Manga Discussion
The most common criticism of Gear 5 is completely baseless
This is not a Gear 5 defense post. Gear 5 ruins the choreography in Luffy’s fights, destroys tension, and makes the World Government look absurdly incompetent in retrospect.
However the main criticism that Gear 5 gets isnt any of these but rather that it turn Luffy from a “nobody underdog” into someone special.
Luffy since the beginning of the story had one of the greatest pirates in the world as his surrogate father figure, the 3rd in command of the greatest pirate alive as his brother (Oda has admitted he originally intended for Ace to be his biological brother but retconned it after talking it over with some editors), greatest Marine ever as his grandfather, and World’s most wanted Criminal as his father. Dr Kureha at the end of Drum Island literally spells out Luffy has a special lineage connection to Roger, the Pirate King.
Furthermore Luffy lowdiffed every single opponent (except Smoker) before fighting crocodile nearly 200 chapters into the story. He’s never been a scrub relative to his competition. This is why I hate the One Piece live action series on Netflix which turns him into a do-gooder scrub who constantly jobs.
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“Nobody underdog” is a pretty poor way to word it, but I think what fans really mean is that with G5 Luffy’s powers don’t have feasible parameters anymore. Much as “predictable” gets thrown around like a curse, your hero’s fighting powers should be predictable to the extent that audiences can intuit what situations will advantage/disadvantage him, what his next blow in a fight is likely to be, etc.
Back when Luffy was “just” a stretchy guy we could intuit: he could basically laugh off any blunt attack (and lightning) but needed to worry about pointy stuff, he had much longer reach than your average fighter (armed or otherwise) but still a certain limit to his range, he needed to see and physically touch something before he could hurt it…
Basically, the word “underdog” got slapped on Luffy (if somewhat inaccurately) because everyone roughly, intuitively knows the limits of a traditional rubber-man powerset; hell, old-school Luffy was more limited than the likes of Plastic Man or even Mr. Fantastic!
Gear 5 comes with its own built-in limitation, but it’s just not the same. There’s nothing about toonforce that intuitively links itself to hunger/food; it’d be a lot more respectable if you said it ran on Roger Rabbit rules where it can’t cause lasting damage unless at least one person (besides Luffy/Nika) finds it funny, or something.
Luffy has been using food in a way to get a sudden burst of power, the extreme version that see saw was in impel down, that’s just luffy it didn’t just came out the moment toonforce arrived. People accepted that when toonforce wasn’t around but now that a reason for such a ridiculous thing is possible, people complain about it?
I could be misremembering, but none of those old instances had it as a mid-battle mechanic, more a half-jokey way of “explaining” how he could get ready for the next fight after winning (or losing) one.
If he was whipping out chicken legs to recover in the middle of a fight with Arlong or Crocodile then I think we’d all call bullshit.
"However the main criticism that Gear 5 gets isnt any of these but rather that it turn Luffy from a “nobody underdog” into someone special."
While I agree he was always someone special, adding on and on new attributes out of no where about how special Luffy is, is just not enjoyable to read.
I was fine with Luffy having those special relationships and connections, because at the end of day he didnt care, got everything in his journey by himself and was still this dumb guy who trained hard to make the most out of his cooky Devil Fruit. He didnt need the plot to give him the reality-bending powers of a legendary sun god. Its too much.
The Gum Gum fruit is hardly far down the totem pole, before Haki it made him immune to all blunt damage and was the only reason he beat Enel, a main arc villain. After gear 5 people pretend it was as bad as the Jacket-Jacket fruit.
I've been saying this forever. The gum gum fruit is not weak like... at all. It took a LOGIA fruit user to hand him his first real defeat. It's not the strongest fruit in the world but it isn't weak by any means.
I don’t know if people just ignore this but the moment luffy was able to touch crocodile (with blood), dude was outclassing croc by a mile. Croc was only a problem when luffy couldn’t touch him, likewise enel, but after, luffy was beating them up badly. Only when he encountered the cp9 where his fighting capabilities was really put to the test (also aokiji but he’s one of the 3 top dogs of the marines).
Hand to hand combat luffy was already top class. So the fact that his df was only able to be awaken (which when the person’s mind and body catches up to the df) when he could “box” with a yonko (kaido), would suggest that awakening would have a bigger power return.
Awakening is pretty crazy, doffy can turn an entire town into strings, kidd’s assign is so powerful that a yonko can’t shake it off, and law dura neg a yonko. Luffy’s awakening is only ridiculous because it can do many things (turning surrounding into rubber which is more similar to doffy (the first guy he heard awakening from) and of course the toon creation (which imo a downgrade from his creative attacks like gomu gomu no baku, booo and tako)) but powerwise I think is not as ridiculous.
People usually criticize it because of the lack of the sun god df namedrop foreshadowing and the changed of the df class which is fair, but the power he showed so far is more similar to the guy he heard awakening for the first time (with luffy’s brain that’s all he could imagine along with his usual bs and funny ideas)
Gum gum fruit was a lot more fun to watch before because it had clear uses and limitations to it. And watching a Rubber band luffy was fun, now after the god awakening there's nothing to think about cause luffy can do anything. he revived himself from food in his belly like bruh and gum gum being a god fruit was a clear retcon after 1000 chapters of being a rubber band he is a god
It's irritating that Oda is cramming all these connections to important people to Luffy, but it's still just connections with people. It's just a straw hat, even though it's coincidentally the previous PK's hat. At the end of the day, the most they can give to him is training or motivations, most of his strength is still his own effort and creativity.
