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Hello, everyone!
Once again taking a quick break from One Piece theories to talk to you all about my favorite new Jump title, Undead Unluck. Not making any promises, but if I can keep coming up with them, I may make this a regular thing, but we'll see.
At this point it's pretty much canon that most if not all Negators have names that are reminiscent of the rules that they negate, with our amnesiac lead Andy being blatantly given his name in chapter 1 based on his Undead rule: Undead in Japanese is pronounced Andeddo, and thus Fuuko names him Andy (thank god she speaks Japanese, or his name would have been Undy).
Some character's names are pretty on the nose with words that outright mean their rule, such as Untruth Shen's name being the closest Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese zhen (meaning truth), or are terms that relate to their rule, such as Unjustice Juiz's name being Portuguese for judge. Other characters have names that use kana from their rule, similarly to Andy, the most notable up to this point being posthumous members Unavoidable Void (who I'm positive was supposed to be named Boyd but got mistranslated by Viz) and Unchange Gina (Unchange -> Anchenji -> Jina -> Gina). This rule also holds true for Negators outside of the Union, such as the Negator Hunter Unrepair Rip (Unrepair -> Anripea -> Rippu -> Rip).
Our main character, Unluck Izumo Fuuko, has easily the most subtle reference, at least if you're not familiar with Japanese, as her name in kanji is 出雲風子. If you remove Izu (出), take Mo (雲) and Fuu (風) and reverse them, then exchange Ko (子) meaning child with an alternate kanji with the same meaning (児), you get 風雲児, Fuu'unji, meaning "lucky adventurer" or "soldier of fortune." It takes a bit of rearranging, and the kanji on their own don't immediately bring to mind anything related to luck, so I was completely willing to write her off as being an exception to the pattern. Because of this, up until this week's chapter, I wasn't totally sure that this even was a hard and fast pattern.
Aside from Fuuko, the character that confused me most and made me think not everyone was named after their ability was Tatiana, as not only was she sealed inside a giant robotic ball up this point, obscuring every single possible identifying feature about her, but her name doesn't really have any meaning to it as far as I can find. It's apparently a Russian corruption of a Greco-Roman name, but even the name it's based on has no meaning. It also didn't have any obvious ties to any English "un" words that I could see, so I just wrote it off as one of the few that doesn't reflect the owner's rule.
Until this week in Chapter 26 where I realized that I was a fool for not even trying to look at her name in kana. In Japanese, her name is pronounced Tachiana, which is quite appropriate, as this week her rule was revealed to be Untouchable. Though romanization looks a bit different because of a geminate consonant and a contextual variant, Untouchable in kana (Antatchaburu) shares the kana ta and chi with Tachiana, making her name effectively "Touch"iana. The moment we got the big reveal, I knew how obvious it had been, and I just couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it, so now I'm going over every other characters' name to see what I can glean from them.
Let's start with the most obvious, Union seat 7, Top. He's extremely fast, but once he's built up momentum, he doesn't seem to be able to come to a stop until he's worked it off, with the exact parameters of his ability remaining a mystery. Just from seeing him be unable to stop himself and hearing his name, though, it's abundantly clear that his rule is UnsTOPpable. You don't need to know kana to figure that one out.
Next is seat 6, Isshin, who is covered in full samurai armor and is noted by Victor to have some kind of hardening ability. His name, meaning "one mind" or "wholehearted" doesn't seem to explicitly denote anything that I can tell, but it works thematically with an ability we've already seen in use, Unbreakable. If he is a wholehearted person, then we can assume that his will is in and of itself unbreakable, not unlike the katana that Andy took from a Union grunt in chapter 1 and the Journey to the West inspired extending Nyoi-Kinko staff used by Shen, both labeled with the kanji for Unbreakable. Victor also notes that Isshin is not really a fighter, attacking with a naginata using brute force and no finesse. Since Isshin is coated head to toe in armor that seems to be able to keep him safe from any harm, it's not hard to imagine that he's a smith by trade who made unbreakable armor and weapons to keep him safe and allow him to wail on enemies without fear of any repercussions.
