During events on Skypiea, Usopp witnessed a shady figure repairing the ship in the middle of the night. The next morning the crew was shocked to see someone had used spare metal plates to patch up the ship. It was revealed in Chapter 351 (almost exactly 100 chapters from the sighting) that the figure seen by Usopp was the Klabautermann, a sprite whose roots in myth were pulled straight from our own world. Although the being is believed to exist separately from the ship in human myths, the Klabautermann is quite literally the spirit incarnate of the ship in a human form. However, the ship is able to communicate with the crew in other ways as well. Merry has been shown to express a wailing noise that only the crew can hear. On three occassions it has actually spoken directly to the crew or crew members. Since the ship uses 'boku', a term most commonly used by Japanese males, when addressing itself, one might believe the ship is a male.

Oda revealed during JUMP Festa 2008 that he considers the original design of Merry's figurehead, seen on the previous page, superior to the more rounded design it took on later. However, since it was difficult to repeatedly draw that shape, he found himself changing the design to the simpler to replicate sphere.

At the end of JUMP Festa 2003 (which was in December 2002) Oda mentioned that a 'crew member will die next year' before running off stage without any further explanation. Well, about four years later, he finally got around to doing the deed. It was The Going Merry. With his twist via the reveal of Merry's sentient qualities as expressed by the Klabautermann, Oda was able to count Merry as 'a crew member' and threw most of his readers for a loop. The first hints that Merry would depart first came in Summer 2004 when Luffy decided to get a new ship after being convinced by expert shipwrights that the damage it endured was too great and it could not travel any further. However, they did not actually part ways with the ship until Fall 2006 where they burned the ship at sea in Chapter 430. Merry spoke to them upon its death and thanked them for taking such good care of it. And the crew never got a ship again.







Go Back!

"No, there is another."