One Piece fans uncover Gear 5 notes from Eiichiro Oda
CrunchyrollOne Piece may have uncovered essential information about Luffy’s Gear 5 powers from Eiichiro Oda’s notes.
In its 25-plus year ongoing run, One Piece‘s Straw Hats have often played it smart, learning the villain’s weakness, and brute forced their way to victory. So when Gear 5 revealed the height of Luffy’s potential, fans were unsure about the Straw Hat captain’s disposition while fighting was appropriate for the scene.
Luffy’s newly acquired Gear 5 ability to control everything he touches as if it were as rubbery as he is sounds relatively simple, if not sounding like something out of an anime version of Tom and Jerry. However, fans still want to figure out how exactly this form works. Thankfully, newly uncovered notes from One Piece author Eiichiro Oda gave us some new info on Gear 5’s capabilities.
One Piece fan uses Eiichiro Oda notes to better understand Gear 5
On the One Piece subreddit, u/stardust_soul shared published notes from series creator Eiichiro Oda himself concerning Luffy’s Gear 5 design and how it works.
The biggest takeaway from this is the comment, “The more he laughs, the stronger he gets.” We know that Luffy can laugh up a storm, so naturally, he becomes incredibly strong in this form; using his abilities to manipulate the environment and people into rubber can only lead to more hilarity, meaning more laughs from old Straw Hat. With more laughs comes more power, which this school of thought promotes.
On the other hand, this could make Gear 5 come across as goofy more than a serious fighting form akin to Goku going Super Saiyan. In the comments, multiple fans call attention to this concern of potentially ruining the tension of a scene, i.e., a character dying and Luffy is just laughing. Out of all of them, u/Nuneasy says it best:
As they mentioned, a concern like this can seemingly be put to rest with the climax of Luffy’s fight with Kaido, with Luffy being serious in the moment before becoming as cheery as he always is. So, dramatic moments in the storytelling can potentially be worked around Luffy’s laughter.
So the worry of any sizeable dramatic moment as he battles with, let’s say, Blackbeard could have the tension broken up as Luffy giggles while throwing punches could be a moot point as the stakes only grow higher as we head into the final saga; with the present situation on Egghead Island peaking as a mysterious arrival takes place.