Seat 3, Billy, is a bit tougher, but I think I may have a general idea. Whatever his ability is, he mainly uses it for ricocheting bullets, and thus far has only used it to shoot targets behind him. Because of his sunglasses and a moment where he didn't realize he was in danger earlier in the story, I've long surmised that he may be blind, which was also confirmed in Chapter 26. I originally thought that he would face away from his target because his rule specifically allowed him to hit targets he couldn't see, but if he's blind that wouldn't be necessary. Again, in the latest chapter, he is shown shooting a man in the head as he walks towards him without needing to ricochet the bullet at all, so while perhaps he's just a good enough shot that he can shoot based on sound, I have another hypothesis. I think that Billy can make impossible or difficult shots after specifically telegraphing or announcing that he cannot see. He had just announced "I can't see" before shooting the man in Chapter 26, so the man obviously knew he was blind. In his introductory chapter and the fight with Victor, he silently turned his back on Andy and Victor respectively before bouncing his bullets off of Tatiana's shell. Most likely, Andy and Victor don't know that Billy is blind, and rather than announce it, he demonstrated that he couldn't see where he was shooting by turning his back, eliminating the need for words at all. I think the reason he has to do this is because his rule is Unbelievable (Anbiriibaburu -> Birii -> Billy), or maybe just Unbelieve, allowing him to do things that people would believe he is incapable of. By instilling a specific belief in a target, even subconsciously, it gives him the ability to negate the reality of that belief. If he's blind, anyone would believe that he can't make a shot. If he's facing away, anyone would believe he can't shoot a target that's behind him. This might even explain how quickly he fires multiple guns during the fight with Victor, because it's just common sense that someone can only fire one gun at a time.
Seat 4, Phil, hasn't really shown us anything of his ability yet, since he seems to fight using Artifacts, mysterious items that seem to just exist within the world without anyone having explicitly made them. Quick side note, Shen's Nyoi-Kinko staff is an Artifact, but it bears the kanji for Unbreakable on the little caps on the end, so I think that the staff itself wasn't made by Unbreakable, and rather they had to place unbreakable caps on the ends to control how far the staff extends, lest it extend infinitely. Back to Phil, while fighting Victor, it was noted that not only does Phil use Artifacts to fire lasers, but that his entire body is actually made of Artifacts, explaining why his limbs look like doll limbs. While it's unclear if he's literally made of Artifacts from head to toe, we can conjecture that he needs to incorporate Artifacts into himself because of his rule. Based on his name, the most obvious possibility would be Unfilled, presumably with the connotation of being empty, or lacking substance. If I had to guess, I would say that this is a self-targeting, compulsory activation type ability wherein Phil's body becomes unfilled. This could either mean that he loses substance in his body, effectively making him a ghost, or that his spirit can actually leave his body and then enter others. Either way, I think that his spirit is currently possessing a doll made of Artifacts, regardless of whether he has a physical body lying around somewhere. This would certainly explain why he was so nonchalant when fighting Victor: he wasn't going to die no matter what happened.
Seat 8, Nico Vorgeil, is...an interesting case. Up to this point, he has seemingly exclusively used his technological inventions (all in the shape of balls, for some reason) to achieve various effects, such as flight, lasers, and long-distance communication. It's possible that his inventions are a byproduct of his ability, but what grabs my attention are the people he talks to. Specifically, he plugs what looks like a 3.5mm jack into his head and it allows him to talk to other people who also have the same jacks; these people have hair styled similarly to him and wear headbands similar to his. This could be a uniform of some kind, but they look so specifically similar to Nico that part of me thinks that they could be clones with alterations that allow them to be different ages, have different hair colors, and even be different genders (as one seems to be a female). Again, I wasn't sure how this could relate to whatever his rule is, until I looked into his name. Nothing really jumps out at me for "Nico," but he is quite conspicuously the only character other than Fuuko to have a last name, so naturally I did a deeper dive on that first. When I looked up what Vorgeil meant...I won't beat around the bush, it's apparently German for horny, or at least "geil" is, not sure where "vor" fits in. We were told by Juiz that one of the rules that was added to the world was "Sex," which at the time I assumed meant physical gender differences causing a divide between humans, but now I'm starting to think that it might be the rule that people need to have sex in order to make more humans, making the continuation of the species more difficult. If that were the case, having Nico negate that rule as Unsex would make the idea of clones a lot more plausible; Nico negated his need to have sex to reproduce and effectively cloned himself, each of them having some difference from him (gender, hair color, etc.). This would even explain why they're different ages; we already know that Nico is at least 60 since he was doing experiments on Andy 50 years ago, so it would make sense that he's got kids in their teens, 20s, even potentially their own 40s or 50s. I'm thinking this is even related to why he can communicate with them via brainjack: they probably have a specific wavelength that allows them to synchronize mentally with each other, or some mumbo jumbo like that.
