Poor Kuma. Saturn is pretty dastardly and yet why would you ever trust him. Sounds like Kuma gave up on everyone. Nothing to stop gov from directing him to kill his own daughter. Bit wooden in terms of writing. Like every single villain in every film. Why would they not just change their mind after you agree. They hold no loyalty.
There are so many words!
My bet is Vegapunk never removed Kuma’s personality. Kuma removed it himself, and Vegapunk is storing it for him. When the time is right, Vegapunk will give Kuma his personality back.
Yeah this chapter loops back to 1072: The Weight of Memory https://tcbscans.com/chapters/5603/one-piece-chapter-1072-review-1688718749
Bonney finds the paw shaped bubble with Kuma memories on Egghead, touches it and sees Kuma’s memories. So definitely Kuma removed his own memories with the paw ability into the storage bubble before he became a robot. Bonney saw the past and we saw bits in the chapter and a later one as well. We haven’t seen all the sacrifices Kuma made for her, but Bonney probably saw that too.
Every chapter, there is more suffering for Kuma. I had a friend guess already a few chapters ago, that ‘Kuma will die next chapter after so much bad things happen to him’, and here he is, suffering once more.
I’m not sure where this will lead, e.g. Kuma might have gotten a Saturn order on the past panel to go an kill Bonney. As kind of a test if he functions properly, if Vegapunk did his work right and to finally get rid of Bonney. But Bonney is still alive, so maybe not everything from Kuma was extracted into the paw bubble on Egghead. Just guessing here what might come.
But Kuma could be revived with memories and reunited at the end – or Oda just lets him die after all the suffering in life.
I believe Kuma’s soul was moved into that giant Robot because Vegapunk didn’t have it within himself to essentially kill Kuma. Giving Kuma an ancient Iron Giant’s soul achieves the same effect and is more humane. Also makes scene why Kuma’s current body just scaled the Red Line like the Iron Giant did in the past attacking Mary Geoise.
