At Marineford, Shanks stopped Akainu with his sword. That much we all saw, but what I noticed was that he did not use Haki on the sword and yet it did not melt.

This has been bugging me. How is this possible, if Akainu's Lava can burn even fire but not melt the sword which is not even infused with Haki.


The black coloring induced by Haki was only introduced after the timeskip. Before that, when Haki is used, it is not visible with two exceptions: Garp's punch at Enies Lobby and Whitebeard's fist at Marineford.

For example, in chapter 512, Rayleigh faces Kizaru in a sword duel. Rayleigh is using a simple sword while the admiral is wielding an energy sword made of pure light. In this fight, for Rayleigh's sword to be effective against Kizaru, he is obviously using Haki, even if the Haki is not visible at all. This is confirmed by the fact that Rayleigh's sword swing injures Kizaru, a logia user.

Therefore, Shanks' sword is not "made" of anything special (i.e. seastone), he was simply embedding it with Haki. He may be wielding one of the world's great swords but this has yet to be confirmed.

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  • This looks very plausible and makes the most sense. One last question though. If Black Color for Haki was introduced only after timeskip, why is that Hawkeye's sword is shown in black because during training zoro, he did indirectly confirm that his sword is black because of haki by saying, "If you learn to master haki, your sword will not have a clinks" or something like that – KRISHNAKANT MISHRA Dec 21 '15 at 6:29
  • Mihawk's sword is called Yoru. It is one of the twelve Supreme Grade Sword and it is also a black sword. So black is its natural color – solalito Dec 21 '15 at 6:35
  • !Source. I was confused by this. Re-read it. It says a black sword and not "the" black sword, referring to his. makes sense now. Thanks. :) – KRISHNAKANT MISHRA Dec 21 '15 at 6:39
  • If Mihawk's blade was black to begin with, would you see a difference if it was induced with Haki? I think not. I may be wrong though. – solalito Dec 21 '15 at 6:40
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    This was a really well thought out answer. The whole black coating for busoshoku didn't occur until after time skip. There are mentions of haki usage and even demonstrations of it earlier in the series though it isn't shown in that level of detail. Great question, great answer, kudos. – Callat Aug 27 '17 at 19:50

I believe the glove is used when fighting special logia types like Akainu and Ace because normally if you try to punch Akainu you're bound to get burned but when using the black glove you can protect yourself from the magma.

I believe that the black glove was not only made after the time skip because during Zorros training the king monkeys sword was not black and it was said that he copied the sword from Mihawk

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