Thread by @3SkullJoe

Dr Vegapunk Character Analysis

What We Know So Far

#ONEPIECE Thread

One thing that we thought we knew about Vegapunk was that 'he' was an old man.

Of course now we've met Vegapunk & it turns out to be a woman. However, based on the way she speaks. We can tell that this is a new body

Vegapunk maintains the personality of the old man.

From details revealed in the past we can get a decent idea of Vegapunk personality and philosophy.

Whilst Franky was at Vegapunk's home island, Karakuri. He learned of how Vegapunk was always passionate about inventing things to help the people.

Back at Punk Hazard we learned that Vegapunk had once created enhanced protective gear so that people could survive the hazardous environments created by one of Ceaser's failed experiments.

Ceaser had been pushing the boundaries on their experiments in order to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Ceaser continued to cross the line and eventually Vegapunk expelled him from the team

It was this that led to Ceaser causing the explosion that almost destroyed the lab

From this we can tell that Vegapunk primarily wants to help people & has at least some moral standards and lines they won't cross.

However, it seems that Vegapunk has no sympathy or respect for pirates and generally dislikes them.

Vegapunk cares most about developing technologies that will help people and make things more peaceful.

Ceaser even implied that Vegapunk's dream is to establish world peace through science.

In this scene he mimics Vegapunk to mock him in front of his followers.

However, this image of Vegapunk is seemingly contradicted by the fact that he has always been making weapons.

Yonji explained that Judge & Vegapunk worked on weapons together & Franky discovered a secret second lab at Karakuri where Vegapunk did weapons research.

From the fact that the Navy were stationed at Karakuri and considered Vegapunk's research there to be 'priceless' & 'national treasure'. We can infer that Vegapunk was most likely coerced in to making these weapons.

We know that Vegapunk was arrested after they discovered Lineage Factors with MADS. So from at least since then, Vegapunk has been forced in to creating these weapons.

It seems that no matter where Vegapunk goes, their research always ends up falling in to the wrong hands and they are manipulated to create instruments of warfare instead of instruments of peace.

So Vegapunk may not be creating weapons willingly but their philosophy on humanity is still interesting to consider.

Vegapunk has knowingly conducted many inhumane experiments on humans & other races, such as Gigantification, Lunarian endurance tests & cybernetics

It seems that Vegapunk's empathy doesn't extend to criminals & this connects back to the comment from 1061 which implies they don't like pirates.

We saw in Punk Hazard that a bunch of corpses from failed gigantification experiments had been kept on ice

Vegapunk also seems to be driven by an urge to be able to understand and control every aspect of their creations.

In 1061, we saw Vegapunk comment on how 'perhaps overriding primal desires is simply impossible.'

To this end they are willing to do experiments on human subjects.

So is Vegapunk a good person? On balance, no not really.

Vegapunk has good intentions but their moral compass is heavily skewed by an obsession with scientific discovery

It may be that Vegapunk is a good person at heart & that they are being coerced in to making human weapons such as the Seraphim.

Some believe that it is this that will lead them to betray the WG & side with the Revolutionaries.

This would tie in with the connection to Kuma

There are a couple more details we can draw from & the first is that Vegapunk is a perfectionist and considers themselves to be mediocre.

This potentially explains why Vegapunk lied to the World Government about the artificial fruit experiment being a failure.

The last detail that we have is that Vegapunk is seemingly very reliant on raising money in order to fund their experiments.

It was implied in 1061 that they raid passing pirates in order to steal their loot ... And possibly take new test subjects

That's about all I could piece together for now. It's not much but it gives a decent insight in to Vegapunk's personality & philosophies.

This arc is sure to be a very interesting one!