Kuma’s Devil Fruit will reincarnate in Nami’s orange trees on Sunny

Kuma is flying somewhere. We don’t know for sure where, but the prevailing theory is that it’s Egghead. That makes the most sense. It’s going to be somewhere on the New World side of the Red Line, so Sorbet Kingdom is ruled out (it’s in South Blue, on the Paradise side of the Line). No where else has any obvious significance so from here out we’re going to assume he’s going to Egghead. The why isn’t important, just the where.

Next, Kuma is not surviving. This whole flashback may want you to see him get a happy ending, but it’s just not happening. Remember how extensively damaged he is from his brief scuffle with Sakazuki. With all the pain he’s suffered, dying is Kuma’s happy ending. Hopefully he gets to see Bonney and Nika and die in an epic final stand against Saturn, but he is dying here.

That leaves us with a question. When Kuma “dies”, how do we know? He’s a cyborg so how we tell the difference in a “dead” Kuma and a malfunctioning Kuma? The devil fruit. When Kuma truly dies, his devil fruit will reincarnate. As of now, we know some part of him is still alive because he still has his fruit power. We’ve never seen an inanimate object with a paramecia power, only Zoans, so the continued presence of the Paw Paw powers means that Kuma hasn’t yet died. His soul is still present in the machine. But when he does finally die, his power will leave him and reincarnate in a new fruit. Which fruit? One of Nami’s tangerines.

The “One of Nami’s Tangerines will become a Devil Fruit” Theory is quite old at this point. For a long time, it revolved around Monet’s snow fruit, but the core idea still works and can be applied again to Kuma’s paw fruit. If he dies on Egghead, then we will know for sure when one of the mikan fruits transforms.

So who gets it? Oda has previously hinted that one of the Straw Hats would get it (it’s a very old gorowase theory that Oda acknowledge in the SBS in Volume 59). The classic answer has always been Vivi. If she got the Paw Paw fruit, she would immeasurably become one of the best support characters in the series. This idea has also gotten new life thanks to theories around Nefertari D. Lili having had the same fruit and using it to scatter the Poneglyphs.

Okay theory over. Thanks for making it this far.