Aside from the Union, we also have the Negator Hunters that I mentioned earlier. Currently, we know four members: Rip, Latla, Creed, and Feng. While we've been given hints for all of them, the only one we know the ability of for sure is Rip, Unrepair. From their names and how they've used their abilities so far, I think we may have enough information to go on.
I'll start with Creed, since his seems the most straightforward. He's been shown using his ability in two ways: 1, he can fire a Gatling gun without feeding a magazine into it, implying that there aren't any bullets in it in the first place; 2, he can pull grenades out of thin air. I considered that he may have been negating the usage of his ammunition, but it doesn't seem like he ever had ammo in the gun in the first place, and I can't tell if the first grenade he threw was one he already had and all further ones are replacements. That might still be a part of the activation, but if I had to guess, I'd say what he's actually negating is the need for his ammo, Unneed or Unneeded (need rhyming with Creed). In this scenario, he just needs to set up that he needs something in the first place. If he has a gun with no bullets, he needs bullets to fire the gun; if he then negates that need, then he can fire the gun even without bullets. If he has one grenade and throws it, but it didn't do the job, then he's going to need another one. Whether an ambiguous situation will work, ie. I may need another grenade so I'll negate that now just in case, or it has to be an immediate need, ie. I threw my grenade and it didn't work so I need to try again, I'm unclear, but I don't think he'd be able to use it to get anything he wants. For example, if he's fighting an enemy that's absurdly huge and durable, I don't think saying "I'd need a nuke to beat this thing" would make a nuke appear. I think it has to be clear what the situation requires, not just what would be ideal. This is backed up by the fact that Creed does carry grenades on his person as well as the empty gun: if he could summon any item he wants, he wouldn't need to carry anything around with him in the first place, so he goes through the trouble to set up the scenarios.
Latra's name is the most obvious how it's related to her ability, but I'm having a ton of trouble figuring out a good word for it. Just like Creed, she's shown two applications of her ability, though it isn't immediately obvious that they're related: 1, she can foretell how an event will occur; 2, she can redirect a moving object's trajectory. However, it seems that she can only redirect things that strictly qualify as attacks. When Andy cuts off his arms to use them as Parts Bullets, Latra seems to know ahead of time that the attack is coming and is able to redirect both arms, so she isn't limited to only one redirection at a time. Moments later, when Andy swings his katana at Rip, Latra redirects the sword to miss, resulting in the blood on the sword to be flung off onto her face and ruining her makeup, implying that she couldn't redirect or predict that the blood which was not intended as an attack and not actually dealing any damage. If we assume that her precognition and redirection are related, then the theme of her ability seems to be linearity with a focus on negating the line. By telling Rip his immediate future, he is able to choose not to remain on that course, veering off the line his future is meant to travel down. By placing herself between Rip and a projectile, she is able to curve the projectile's trajectory. Both are explicitly related to some form of "lateral" movement, as evoked by her name, "Latra." My best guess at the moment is that her ability is Unlinear, since not every Negator's rule has a name with proper conjugation, but it doesn't feel quite right. Still, I'm confident I'm on the right track, so provided she doesn't Negate my line of thinking, we're good.
