This is the textbook visual-silhouette payoff: when Oda name-drops a legend over a solid-black silhouette (identity fixed, face withheld), the eventual face reveal re-uses the same full-name-drop grammar — the shadow simply gets “switched on.” Xebec’s grin and hair silhouette in 957 read forward cleanly onto the 1154 face. Watch for the same seed→payoff on other still-shadowed legends of the same generation (the God Valley silhouettes, Rocks-era crew still drawn in shadow) — a blacked-out figure paired with a hard name-drop is a promissory note that the face is coming.
