Although the story of One Piece mostly revolves around the battle between pirates, navy soldiers, more pirates and a corrupt government that seems to be basically demons incarnate, there is also an entire underground underworld within the world of One Piece. Brokers, shipping, slave trade and lots of smuggling are all handled within this shady world. One figure is known for being very effective at smuggling. That is one of the underworld emperors, a man by the name of Umit who runs the Umit Shipping company.
We see Umit very sparsely throughout the story of One Piece. He is present at the wedding of Charlotte Pudding and Vinsmoke Sanji as one of the guests, and although he falls down with the cake, I have a suspicion he will still be around. He’s also been shown to help Vegapunk with the creation of Egghead back in the day, which means that at least some of the work he does involves the navy to an extent. Vegapunk is also friends with some highly wanted people, so that doesn’t have to be true, but it’s an interesting tidbit.
Why am I bringing Umit up? Well, he is specifically introduced as one of the underworld emperors when we first meet him during Whole Cake Island, and to run a shipping company like that, you need to have a way to get from one part of the world to another part of the world with relative ease. Although we learn later in the story that a lot of the more powerful people tend to come and go as they please, the world of One Piece is still made out of different stretches of ocean that are split up by large strips of land. You can’t just smuggle stuff across the world without running into some barriers here and there. So Umit probably has some special routes that he takes.
And if we think of someone taking special routes, the first person that comes to mind for many of us is our favorite red haired pirate Shanks. You see, one of the things that has long baffled people about Shanks is his ability to be at so many different places within such a short time. He appears in front of Kaido one day, then is at Marineford the next day to stop the war. He is at Wano to stare menacingly at Ryokugyu and is at Elbaf within a day or two. He visits East Blue regularly and seems to know where to find Mihawk if he needs to. To make a long story short, I think both Umit and Shanks know something that many people don’t, and I think the Roger Pirates knew the same thing.
Back in Fishman Island, we learned that there are underwater currents that take you from one place to another but can get you stuck there if you’re not careful. A very fun theory – and of course, I’m not the one who came up with this theory – is that the Roger pirates, the Red Haired pirates and the Umit Shipping company all know about these underwater currents and are very capable at traversing them, essentially using a form of fast travel throughout the world of One Piece. This would explain a lot about how some of these people get from one place to another so efficiently – Rayleigh swimming from Sabaody to Goa Kingdom makes more sense if he knows the right currents – without being spotted by anyone. It would also explain why the Roger pirates and Shanks’ crew don’t have devil fruits and it would add an extra layer to why Buggy is so upset about not being able to swim. Of course there seems to be quite a lot of strangeness down at the bottom of the ocean that we have yet to explore, think of what we saw at the end of Wano with the original country being much deeper down, and suddenly we have a very good reason to be able to traverse the bottom of the ocean. With One Piece reaching its final saga, I don’t think these deep sea currents will play a major role in the story, but perhaps we get a few crumbs of lore in the upcoming arcs to learn a little bit more about them. There’s a lot to this world that is not yet discovered and I can’t wait to learn more about it all. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 