One Piece: Oda Finally Explains Why the World Forgot Imu After God Valley

Here is a fun One Piece brain-bender: what if nobody forgot Imu after God Valley because there was nothing to forget? Not because of a memory-wipe Devil Fruit or some shadowy government device, but because everyone there thought they were looking at someone else entirely. It’s a clean bit of misdirection that feels very Oda.

The pitch: Imu wearing Saturn’s skin at God Valley

Picture the scene: chaos everywhere at God Valley, Rocks D. Xebec going off the rails, Roger and Garp forced to tag-team, and a monstrous force from the World Government shows up. Officially, that presence is Saint Saturn, one of the Gorosei. The theory making the rounds? That wasn’t Saturn at all. It was Imu, riding shotgun inside Saturn’s body and pulling the strings.

And here’s the sneaky part: most people at God Valley had never laid eyes on Imu or Saturn. To a Marine grunt or a random pirate, a Five Elder unleashing god-tier power is exactly what you’d expect a Five Elder to do. No red flags. No reason to think there’s a hidden boss behind the boss.

But shouldn’t Haki have blown the cover?

Observation Haki can read presence and strength, sure, but it doesn’t pop up a name tag. Unless you’ve felt both Saturn and Imu’s Haki separately before, you’re not going to clock the swap. The theory points to one exception: Rocks D. Xebec. He might have known exactly who was in the room when he told his crew:

"we are in front of the world"

At the time, that line read like grandstanding. Reframed, it sounds like Rocks recognized the actual ruler at the top of the food chain standing right there.

Egghead basically tees this up

Fast-forward to Egghead. Saturn turns into a full-on yokai nightmare in front of Marines and pirates, and nobody blinks. Why would they? The Gorosei are already treated like borderline mythical beings. If Saturn can show up in that demonic form now without anyone panicking about what he is, then people at God Valley wouldn’t have questioned an elder throwing around godlike abilities back then, either.

• People assumed they were watching Saint Saturn, a known Five Elder, do ridiculous Five Elder things.
• Observation Haki told them the power level, not the identity.
• Only someone who had felt both Imu and Saturn’s auras would spot the difference, which might explain Rocks’s cryptic line.
• Result: no memory erasure needed. Everyone left thinking they saw a Gorosei flex, while they actually stood in front of Imu.

So the big swing here isn’t sci-fi mind wipes. It’s Oda doing what he loves: a sharp narrative trick hiding in plain sight. Imu wasn’t scrubbed from history; the world just never officially knew they’d seen him.

Do you buy it? Or do you still think there’s a memory-erasing Fruit or secret tech in the mix? One Piece is streaming on Crunchyroll if you want to revisit the clues.