Feng is easily the hardest for one simple reason: I don't know Chinese. From a linguistic perspective, the only thing I've been able to glean is that Feng specifically speaks Mandarin Chinese, since all of their dialogue seems to specifically use Mandarin pinyin (ex: they pronounce 1 as "yi" as opposed to the Cantonese "jat"), so we can assume that their name is a Mandarin word as well. Unfortunately, because they're translating it from the Japanese "Fan," the closest pronunciation Japanese has to the Mandarin "Feng," Viz doesn't include an accent mark on Feng's name, as they have no frame of reference for what hanzi their name uses. Because of this, I am having an absolutely horrid time trying to reverse engineer what hanzi is used in their name. Going by the fact that their ability seems to increase the destructive force of their attacks, being able to crack Tatiana's shell which thus far has only been damaged by the unbreakable katana, my best guess is that Feng's rule either has something to do with human limitation or specifically damages defenses. Since they weren't able to completely break through the shell, I'm less inclined to say the latter, so until we get more information, I'm going with the former. In that case, the best I've been able to find is (峰), meaning peak or summit. In this scenario, rather than being named after the thing they're negating, it would be that Feng is named after the results of their negation: by negating their limits, Unlimited, Feng is able to perform attacks with an output they would never be able to otherwise. This isn't a perfect match by any means, and it's the one I'm least confident on, but it's the best guess I've been able to surmise with my extremely limited knowledge of Mandarin. If I have some kind of epiphany between the time I post this and Feng's ability is revealed, I'll definitely update this section to reflect my findings.
Let's review: Every Negator, whether subtly or explicitly, has a name that reflects the rule they negate. Based on this, Top's quick running speed may suggested he is Unstoppable, Billy is likely Unbelievable since he defies expectations with his trick shots, Isshin's name translating to "wholehearted" may thematically indicate that he is the previously established and unidentified Unbreakable, Phil may be Unfilled and capable of leaving his body to possess inanimate objects, and Nico "Horny" Vorgeil can likely clone himself as Unsex. Harder to pin down are the Negator Hunters, but Creed may be Unneed and can eliminate the need for objects that he has clearly run out of, Latra may be Unlinear by altering the lateral movement of attacking objects or dangerous events, and Feng's name may translate to "peak" to suggest that they can surpass their limits as Unlimited.
Overall, even if I'm completely off base for the actual words used, I think I've got a pretty good idea of the base ideas. The author's logic has tripped me up before, like Shen's ability seeming to be making people act the opposite of their intent, leading me to believe it would be Unintentional only for it to be that he was making liars out of them as Untruth. After that incident, I really can't feel confident basing my guesses only on outward appearances, so the name pattern will hopefully prove more fruitful. I could still easily be wrong, but at least I have a stronger starting point now.
Until next time,
-Tokiro Oumaga
[automerge]1601254680[/automerge]
Update:
Recent chapters have revealed a handful of these theories and given new evidence for a few others.
Once again taking a quick break from One Piece theories to talk to you all about my favorite new Jump title, Undead Unluck. Not making any promises, but if I can keep coming up with them, I may make this a regular thing, but we'll see.
At this point it's pretty much canon that most if not all Negators have names that are reminiscent of the rules that they negate, with our amnesiac lead Andy being blatantly given his name in chapter 1 based on his Undead rule: Undead in Japanese is pronounced Andeddo, and thus Fuuko names him Andy (thank god she speaks Japanese, or his name would have been Undy).
Some character's names are pretty on the nose with words that outright mean their rule, such as Untruth Shen's name being the closest Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese zhen (meaning truth), or are terms that relate to their rule, such as Unjustice Juiz's name being Portuguese for judge. Other characters have names that use kana from their rule, similarly to Andy, the most notable up to this point being posthumous members Unavoidable Void (who I'm positive was supposed to be named Boyd but got mistranslated by Viz) and Unchange Gina (Unchange -> Anchenji -> Jina -> Gina). This rule also holds true for Negators outside of the Union, such as the Negator Hunter Unrepair Rip (Unrepair -> Anripea -> Rippu -> Rip).
Our main character, Unluck Izumo Fuuko, has easily the most subtle reference, at least if you're not familiar with Japanese, as her name in kanji is 出雲風子. If you remove Izu (出), take Mo (雲) and Fuu (風) and reverse them, then exchange Ko (子) meaning child with an alternate kanji with the same meaning (児), you get 風雲児, Fuu'unji, meaning "lucky adventurer" or "soldier of fortune." It takes a bit of rearranging, and the kanji on their own don't immediately bring to mind anything related to luck, so I was completely willing to write her off as being an exception to the pattern. Because of this, up until this week's chapter, I wasn't totally sure that this even was a hard and fast pattern.
