Third, and most importantly, because we might have already gotten a clue about the presence of automata in Wano. In chapter 934, Brook says he has found a Poneglyph in the basement of Orochi’s castle, in a “weird room with wooden dolls lined up inside” protected by a rock-solid door.
The lined-up dolls part reminded me of this image.
Shinobu thinks what Brook saw might be kokeshi dolls, but that’s just her guess and could be a misdirection.
In the castle basement, next to the Poneglyph, there might be automata just like those built by Tsukimi and those on the Moon.
These automata could be dressed in Wano clothing (that is traditional Japanese clothing, like the real karakuri puppets) and this may be the reason Brook mistook them for dolls.
Finally, another thing could connect Tsukimi’s automata to Wano. When the four robots decided to travel to the Moon, they used balloons.
Flying all the way to the Moon holding onto a balloon has always looked a little unbelievable to me even for One Piece, where things are crazy but there’s always been some logic applied to travel mechanics (coating ships, the flying Merry etc.). They are robots so they wouldn’t have trouble surviving in space, but wouldn’t the balloons break or just not work?
That’s why I think the automata might have made a stop at Balloon Terminal, the place where all the balloons gather, and from there they took another transport to the Moon. Notice how they’re not shown flying in space, but only through some clouds. And “terminal” is also the name for a point of connection for departures and arrivals, after all.
On Balloon Terminal there are also what look like observatory domes, perhaps once used to observe space and specifically the Moon. And who did we first meet on Ballon Terminal? Kaido himself. Which might suggest it’s not too far from Wano and is reachable flying from there. Which, in turn, might indicate that a point of connection existed between Wano and the Moon (I say existed because the terminal is now in ruins).
THE AUTOMATA’S PURPOSE IN WANO
Assuming that the place where Tsukimi watched the Moon with his automata is Wano, and that there are other inactive automata in the castle basement, what could these little robots’ purpose be? Were they just made for entertainment like their real-world counterparts? Given the connection between Tsukimi’s automata and those built by the ancient civilization of the Moon – already established in Enel’s cover story – I doubt it.
Wano shares similarities with both Shandora and Alabasta/Alubarna: Shandora was called the “City of Gold” and Wano was called the “Country of Gold”; Alabasta doesn’t have an epithet like that but has a comparable ancient history. The ancient places of Wano, Shandora and Alubarna all house a Poneglyph hidden and protected by their people, and in 2 out of 3 cases it’s one that reveals the location of an ancient weapon: Pluton on Alubarna’s Poneglyph and Poseidon on Shandora’s.
Following this logic, I think the Poneglyph Brook found may hold the secret to the location of Uranus.
If the Wano automata were stored with the Poneglyph that reveals Uranus’s location, and these automata are the link between the Moon and Wano, the most logical conclusion would be that Uranus is on the Moon – something that has already been theorized by the fans for years.
The purpose of the automata stored in the castle could be to provide whoever is able to read the Poneglyph – and finds out about Uranus’s location – with a way to reach or control the weapon.
We might even have seen Uranus already: Birka, the underground technologically-advanced city operated by the automata, could be exactly that. The Moon itself might also turn into a giant weapon operated by the little robots – again, something that has already been theorized.
I say reach or control the weapon because I don’t think Uranus being on the Moon automatically means we’ll get a space arc, or that main characters aside from Enel will go to the Moon; maybe Uranus is supposed to be controlled at a distance through the automata, that are the ones meant to go to the weapon and activate it, “waking up” their fellow robots (little do they know, Enel has already done that with his powers, possibly taking control of the weapon. But that’s another story).
*Theory by akazaya
