User blog comment:Jameselite2c-therealdeal/Kuina is alive theory/@comment-24850639-20170905193819

This topic is quite the can of worms, and understandably so because we have nothing conclusive, yet so much discussion material. I don't have the longest tenure on this wiki, so I'm not sure how "Kuina is alive" blogs there have been to date, but they've been getting shot down ever since I joined. I appreciate you bringing up the topic, regardless of what happens in this thread.

1.) Gotta shoot this one down. Oda draws pictures of various One Piece characters in their childhood, and you can see in Tashigi's that she's worn glasses since she was a kid. As evidenced in her introduction scene with Zoro, her vision is actually pretty bad without them. Kuina didn't to wear glasses, and she was definitely older than Tashigi was in her SBS picture during the brief time we got to see her. Sabo's story also makes it kinda hard to buy someone losing their fighting prowess as a result of memory loss. I know Oda likes to nerf women, but this would just be a huge pile of bs. She's literally the only person we've ever seen Zoro lose to outside of Mihawk, who practically doesn't even count, so her all of a sudden being the one chasing him in strength when he dedicated his life to chasing her wouldn't make any kind of sense at all to me.

2.) This one I can definitely agree on some of your points, such as her eventually finding a way to Wano, and Zoro having to fight her at some point as part of taking down Kaido. It's hard for me to believe that Koshiro would come up with such an elaborate lie to Zoro if he isn't absolutely certain that Kuina is dead. That would add Koshiro to his inevitable war path, which I think is already pretty occupied with Mihawk, Shiryuu, The Shogun of Wano, Admiral Fujitora, and probably one of Kaido's calamities. His plate is pretty full from Wano on, before you even potentially add Kuina to the mix. So for that portion, I think Kuina engineered her "death" with a fake body of some sort or something to put her in a deep sleep, and Koshiro was none the wiser. I also don't think that Zoro is holding any "guilt" over his shoulder, he has no reason to think that he had anything to do with her death. His last words to her were words of encouragement, over their mutual dream.

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Now back to what I do agree with, there's certainly been a lot of theories on this subject. My favorite is based on her issues with her gender, and it's not Ivankov juicing her up with hormones. I know Oda hasn't exactly looked the best when it comes to giving women shine in this series, or supporting feminism, but I still have faith in his good writing. I think it sends a bad message for a girl who grew up kicking men's asses and wanting for the reputation associated with their strength to be attributed to her as a woman, to actually become a man to achieve her goals. The writing is much more compelling if she instead finds a way around this barrier while still maintaining her womanhood. To that end, the theory I believe is not that she became a man, but began changing her appearance so that she looked like one. She wanted to go to Wano because that's the ultimate country of swordsmen, but there, women are treated as second-class citizens essentially. She couldn't challenge these men as a woman, so she changed her hair and makeup in order to look more "manly". Everyone is probably going to be wearing kimonos in Wano, so her womanly figure is already hidden pretty well.

Here's where things get interesting: as we all know, Wano definitely represents Japan. Wano's closed borders is actually taken straight from history, as there was a period of over 200 years where Japan banned foreign trade and didn't really let people leave the country. After this policy was eventually uplifted in 1854, loyalists of the country began to rebel. The Shogun needed protection when traveling, and thus formed a unit of samurai for just that purpose. One of the most famous of these units is known as the Shinsengumi, founded with 13 members who remained in Kyoto after the Shogun visited there for a meeting with the Emperor over these isolationist policies. One of these founding members, Okita Soji, has a reputation for being mistaken for a woman due to a very high level of attractiveness. Even more interesting? While his blade is officially listed as the Kaga Kiyomistu, due the popularity of novels by an author known as Ryotaro Shiba, Okita Soji is commonly stated to have wielded one of the Kiku Ichimonji ("Kiku Ichimonji" is the collective name given to the blades that were produced by 13 swordsmiths in the employ of Emperor Go-Toba). If that wasn't crazy enough, Shiba's highest-selling novel to date is called Ryoma Goes His Way, which is about a samurai named Sakamoto Ryoma who was instrumental in bring about the end of Japan's closed borders. Shiba was one of Japan's most famous authors ever, and I refuse to believe that Oda didn't draw at least SOME inspiration from this man's work. I'm sure we'll see some form of elite protection force for the Shogun, and while I'm not sure if Oda would make her a part of it, I do believe that she is quite a well-known samurai in Wano under a different name and identity.