Aside from Fuuko, the character that confused me most and made me think not everyone was named after their ability was Tatiana, as not only was she sealed inside a giant robotic ball up this point, obscuring every single possible identifying feature about her, but her name doesn't really have any meaning to it as far as I can find. It's apparently a Russian corruption of a Greco-Roman name, but even the name it's based on has no meaning. It also didn't have any obvious ties to any English "un" words that I could see, so I just wrote it off as one of the few that doesn't reflect the owner's rule.
Until this week in Chapter 26 where I realized that I was a fool for not even trying to look at her name in kana. In Japanese, her name is pronounced Tachiana, which is quite appropriate, as this week her rule was revealed to be Untouchable. Though romanization looks a bit different because of a geminate consonant and a contextual variant, Untouchable in kana (Antatchaburu) shares the kana ta and chi with Tachiana, making her name effectively "Touch"iana. The moment we got the big reveal, I knew how obvious it had been, and I just couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it, so now I'm going over every other characters' name to see what I can glean from them.
Let's start with the most obvious, Union seat 7, Top. He's extremely fast, but once he's built up momentum, he doesn't seem to be able to come to a stop until he's worked it off, with the exact parameters of his ability remaining a mystery. Just from seeing him be unable to stop himself and hearing his name, though, it's abundantly clear that his rule is UnsTOPpable. You don't need to know kana to figure that one out.
Next is seat 6, Isshin, who is covered in full samurai armor and is noted by Victor to have some kind of hardening ability. His name, meaning "one mind" or "wholehearted" doesn't seem to explicitly denote anything that I can tell, but it works thematically with an ability we've already seen in use, Unbreakable. If he is a wholehearted person, then we can assume that his will is in and of itself unbreakable, not unlike the katana that Andy took from a Union grunt in chapter 1 and the Journey to the West inspired extending Nyoi-Kinko staff used by Shen, both labeled with the kanji for Unbreakable. Victor also notes that Isshin is not really a fighter, attacking with a naginata using brute force and no finesse. Since Isshin is coated head to toe in armor that seems to be able to keep him safe from any harm, it's not hard to imagine that he's a smith by trade who made unbreakable armor and weapons to keep him safe and allow him to wail on enemies without fear of any repercussions.
Seat 3, Billy, is a bit tougher, but I think I may have a general idea. Whatever his ability is, he mainly uses it for ricocheting bullets, and thus far has only used it to shoot targets behind him. Because of his sunglasses and a moment where he didn't realize he was in danger earlier in the story, I've long surmised that he may be blind, which was also confirmed in Chapter 26. I originally thought that he would face away from his target because his rule specifically allowed him to hit targets he couldn't see, but if he's blind that wouldn't be necessary. Again, in the latest chapter, he is shown shooting a man in the head as he walks towards him without needing to ricochet the bullet at all, so while perhaps he's just a good enough shot that he can shoot based on sound, I have another hypothesis. I think that Billy can make impossible or difficult shots after specifically telegraphing or announcing that he cannot see. He had just announced "I can't see" before shooting the man in Chapter 26, so the man obviously knew he was blind. In his introductory chapter and the fight with Victor, he silently turned his back on Andy and Victor respectively before bouncing his bullets off of Tatiana's shell. Most likely, Andy and Victor don't know that Billy is blind, and rather than announce it, he demonstrated that he couldn't see where he was shooting by turning his back, eliminating the need for words at all. I think the reason he has to do this is because his rule is Unbelievable (Anbiriibaburu -> Birii -> Billy), or maybe just Unbelieve, allowing him to do things that people would believe he is incapable of. By instilling a specific belief in a target, even subconsciously, it gives him the ability to negate the reality of that belief. If he's blind, anyone would believe that he can't make a shot. If he's facing away, anyone would believe he can't shoot a target that's behind him. This might even explain how quickly he fires multiple guns during the fight with Victor, because it's just common sense that someone can only fire one gun at a time.
