I’m Gonna Throw My First Post Ever Out Into The Void And See How It Goes. The One Piece Community Might

I’m gonna throw my first post ever out into the void and see how it goes. The one piece community might eat me alive for this one.

If I have to see one more person say Sabo got his memories back from reading the name Sakazuki in the newspaper in conjunction with Ace’s death, as though it’s not completely headcanon, I’m going to tear my hair out. I had no issue with this headcanon before, hell I thought it was pretty cute, but seeing so many people comment in YouTube reacts with that as an explanation for Sabo getting his memory back is getting out of hand. It’s not even actually supported by canon, but everybody in the community treats it like fact so I’m gonna debunk it.

There are two ways Sabo could’ve heard the name Sakazuki when he found out Ace died; either he read it in the newspaper article itself or he heard the revolutionaries say it out loud. However, neither of those are actually viable and I’m gonna break down why.

The chain of events for Sabo realizing Ace died is hearing the revolutionaries say out loud “fire fist Ace is dead”, Sabo picks up the newspaper, reads only the headline, sees Ace’s picture which immediately worsens his budding panic attack/flashback, the revolutionaries discuss the events of Marineford in the background, then he passes out. Sabo was already starting to have panic attack as he was going to pick the newspaper up, the moment he saw Ace’s picture is when he completely flipped out and started having flashbacks, I highly doubt he was in any state of mind to read the body of the article.

Even if Sabo somehow did read the full article, it goes onto my next point, Sakazuki would not have been referred to as Sakazuki in the article and was never referred to as such by the revolutionaries; he’s only called his admiral title, Akainu, at this time. The names all of the admirals go by are titles, not their actual names; it’s an understandable thing to miss considering Green Bull (Ryokugyu) is the only title translated literally for some reason. Akainu just means red dog (the admirals seem to have a colour and Chinese zodiac theme). I do think part of the misconception comes from some people not realizing his name isn’t actually Akianu, so it’s not like the newspapers are going to be listing his last and first name as something like Akainu Sakazuki . All this is to say that the newspapers would not be using Sakazuki’s actual name until he becomes fleet admiral in a year; the admirals are never referred to by their actual names unless by people they consider close friends or people being disrespectful. The revolutionaries themselves when discussing the events of the war only ever use the name Akainu, there was no way for Sabo to have heard the name Sakazuki while panicking about Ace.

Look, I get that to a lot of people the Sabo amnesia stuff was not handled in a satisfying way, but there’s a difference between using a headcanon to fill in the gaps and treating a headcanon as a canon explanation when discussing the events of the manga.