Warning! Contains BIG revelations for One Piece and Chainsaw Man!
While A piece And chainsaw man extremely different, their ultimate villains, Imu and Makima, are strikingly similar. The two manga by Eiichiro Oda and Tatsuki Fujimoto are among Shonen Jump’s most popular manga respectively for very different reasons. One Piece comes from the older Shonen storytelling era while Chainsaw Man is leading the vanguard of modern stories.
Part of the revolution for Chainsaw Man is the main antagonist Makima. Makima is the head of a government organization tasked with hunting demons, though ironically her true identity is the Demon of Control. As the Demon of Control, she manipulates everyone around her and tries to make protagonist Denji’s life miserable so she can finally control the Chainsaw Man. This callous manipulation is what makes her Shonen Jump’s best modern villain. Her ultimate goal is to erase the evils in the world with the mysterious power of the Chainsaw Man to completely destroy the other demons he eats. All of this makes her resemble Imu (sometimes spelled Im), the ultimate villain of One Piece.
One Piece’s Im and Chainsaw Man’s Makima Are Strangely Similar
Imu is One Piece’s biggest villain, a mysterious figure that runs the World Government from the shadows. They seem to be directly linked to the mysterious Drum Century, a historical period that has been erased for unknown reasons. These two details directly connect Imu with Makima, who also runs her government organization from the shadows and tries to erase parts of history. Oddly enough however the similarities don’t stop there. Both characters have very distinctive eyes with concentric circles and both premiered on Shonen Jump in 2018. Also, Imu’s gender is yet to be revealed and some fans graves have speculated they might be women, making them another female villain just like Makima in a genre saturated with male villains. Even their names are similar, with literally part of Makima’s name.
With all of these connections between the two villains, it may seem like one is directly inspired by the other, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Imu appeared in One Piece a few months before Makima, but Makima’s eye design was taken from a one-shot Fujimoto created many years ago called Yogen no Nayuta. Also, given how well planned One Piece is, Imu’s character was probably created years before they first appeared in the manga, meaning it may not have been influenced by Makima. While this doesn’t mean that Oda was never influenced by other modern Shonen Jump manga, it does make this kind of influence less likely.
While the two characters don’t seem to inspire each other, their many connections reveal a deeper truth about Shonen’s storytelling. Even as modern Shonen stories deconstruct the classics and become ever darker, they ultimately operate on the same pattern as their predecessors. In spite of A piece And chainsaw man On the surface it may seem like completely different stories, but many of the connections between Imu and Makima suggest that they are more similar than fans think.
One Piece and Chainsaw Man are both available to read from Viz Media.