Seat 4, Phil, hasn't really shown us anything of his ability yet, since he seems to fight using Artifacts, mysterious items that seem to just exist within the world without anyone having explicitly made them. Quick side note, Shen's Nyoi-Kinko staff is an Artifact, but it bears the kanji for Unbreakable on the little caps on the end, so I think that the staff itself wasn't made by Unbreakable, and rather they had to place unbreakable caps on the ends to control how far the staff extends, lest it extend infinitely. Back to Phil, while fighting Victor, it was noted that not only does Phil use Artifacts to fire lasers, but that his entire body is actually made of Artifacts, explaining why his limbs look like doll limbs. While it's unclear if he's literally made of Artifacts from head to toe, we can conjecture that he needs to incorporate Artifacts into himself because of his rule. Based on his name, the most obvious possibility would be Unfilled, presumably with the connotation of being empty, or lacking substance. If I had to guess, I would say that this is a self-targeting, compulsory activation type ability wherein Phil's body becomes unfilled. This could either mean that he loses substance in his body, effectively making him a ghost, or that his spirit can actually leave his body and then enter others. Either way, I think that his spirit is currently possessing a doll made of Artifacts, regardless of whether he has a physical body lying around somewhere. This would certainly explain why he was so nonchalant when fighting Victor: he wasn't going to die no matter what happened.
Seat 8, Nico Vorgeil, is...an interesting case. Up to this point, he has seemingly exclusively used his technological inventions (all in the shape of balls, for some reason) to achieve various effects, such as flight, lasers, and long-distance communication. It's possible that his inventions are a byproduct of his ability, but what grabs my attention are the people he talks to. Specifically, he plugs what looks like a 3.5mm jack into his head and it allows him to talk to other people who also have the same jacks; these people have hair styled similarly to him and wear headbands similar to his. This could be a uniform of some kind, but they look so specifically similar to Nico that part of me thinks that they could be clones with alterations that allow them to be different ages, have different hair colors, and even be different genders (as one seems to be a female). Again, I wasn't sure how this could relate to whatever his rule is, until I looked into his name. Nothing really jumps out at me for "Nico," but he is quite conspicuously the only character other than Fuuko to have a last name, so naturally I did a deeper dive on that first. When I looked up what Vorgeil meant...I won't beat around the bush, it's apparently German for horny, or at least "geil" is, not sure where "vor" fits in. We were told by Juiz that one of the rules that was added to the world was "Sex," which at the time I assumed meant physical gender differences causing a divide between humans, but now I'm starting to think that it might be the rule that people need to have sex in order to make more humans, making the continuation of the species more difficult. If that were the case, having Nico negate that rule as Unsex would make the idea of clones a lot more plausible; Nico negated his need to have sex to reproduce and effectively cloned himself, each of them having some difference from him (gender, hair color, etc.). This would even explain why they're different ages; we already know that Nico is at least 60 since he was doing experiments on Andy 50 years ago, so it would make sense that he's got kids in their teens, 20s, even potentially their own 40s or 50s. I'm thinking this is even related to why he can communicate with them via brainjack: they probably have a specific wavelength that allows them to synchronize mentally with each other, or some mumbo jumbo like that.
Aside from the Union, we also have the Negator Hunters that I mentioned earlier. Currently, we know four members: Rip, Latla, Creed, and Feng. While we've been given hints for all of them, the only one we know the ability of for sure is Rip, Unrepair. From their names and how they've used their abilities so far, I think we may have enough information to go on.
I'll start with Creed, since his seems the most straightforward. He's been shown using his ability in two ways: 1, he can fire a Gatling gun without feeding a magazine into it, implying that there aren't any bullets in it in the first place; 2, he can pull grenades out of thin air. I considered that he may have been negating the usage of his ammunition, but it doesn't seem like he ever had ammo in the gun in the first place, and I can't tell if the first grenade he threw was one he already had and all further ones are replacements. That might still be a part of the activation, but if I had to guess, I'd say what he's actually negating is the need for his ammo, Unneed or Unneeded (need rhyming with Creed). In this scenario, he just needs to set up that he needs something in the first place. If he has a gun with no bullets, he needs bullets to fire the gun; if he then negates that need, then he can fire the gun even without bullets. If he has one grenade and throws it, but it didn't do the job, then he's going to need another one. Whether an ambiguous situation will work, ie. I may need another grenade so I'll negate that now just in case, or it has to be an immediate need, ie. I threw my grenade and it didn't work so I need to try again, I'm unclear, but I don't think he'd be able to use it to get anything he wants. For example, if he's fighting an enemy that's absurdly huge and durable, I don't think saying "I'd need a nuke to beat this thing" would make a nuke appear. I think it has to be clear what the situation requires, not just what would be ideal. This is backed up by the fact that Creed does carry grenades on his person as well as the empty gun: if he could summon any item he wants, he wouldn't need to carry anything around with him in the first place, so he goes through the trouble to set up the scenarios.
