Of all the characters in One Piece Shanks is the most mysterious one. One Piece is getting into its final saga where fans are getting their answers to most awaited questions like, who is Vega Punk? what is the reality of Luffy’s devil fruit? or why did Monkey D Dragon form the revolutionary army? But still, the world of One Piece is filled with such mysteries that it may take Oda 3 to 4 years to reveal those to us.

When did Shanks get the scar?

In One Piece Shanks had his scar even before he met Luffy in Fushia Village. When he told Whitebeard that he got his scar from fighting one of his crewmates but it was not in the crew’s fight. It is safe to say that he got it after Gol D Roger’s death, somewhere around 12 to 25 years ago from now.

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Also read: Garp vs Blackbeard

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When Shanks met Luffy on Fushia Island he wasn’t any random pirate. He had a reputation for himself as the rival of the strongest swordsman Dracule Mihawk. But still, we don’t know whether Shanks was Emperor level when he got that scar. It’s obvious that he wasn’t as strong as he is now, but was strong enough to have daily duels with Mihawk that even Whitebeard praised. This means that Blackbeard was also strong and capable to fight Shanks.

At that time Blackbeard was in Whitebeard’s crew and talking of Shanks, he was alone after rogers death. Maybe some of Whitebeard’s crewmates had a quarrel with Shanks. Blackbeard was in the second division and he knew that the place of the commander of the second division was vacant for a very long time. So, when the fight started, to get the lead in order to become the commander of the second division Blackbeard fought Shanks one to one and gave shanks the scar.

How did Shanks get Scar?

It is well known that in One Piece Shanks got his scar from Marshal D Teach aka Blackbeard. But how did he manage to do so? It is hard to believe that the strongest conqueror haki user, the strongest captain right now that exists did not retaliate.

Shanks has the power to get head to head fight with the strongest man and strongest creature i.e all-father Whitebeard and Kaido. He is the rival of the strongest swordsman alive. He stopped Kaido from entering the marineford war. World Government stopped the war when Shanks arrived and said to stop the war. So how can he not take revenge on Blackbeard?

There is a possibility that Blackbeard may have got Shanks by surprise or he may have betrayed Shanks while fighting a common enemy. Blackbeard gets scared when facing a powerful enemy as we saw in marineford he was whining like a child when Whitebeard attacked him. So he would have switched sides with the enemy and attacked Shanks instead.

Another possibility is that Shanks must have underestimated Blackbeard and paid the price. It’s like attacking Ussop and finding out Ussop is as strong as Zoro. Shanks didn’t know about his ability, so he wanted to stop Ace from fighting Blackbeard.

Why didn’t Shanks take revenge?

In One Piece Shanks and almost every other powerful member have scars. When Blackbeard was in Whitebeard’s crew he used somewhat wolverine-like clawed weapons to fight. Here in the One Piece universe match-up of powers matters the most. Blackbeard vs Shanks can be compared to that Luffy vs Eneru where one’s ability is superior to others no matter their physical strength. For example, by default, Luffy’s rubber ability defeated Eneru’s lightning ability. It is also possible that the scar Blackbeard gave to Shanks while they fought must be because of Blackbeard’s superior ability.

Another reason that Shanks didn’t kill Blackbeard is that Blackbeard was in Whitebeard’s crew and as we all know Whitebeard always wanted a family, he considered every crew member as his own son. Now just imagine Shanks killing one of the All-Father Whitebeards, the world’s strongest man’s son. It means that Shanks would have eventually died at the hands of Whitebeard.

You can get the gravity of the situation by knowing that when World Government announced the execution of Portgas D Ace he challenged the whole World Government. Old Whitebeard was a nightmare for the government, prime Whitebeard would have killed Shanks easily for killing one of his sons. Although he didn’t like Blackbeard much, he was the pirate who lived his whole life by the code of conduct.

We can all agree that in the world of One Piece Shanks is the character that doesn’t do a thing without a plan. There may be some reason that he let Blackbeard go unharmed. Also, there must be totally different reasons why Shanks and Blackbeard had a fight in the past. There is a lot of mystery around that scar.

Who is stronger in One Piece Shanks or Blackbeard?

Shanks vs Blackbeard is one of the most awaited fights we all fans are waiting for. This battle would be more disastrous than that of marineford. In One Piece Shanks is not the type of guy who would kill a person for a personal grudge. On Fushia Island, he didn’t attack those mountain bandits when they insulted him, but when Luffy was hurt by those bandits he didn’t hesitate to kill those bandits. Also in One Piece Film Red, Shanks’ daughter was hurting herself and others so Shanks intervened. It is most will be Luffy vs Blackbeard and when Luffy will need help, Shanks will come to help him or vice versa.

Considering the current timeline Shanks should have killed Blackbeard by now. There’s no doubt that Shanks is everyone’s favorite character and he is like an elder brother we all want but giving a scar on the face to a character like Shanks is no joke. In One Piece Film Red, shanks took down Admiral Kizaru in an instant like a piece of cake and brought Admiral Fujitora to the knees just by his conqueror’s haki. Vice Admirals were knocked out cold. Admiral Ryokugyu felt Shanks haki from miles away in Wano and was forced to retreat.

Still, Shanks didn’t attack Blackbeard till now can mean that Blackbeard is more robust than Shanks. We cannot ignore that Blackbeard now has two devil fruits that are strongest in their categories. He is mastering the awakening of those two devil fruits and is in search of the third devil fruit. In recent chapters, we got to know that he too has conquerors haki. When Ace fought Blackbeard we got to see the enormous physical strength of Blackbeard.

In the future, we may see Shanks vs Blackbeard again and it is difficult to say who would win because both of them are powerful and mysterious. It would be very interesting to watch this. Let’s hope we may get to watch it soon.

Genuinely, I think Shanks is overhyped to be some god in the OP-verse, but we haven’t seen anything from him. I think Luffy and Shanks are on the same level now, so when they have their duel, I feel like that’ll take hours or days in their time to declare a winner.

Some people think this is the generic Shonen rule of progression, meaning they think Shanks is gonna be the strongest emperor because he’s supposed to be last in line for Luffy to beat the Yonko (even though Kaido made it clear that he is currently the strongest emperor). I think we should lower our expectations of Shanks in case something happens, otherwise, we could be disappointed.

Luffy and Shanks’s reunion in the manga is gonna fucking break the internet though, now that I can’t wait for it. I gotta feeling OP is gonna blow up (in popularity) when that happens.

I don’t think there is a “weakest” emperor, but I do believe there is a strongest emperor though, with that being Kaido. Shanks’s crew is likely where he gets his famous strength since he likely has the most powerful Yonko crew. Shanks also got famous for his duels with Mihawk.

Unlike the Red Hair Pirates’ strength mainly being from all of the crewmates, the Beast Pirates’ strength mainly comes from Kaido carrying his crew.

What I mean by this is Kaido’s carrying his team with 40+ kills, like in a BTB game of Halo 2.

That said, Shanks gets to do stuff others don’t. Like walk into the 5 elders and say he gets an audience, so he might have other abilities that lend him a different kind of strength, (super advanced observation haki? Reliable future sight?)

I believe Shanks’s power is mostly backed up by his Conqueror’s Haki. In Pirate Warriors 3 and 4, he coats his sword in conqueror’s coating, kinda like this in this SBS drawing.

I heard that the developers of the game asked Oda help for in making Shanks’s moves-set, so Oda did have a play in making Shanks’s move-set for PW3. PW4 has also shown tornado moves Kaido used before it was seen in the manga. This is probably the closest we’re going to get to Shanks’s fighting style before we actually see him in the manga.