St. Ethanbaron V. Nasjuro - Death Horse

St. Ethanbaron V. Nasjuro can transform into the Death Horse. In Japanese it is called by the translated name of “Bakotsu”, which literally means “Skeleton Horse” and widely refers to the skeletal horses from different mythologies. There is technically a fairly obscure yokai that is called “skeleton horse” or “bakotsu”, but in this case Oda seems to have been more inspired more largely by the depiction of the skeleton horse in several mythologies. Also known as the Death Horse, the Pale Horse, Reaper Horse, or quite simply “Skeleton Horse”, Oda seems to have based it off mostly off of the pale horse of death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in European myth, often depicted as a skeletal horse with its head covered in drapes, the harbinger of death itself. 

 

However, we also see Nasujurou transforming into his hybrid form, where he turns into a centaur, allowing the top half of his body to look human and wield a sword. He uses his horse legs to quickly dash across the battlefield and slash every Pacifista, decomissioning them in one shot and freezing half of the entire army in mere seconds. Interestingly, the Pacifista appear to freeze and fall down but while the blade went through their body, they don’t seem to have been sliced clean, instead having been sliced while still retaining their bodies. There also appears to be a cloud of cold drawn around the slash, something reinforced by later Marines saying the Pacifista were frozen. This allows the Gorosei to decommission the Pacifista without breaking them so they can still use them at a later date. This would make sense, as much like how Brook’s fruit allows him to draw forth the chill of the Underworld, it makes sense that the pale horse of death would be able to draw from the underworld as well and freeze its opponents. An interesting detail as well is that we can also see Nasujurou’s blade clad in haki, as it becomes a black bade momentarily, even if when draw in the past (Chapter 594, for example) it looked like a normal blade. Speaking of which, in case you didn’t know, Nasujurou’s blade bears the iconic hilt of the Kitetsu line of swords, the same line to which Zoro’s Sandai Kitetsu belongs, being the third iteration in the line. Thus many fans have speculated that this sword could be the Shodai Kitetsu, said to be the original of the cursed sword line and one of the Saijo O Wazamono, the twelve strongest blades in the world, standing on the same level as Mihawk’s Yoru, Whitebeard’s Murakumogiri, and Roger’s Ace. So it would make a lot of sense that one of the Gorosei, being such a mighty warrior, would bear this historical blade, one of the greatest ever forged.