Latra's name is the most obvious how it's related to her ability, but I'm having a ton of trouble figuring out a good word for it. Just like Creed, she's shown two applications of her ability, though it isn't immediately obvious that they're related: 1, she can foretell how an event will occur; 2, she can redirect a moving object's trajectory. However, it seems that she can only redirect things that strictly qualify as attacks. When Andy cuts off his arms to use them as Parts Bullets, Latra seems to know ahead of time that the attack is coming and is able to redirect both arms, so she isn't limited to only one redirection at a time. Moments later, when Andy swings his katana at Rip, Latra redirects the sword to miss, resulting in the blood on the sword to be flung off onto her face and ruining her makeup, implying that she couldn't redirect or predict that the blood which was not intended as an attack and not actually dealing any damage. If we assume that her precognition and redirection are related, then the theme of her ability seems to be linearity with a focus on negating the line. By telling Rip his immediate future, he is able to choose not to remain on that course, veering off the line his future is meant to travel down. By placing herself between Rip and a projectile, she is able to curve the projectile's trajectory. Both are explicitly related to some form of "lateral" movement, as evoked by her name, "Latra." My best guess at the moment is that her ability is Unlinear, since not every Negator's rule has a name with proper conjugation, but it doesn't feel quite right. Still, I'm confident I'm on the right track, so provided she doesn't Negate my line of thinking, we're good.
Feng is easily the hardest for one simple reason: I don't know Chinese. From a linguistic perspective, the only thing I've been able to glean is that Feng specifically speaks Mandarin Chinese, since all of their dialogue seems to specifically use Mandarin pinyin (ex: they pronounce 1 as "yi" as opposed to the Cantonese "jat"), so we can assume that their name is a Mandarin word as well. Unfortunately, because they're translating it from the Japanese "Fan," the closest pronunciation Japanese has to the Mandarin "Feng," Viz doesn't include an accent mark on Feng's name, as they have no frame of reference for what hanzi their name uses. Because of this, I am having an absolutely horrid time trying to reverse engineer what hanzi is used in their name. Going by the fact that their ability seems to increase the destructive force of their attacks, being able to crack Tatiana's shell which thus far has only been damaged by the unbreakable katana, my best guess is that Feng's rule either has something to do with human limitation or specifically damages defenses. Since they weren't able to completely break through the shell, I'm less inclined to say the latter, so until we get more information, I'm going with the former. In that case, the best I've been able to find is (峰), meaning peak or summit. In this scenario, rather than being named after the thing they're negating, it would be that Feng is named after the results of their negation: by negating their limits, Unlimited, Feng is able to perform attacks with an output they would never be able to otherwise. This isn't a perfect match by any means, and it's the one I'm least confident on, but it's the best guess I've been able to surmise with my extremely limited knowledge of Mandarin. If I have some kind of epiphany between the time I post this and Feng's ability is revealed, I'll definitely update this section to reflect my findings.
Let's review: Every Negator, whether subtly or explicitly, has a name that reflects the rule they negate. Based on this, Top's quick running speed may suggested he is Unstoppable, Billy is likely Unbelievable since he defies expectations with his trick shots, Isshin's name translating to "wholehearted" may thematically indicate that he is the previously established and unidentified Unbreakable, Phil may be Unfilled and capable of leaving his body to possess inanimate objects, and Nico "Horny" Vorgeil can likely clone himself as Unsex. Harder to pin down are the Negator Hunters, but Creed may be Unneed and can eliminate the need for objects that he has clearly run out of, Latra may be Unlinear by altering the lateral movement of attacking objects or dangerous events, and Feng's name may translate to "peak" to suggest that they can surpass their limits as Unlimited.
