ADVENTURE IN THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST: ZOU’S INSPIRATIONS AND RETURN OF JINBE

Hello once again everyone and back to a short theory for your entertainment. This time, I shall be diving into the possible inspirations behind Zou.

With the recent chapter, we got a good look at Zou.

The buildings are designed after the buildings of Yemen in Southwest Asia.

The stone architecture bares similarities to the Turkey Lycian Tombs, Puma Punku and the Inca Empire, the latter two being abandoned civilizations in South America.

The forest is designed after the Amazon Rain Forest in South America.

The Amazon Rain Forest suffers from human activity, as humans are causing deforestation. The highways(means Kaidou in Japanese) built in the rainforest posses a major threat and seriously damages the environment of the forest. Soybeans used to be in high supply in the rainforest but due to humans, production of soybeans has dwindled heavily, eliminated a source of food of the animals of the forest. The loss of biodiversity releases lots of carbon, gas and smoke(Caesar and remember Franky smelling gunpowder and smoke?), accelerating global warming. Water seems to play a decent role in Zou and it could be a reference to the Amazon River.

Another reason for global warming in the Amazon Rainforest is dust and sand blown in from the Sahara Desert. Remember the crocs we saw Sheepshead and the Mink woman riding? You can see very similar looking crocs called bananadiles in Alabasta owned by Crocodile. Crocodile showing up?

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest could mirror the Mink’s distrust of humans and as you will see below, the forest of the Mink’s is already being destroyed.

The trees of Zou are designed after Planet Namek

As for the elephant itself….

With the 1000 year old elephant and one of its inspirations being an elephant carrying an obelisk, it really reminds me of Jinbe discovering a poneglyph not to far off from G5, Dressrosa and Zou.

Also, there is something called the ‘Whale Tree” in Zou.

Jinbe is a whale shark, but the whale looks strangely like WB’s ship the Moby Dick and Jinbe was an ally of WB. Its almost a guarantee that Robin will find some Void Century info and that poneglyph may be reason why, given to her by the man she called handsome.

*Theory by Vandenreich