This page covers what the shield is and what happened to it in chapter 1192. For what the names Tōfū and Bōfū mean, see what Imu's "Tohu" and "Bohu" swords really mean.
Quick answer
Imu now has named weapons. Chapter 1192 puts three names on the page for the first time, wielded by the blackened arms that 1191 introduced and never explained: 混沌剣 (Chaos Sword), 虚無剣 (Void Sword), and 空虚の盾, the shield the two combine into.
And the shield does not hold. Luffy's Gear 5 punches only hurt his own hands against it. The chapter ends with Loki launching Luffy through it as a projectile, the guard breaking, and Imu taking the hit.
Read directly from the official Japanese release — Weekly Shonen Jump 2026 issue 41, ONE PIECE chapter 1192「おれ達が許さねェ!!!」. Evidence label: PRIMARY — MANGA VERIFIED. No leaks, no raw scans, no scanlations.
The three weapons
Named in chapter 1192
- 混沌剣 — read Tōfū. A blade formed from Imu's blackened arm
- 虚無剣 — read Bōfū. The second blade, formed the same way
- 空虚の盾 — read Tōfū-wa-Bōfū. The two blades combined into a guard
- The shield hurts Gear 5 fists on contact
- The shield breaks under the Luffy–Loki finish
Still unexplained
- Where the blades come from, or what they are made of
- Why the readings are non-standard rather than the usual Japanese
- Whether they relate to Imu's covenants or the Abyss
- Whether Imu can reform them after the break
- Whether the blackened arms are Haki at all — still never stated
All three are given furigana readings that are not the ordinary Japanese ones, which is the detail worth flagging early:
| Written | Reading given | Literal sense |
|---|---|---|
| 混沌剣 | Tōfū | "Chaos Sword" |
| 虚無剣 | Bōfū | "Void Sword" |
| 空虚の盾 | Tōfū-wa-Bōfū | "Shield of Emptiness" |
The shield's reading is simply the two sword readings plus a third element, which is the clearest thing the chapter tells us about the mechanic: the shield is the two blades combined, and it is named as such rather than being a separate item.
What the chapter does not do is explain any of it. There is no origin, no material, no link stated to the Shallows Covenant, the Abyss, Imu's Omen or anything else in Imu's kit. We are labelling the readings as printed and stopping there.
The names themselves may point somewhere specific, though: read in order, the shield is Tōfū-wa-Bōfū, which is the Hebrew phrase in Genesis 1:2. We took that apart in What Imu's "Tohu" and "Bohu" Swords Really Mean.
What actually happened to the shield
The sequence, in order, all FACT:
- Luffy attacks in Gear 5 with octopus-like arms — the technique is named 〝ゴムゴムの白い怪物蛸〟, shiroi read as Dawn and kaibutsu-dako as Kraken — into 〝銃乱打〟(Gatling). It lands repeatedly.
- Imu forms the two blades, then merges them into 空虚の盾.
- Luffy hits the shield and comes off worse: "my hands feel like they're going to shatter", "that hurts!" His fists are the thing that gives.
- Loki is told to swing through. Luffy is launched as a 〝弾丸〟(Bullet), with 〝白い〟(Dawn) and 〝雷神〟(Thor) in the call-out.
- Imu raises 空虚の盾 to meet it. The shield breaks. Imu takes the impact and coughs. The chapter ends on that panel.
What this does not establish: Imu is not beaten, and the chapter never says the shield is destroyed permanently rather than broken in that exchange. One clean hit through a broken guard is one clean hit — we are not going to inflate it, and neither should the ranking pieces that will inevitably quote it this week.
Why this weakens the "Imu's arms are Armament Haki" reading
This is the part with consequences beyond the chapter.
What 1191 left open
OPEN
- Imu's second form has fully blackened arms
- They look like an Armament Haki coating
- Nothing in the chapter names them
- Several rankings began treating it as Armament
What 1192 adds
WEAKER
- The same arms now wield named relic blades
- Blackness around a weapon is not hardened skin
- Still no Haki term attached anywhere
- So the Armament reading has less support, not more
When 1191 gave Imu a second form with fully blackened arms, the obvious read was Armament Haki — blackening is what Armament looks like, and Imu already has confirmed Conqueror's Haki. A number of rankings started treating it as settled.
1192 shows those same arms doing something else: wielding named blades wreathed in the same black. That is a weapon effect, not a hardening of the body. It does not prove the arms are not Haki — nothing in either chapter names them either way — but it supplies an alternative explanation for the blackening that fits the art at least as well, and the story still has not attached a Haki term to any of it.
Our position stays where it was, now with more reason: the blackened arms are observed, not identified. Anything ranking Imu's Armament Haki off those panels is ranking off a guess. For what Imu's Haki record actually consists of — and it is narrower than the character's presence suggests — the confirmed pieces are the Supreme King Haki blast in chapter 1150 and the Abyss described as emanating it in 1179.
What this changes from chapter 1191
- 1191 ended with the three-man Gokoku blast sending Imu flying and no follow-up. 1192 gives Imu a counter-kit and then breaks it.
- 1191 showed the blackened arms with no function. 1192 gives them one, and it is wielding named blades — relic weapons, not something the arms create.
- 1191 had Luffy and Loki fighting alongside each other for the first time under a joint technique name. 1192 turns that into a second, different combination — Loki as the launcher, Luffy as the projectile. We looked at the first one in What Made Luffy, Loki and Hajrudin's 'Sanjō Hakoku'.
For where Loki sits against the rest of the island, see Strongest Elbaf Characters in ONE PIECE, Ranked. For what the chapter does to Luffy himself — he spends it refusing to be defined by Nika, Joy Boy or Roger — see Luffy Rejects the "Nika" and "Joy Boy" Labels in ONE PIECE Chapter 1192. And for the contracts 1192 leaves untouched, Who Is Imu Contracted To?.
What is still unknown
- Whether the blades can be reformed. The shield breaks; nothing says Imu cannot make another.
- What the non-standard readings are pointing at. 混沌 and 虚無 are ordinary words given unusual readings, which in this series usually means something is being signalled. We do not know what.
- How much damage the final hit did. The chapter cuts at the impact.
- Whether the arms are Haki. Still unstated after two chapters.
THEORY, ours and labelled: a guard built by combining two offensive weapons, which then shatters the first time it meets a combination attack, reads like a deliberate symmetry — Imu's power is assembled from parts, and it comes apart when met by something also assembled from parts. That is a reading of the staging, not a claim about the mechanics.
Change log
- 7 September 2026 — Published from the official Japanese release on the day of release. Chapter read directly; evidence label PRIMARY — MANGA VERIFIED. Weapon readings recorded as printed, with no etymology asserted.
- 7 September 2026, corrected — The shield's reading was published as Tōfū-Bōfū-Wā; re-read at full resolution it is Tōfū-wa-Bōfū (空虚 takes トーフー, の takes ワー, 盾 takes ボーフー). Describing the blades as generated by the arms was also overstated: the chapter shows them wielded, and they belong to the arsenal before the Empty Throne.