Overall, even if I'm completely off base for the actual words used, I think I've got a pretty good idea of the base ideas. The author's logic has tripped me up before, like Shen's ability seeming to be making people act the opposite of their intent, leading me to believe it would be Unintentional only for it to be that he was making liars out of them as Untruth. After that incident, I really can't feel confident basing my guesses only on outward appearances, so the name pattern will hopefully prove more fruitful. I could still easily be wrong, but at least I have a stronger starting point now.
Until next time,
-Tokiro Oumaga
[automerge]1601254680[/automerge]
Update:
Recent chapters have revealed a handful of these theories and given new evidence for a few others.
For starters, Isshin and Top have been confirmed to be Unbreakable and Unstoppable. The exact rules of Unbreakable haven't been elaborated on, but we now know that Top is able to move at high speeds and can only be stopped by "changing the shape of his body." What this seems to mean in most scenarios is taking grievous bodily harm, like breaking a bone, hence why he is generally seen with an arm in a cast.
Though Nico's ability has not been confirmed, we have confirmed that the female who works for him is named Mico Vorgeil, and when she forgets to call him Doctor, she refers to him as Pappy. I'm not sure what she's saying in Japanese, so Pappy could easily be a nickname for either "father" or "grandfather", but given that her name is "Mi"co and her pappy's is "Ni"co, it's possible that their names are meant to denote a sequence, as "ni" is Japanese for 2 and "mi" is an alternate reading for 3. This could even imply that Nico isn't the original and that he's an offshoot from another Unsex, possibly named something like Ichico, Ico, Hico, whatever the author thinks sounds good.
Andy referred to Latla's ability as preventing "orthodox" attacks from landing, with her weakness being randomness. This could imply that her ability is "Unorthodox", which is probably the best way to word it, but I still think the idea is that her ability is to negate things that are "straightforward", or possibly even "predictable." Going by how she's used the ability, diverting things with predictable trajectory's, I still think her ability could somehow reference lines, but Unorthodox and Unpredictable are looking to be good candidates for the exact wording.
Though Nico's ability has not been confirmed, we have confirmed that the female who works for him is named Mico Vorgeil, and when she forgets to call him Doctor, she refers to him as Pappy. I'm not sure what she's saying in Japanese, so Pappy could easily be a nickname for either "father" or "grandfather", but given that her name is "Mi"co and her pappy's is "Ni"co, it's possible that their names are meant to denote a sequence, as "ni" is Japanese for 2 and "mi" is an alternate reading for 3. This could even imply that Nico isn't the original and that he's an offshoot from another Unsex, possibly named something like Ichico, Ico, Hico, whatever the author thinks sounds good.
Andy referred to Latla's ability as preventing "orthodox" attacks from landing, with her weakness being randomness. This could imply that her ability is "Unorthodox", which is probably the best way to word it, but I still think the idea is that her ability is to negate things that are "straightforward", or possibly even "predictable." Going by how she's used the ability, diverting things with predictable trajectory's, I still think her ability could somehow reference lines, but Unorthodox and Unpredictable are looking to be good candidates for the exact wording.
The biggest reveal, though, has to be Billy, confirmed as Unbelievable, but not at all how he's presented it thus far. He told Tatiana that Unbelievable specifically allowed him to make "unbelievable" shots, ricocheting bullets off of things that aren't his target, but upon revealing that he's the leader of the Negator Hunters, now revealed to be named Under, he also reveals that he can use the abilities of other Negators. Presumably his rule is still Unbelievable, since it seems like using other Negators' abilities is something that no one could have predicted or believed in context. It's possible that he can do literally anything that people believe he can't, but that might be a bit much.
That said, it's also possible that "Unbelievable" is in and of itself a lie on his part, with the trick shots being an ability he copied from the real Unbelievable, leaving room for his true ability to still be something else. In this scenario, I'm willing to bet that his name isn't actually Billy. Maybe his true rule is Unlimited, as he isn't limited to only one ability, and his real name is something like Lim or Mitt...or Ted.
That said, it's also possible that "Unbelievable" is in and of itself a lie on his part, with the trick shots being an ability he copied from the real Unbelievable, leaving room for his true ability to still be something else. In this scenario, I'm willing to bet that his name isn't actually Billy. Maybe his true rule is Unlimited, as he isn't limited to only one ability, and his real name is something like Lim or Mitt...or Ted.
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