vegapunk to conduct experiments on him.
- The Five Elders of the World Government took advantage of Kuma’s desperate situation and turned him into a puppet, forcing him to obey their commands as a Warlord.
One of the biggest mysteries in One Piece is regarding Bartholomew Kuma the Tyrant. Why would a man known as one of the founders of the Revolutionary Army join the World Government as one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea? Why would somebody who can decimate an entire city in seconds agree to become the World Government’s Guinea Pig?
For the longest time, nobody knows the answer to this question. Even Kuma’s long-time friends, such as Emporio Ivankov and Monkey D. Dragon, are baffled by his absurd decision. But then chapter 1099 of One Piece manga came along, and we finally knew the answer to this question, and it is a lot more tragic than you might think.
Related: One Piece: How Doflamingo Took Over Dressrosa In One Night
Bonney’s Sapphire Scales Disease
Recent One Piece chapters revealed that the captain of the Bonney Pirates, Jewelry Bonney, is the adaptive daughter of Bartholomew Kuma. Her mother was Kuma’s childhood friend and the former East Army Captain of the Revolutionary Army, Ginny. While on a mission with the Revolutionary Army, Ginny was captured by the Marines and forced to be a slave and a wife to a World’s Noble.
While in the Holy Land of Marie Geoise, Ginny contracted the rare Sapphire Scales disease. Because of that, Ginny and her infant daughter were thrown out of the Holy Land by her captor. After two years as a slave, she could finally come back home to their hometown. Unfortunately, when she arrived in the Sorbet Kingdom, the disease had already consumed her entire body. Ginny lost her life before she could meet Kuma, the love of her life.
From then on, Kuma became the adoptive father of Ginny’s daughter, Bonney. But when Bonney was around three years old, she displayed a symptom of the Sapphire Scales disease, the same illness that took her mother’s life. Kuma traveled the world to find the cure for Bonney, but every doctor he met didn’t have a clue about this extremely rare disease. One of them even said that it would be a miracle if Bonney could reach her 10th birthday. When all hopes seemed to be lost, Dragon recommended Kuma to meet the smartest human being in the world, Dr. Vegapunk.
A Deal With Vegapunk
At the time, Dr. Vegapunk had just moved into his new headquarters, an isolated island that would later be known as Egghead, so the surrounding security was still quite lax. Thanks to that, Kuma managed to sneak into the lab and meet the genius inventor. Vegapunk was an old acquaintance of Dragon, so once Kuma mentioned Dragon’s name, the doctor warmly welcomed him into his laboratory.
Vegapunk admitted that he had never dealt with such a puzzling disease before. However, he had some ideas about how to treat, and even possibly, cure Bonney’s Sapphire Scales. He said that he could design a radically different approach than what was available in the medical community at the time. The only problem was such an approach would be extremely expensive. According to Vegapunk, finding the cure for Bonney required the same amount of money as creating the most advanced cyborg in the world.
Despite being a King, Kuma didn’t have access to such an unbelievable amount of money. So both men settled on a deal of the century instead. In exchange for curing Bonney, Kuma would let Vegapunk conduct various experiments on him. As a member of the near-extinct race known as the Buccaneers, Kuma’s body was the source of a wealth of knowledge that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world. Vegapunk’s ultimate goal with the experiments was to create a group of clones that could be used as super soldiers. As for Kuma, if it means Bonney can be cured, then he would happily do anything that Vegapunk wanted. And that was when the Pacifista Project officially began.
Related: One Piece: Why Vegapunk Decided To Join The World Government
Becoming The World Government’s Puppet
Although Vegapunk worked for the World Government, he didn’t mind working with a member of the Revolutionary Army like Kuma. Likewise, Kuma didn’t care who Vegapunk worked for as long as he could cure Bonney. He even said that he would make a deal with the devil himself if it meant Bonney would be cured. Unfortunately for him, it was indeed a deal with the devil. Because there was somebody else who knew about the deal between Bartholomew Kuma and Dr. Vegapunk, the World Government. Or to be more precise, the Five Elders.
Upon learning about Vegapunk and Kuma’s arrangement, the Five Elders quickly stepped in and began to take advantage of Kuma’s helpless situation. They knew that Kuma would do anything for the sake of his daughter, so they immediately used it to turn him into the greatest puppet that they ever had. As a result, not only did Kuma have to participate in any kind of experiments that Vegapunk had in mind, but he also had to obey the World Government by becoming one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. Kuma had to abandon his friends in the Revolutionary Army and surrender himself to be a pawn of the World Government.
So why did somebody like Bartholomew Kuma willingly become the World Government’s puppet? The answer was to save his daughter’s life.
One Piece is available to stream on Crunchyroll.
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