ᚦ (Lord of end times)

The more I reread Blackbeard vs Ace, the more convinced I become that Haki was at least partially a retcon. Think about how Blackbeard explained the Yami Yami no Mi. He specifically called it the most powerful Devil Fruit because it could nullify other Devil Fruit abilities, INCLUDING Logia intangibility. And Oda made a point of highlighting the massive drawback: the user becomes tangible, takes attacks directly and experiences even more pain than normal. Why emphasise that drawback so heavily if there was already a universal power system designed to let people hit Logias regardless? Then there’s Ace. This is a man who would eventually be recognised as a top Yonko commander, yet the Blackbeard fight doesn’t really present Haki as an established way to deal with Logias. Back then, the apparent rules were much simpler: * Seastone could neutralise Devil Fruit users. * Natural elemental weaknesses could counter certain abilities. * The Yami Yami no Mi could forcibly nullify Devil Fruit powers. And because Seastone was rare, Logias felt genuinely terrifying. You needed the right counter or an extremely specific ability to fight them. Now Haki provides a universal answer to one of the biggest advantages Devil Fruits had. I’m not saying Oda couldn’t have had Haki planned in some form from the beginning. But the way it eventually became a universal combat system feels very different from how the early story treated Devil Fruit matchups. And I fully expect Blackbeard’s darkness to receive some deeper abilities that explain why he wanted it so badly. But if that happens, it’ll feel like Oda is retroactively rebuilding the importance of a fruit whose original selling point was that it could do something Haki eventually made much less special. Did Oda always intend Haki to work this way, or did the power system evolve so much that it changed the original purpose of the Yami Yami no Mi?