Highlights
- Gear 5 is an innovative and absurd form that pushes the boundaries of Luffy’s transformations in One Piece.
- The introduction of Gear 5 allows Oda to experiment with Luffy’s confrontations and redefine future fights in the series.
- Gear 5 is a true Awakening of Luffy’s Devil Fruit, allowing him to mold reality and have a wide range of abilities.
Monkey D. Luffy’s Gear 5 is a form that has rewritten many of the rules for transformations in shonen anime and manga, taking a route that tends towards the absurd. In many ways, this is a natural move for One Piece’s creator, Eiichiro Oda, whose ability to subvert expectations is second to none when it comes to the development of Luffy’s combat abilities. Flashes of Oda’s incredibly inventive approach to shonen power ups have been seen in Gear 2, 3, and 4, with Gear 5 serving as an organic successor to all of them.
In many respects, Gear 5 is an ideal way for Luffy to progress as a character, as he attempts to rise through the ranks of the pirate world in One Piece by taking on some of the strongest individuals on the seas. His battles, in particular, have always been brutal contests of endurance and willpower, punctuated by elements of surreal humor. Consequently, the introduction of Gear 5 has now afforded Oda an avenue to freely experiment with Luffy’s confrontations by pushing the limits of this reality-altering power, which could redefine future fights in the series as a whole.
Beyond Mere Elasticity
After consuming the Gomu Gomu no Mi — as it was known at the start of the series — Luffy’s entire body gained the properties of rubber, to the point where he could absorb blunt force attacks or gunfire, and stretch limbs to insane proportions. This ability served him fairly well in the East Blue Saga as well as the early arcs in the Grand Line, where Luffy was able to channel the elasticity of his body and combine it with his innate battle intelligence to fight powerful opponents.
Once the Straw Hat Pirates encountered more powerful foes in CP9 during the Enies Lobby Arc, Oda devised two new power ups for One Piece’s protagonist. Dubbed Gear 2 and Gear 3, these abilities utilized Luffy’s Devil Fruit in innovative ways to grant him speed and strength respectively, altering his unique rubbery physiology to impressive effect. After the time skip, he would combine these power ups into a new form, christened Gear 4, that was bolstered by his newfound mastery of Armament Haki, to confront even more powerful foes in the New World.
Keeping this trajectory in mind, there were subtle hints of Gear 5 in earlier transformations — such as the steam clouds around his neck in Gear 4. In essence, Gear 5 takes all of these forms to the next level, going past the confines of how elasticity can effect Luffy’s body, to a state where he can practically mold reality as he sees fit. Unlike earlier forms, Gear 5 is a true Awakening of Luffy’s Devil Fruit, which was revealed to be a coveted Mythical Zoan type known as the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika. Despite this, Gear 5 allows Luffy to affect his surroundings in the style of a Paramecia Awakening, which leads to some very interesting implications on what he can really do.
A Warrior Of Liberation
As referenced in legends, Sun God Nika — a name that has now become synonymous with the historical figure Joy Boy — is someone who was said to have brought freedom and jubilation to all that he encountered. Described as a “Warrior of Liberation,” Nika was portrayed as having fought with unlimited freedom, as he possessed the power to shape reality as he saw fit. This has already been shown a few times in Luffy’s own fights while using Gear 5, where he was able to defy the laws of physics and bypass conventional logic to some extent.
He can alter the surrounding terrain, turn intangible substances such as lightning tangible, reshape his physiology to the size of a giant, make his body almost cartoonishly malleable to absorb attacks, or run through the air and generate enough friction to produce fire. Luffy even manifested goggles out of nowhere when using his Gomu Gomu no Dawn Rocket attack, which could be a hint of things to come.
Naturally, since the Straw Hat Pirates’ captain has not yet mastered this immensely powerful form and is still getting used to it, there are many directions in which this ability can be taken. Considering the virtually caricature-esque quality of Luffy’s Gear 5 form and its associated abilities, Eiichiro Oda has a multitude of different options to render his protagonist’s mastery of the form in due time. Where Gear 5 has drawn inspiration from rubber hose animation seen in early animated features such as Hanna-Barbera’s Tom and Jerry, he also has decades’ worth of media to take inspiration from, in elaborating on Luffy’s new slapstick style of combat.
What Are The Limits Of Gear 5?
One of the main limits of Luffy’s usage of Gear 5 that has been portrayed so far, is the monumental drain it has on his stamina, reaching levels that exceed Gear 4. When he approaches his limit, Luffy emerges from his Awakened form in a state where he visibly ages and appears almost emaciated. Due to this, Oda has made Luffy use the form in bursts which always culminate in him being incapacitated when he pushes things too far.
From a storytelling angle, the limits of Gear 5 are only really constrained by Oda’s imagination, and how appropriate a particular ability is to the situations the Straw Hat Pirates find themselves in. On the surface, Gear 5 has to adhere to the elastic and cartoonish aesthetic gamut it has displayed so far, and also embody the properties of rubber in some capacity, to avoid diverging from its origins.
Neither of these limitations are particularly restrictive in a world as colorful and surreal as that of One Piece. Since Gear 5 was devised as a measure to subvert conventions in shonen anime and manga to make fights in One Piece tend more towards the comical, Eiichiro Oda has what is nothing less than an ideal slate for him to project ideas on to, with the onset of the Final Saga.
One Piece is available to stream on Prime Video.
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