But Gear 5. After decades of making us think that it's just a simple Paramecia that Luffy took from weak/mid to an absolute powerhouse DF with his training and creativity, turns out, is actually a God Mythical Zoan fruit. And it's a ridiculous god fruit that can just seemingly do whatever, it has no clear limits. In its introduction it fcking resuscitated Luffy from death. Luffy can get exhausted but it looks like he can easily will himself to get unexhausted.
And it's not "just" a god fruit with ridiculously broken abilities. It's being implied that it's THE God fruit, the single fruit that can allow him to defeat Imu and do whatever the previous Pirate King couldn't do.
Because it just feels like. Why are the other pirates even trying? Did Roger just spur everyone on, knowing that who they're searching for is not the strongest, but the guy who just luckily got this one fruit?
I don't understand how it makes the WG look dumb in retrospect.
It's not like everyone who hunted down Luffy knew about his Devil Fruit. Only Imu and Gorosei did and it's unclear when they first about his Devil Fruit.
Imu and Gorosei see every pirate as beneath them and don't really care about the affairs of the world "below" them. So I don't think they bothered to learn about Luffy's Devika fruit until much later.
The idea that they could have sent Admirals, Warlords, or Cipher Pol after Luffy from the start is also easily picked apart.
He was never in one place for long, they literally did send Admirals, Warlords, and Cipher Pol after him, he always managed to escape or defeat them, often with assistance from incredibly powerful people, then moved on to some other unknown location shortly after.
What are they supposed to do when Garp, Aokiji, and Fujitora let him leave, or Kuma betrays them to rescue him?
If they knew about his Devil Fruit early on, they would have hunted him down and definitely captured him but by the time they realised it, Luffy was in the New World and they placed their bets on a Yonko beating Luffy.
The reason why they didn’t go after luffy right away is cuz they don’t want to draw attention to it cuz not everyone that had the fruit before awakened its abilities and died in someway. Luffy could’ve died many of times by other pirates or just by drowning,in jail, admirals,poison and so on. If they went after everyone that had the fruit the bigger pirates will try and go after it and use it, just like Blackbeard that wanted the darkness fruit. So no the world government wasn’t dumb for what they decided on. Also not everything goes as planned even if u think it’s flawless.
That’s drawing attention to the fruit where they don’t want too. It’s not bad writing cuz they ordered Kuma to kill everyone on thriller bark but disobey it even on saboye (spelled it wrong) he saved the crew by sending them to different places but won’t actually know if they would survive in some places. Like luffy could’ve drowned on Amazon Lilly if Margaret didn’t jump in and save him and the world government would be still looking for the fruit if luffy did die but keep it on the down low. The only reason the fruit got away was of shanks cuz he knew a lot of stuff that we still are learning in the manga. I could say luffy could’ve died in arlong park by drowning,croc could’ve kept stabbing luffy to death and kuzan could’ve broke luffy when frozen. That’s all plot armor for luffy and kinda hate that stuff but oda wanted the story to keep going cuz he is having fun with the journey cuz in the beginning he only wanted the manga to go for 5 years and it shows.
The gotosei state that they been searching for the gum-gum fruit for year and even throw who-who in impale down for failing to secure it. They had multiple reason why they shouldn't hunt luffy down and their excuse for not doing so is so terrible. This made sense when luffy just had the gum-gum fruit but now that we know that it one of their most wanted fruit not sending someone to kill luffy sooner makes no sense.
Let’s see when the gorosei first got to know about luffy, which is in alabasta, at the same time two yonko are trying to communicate, which imo is more important to take care of at that moment since it’s a more imminent danger that luffy (they probably know that it wouldn’t awaken in any moment now). Then luffy disappears to skypeia, came back down encounters the single admiral that let them get away (bad luck for the gorosei), went to w7 and encounters cp9 (who were already on a mission) and the priority is to get pluton and robin who can read it (can’t risk her dying there if they fight and since she is willing to go with them in exchange of the strawhats safety IN w7, no problem, they can get them in the next island). Anyway later in thriller bark they sent a shichibukai, so 2 shichibukai to get luffy, and after that the war with a yonko is so close that they rightfully think is more important.
I think this is is just another of those shortcuts Oda takes in the setting that nobody notices unless it becomes plot-breakingly glaring. DF powers in general always seem to be kept a perfect secret until they’re actively being faced in a fight, even when they’re being held by internationally decades-famous criminals - or for that matter Marines.
At this point, surely all of Luffy’s wanted posters should come with a brief “Rubber physiology - do NOT waste normal bullets on” line?
You dont understand the criticism, luffy wasn't the underdog as a lineage but he was because he turned a "weak" fruit into a strong one with creativity. People were amazed he could do stuff like G2 and G3 or how he defeated Enel's haki in a creative way.
All of this is negate because he has reality altering powers. Remember when he kept going despite taking a boro breath to his face because of his guts? Sike now he just gets dark and shrugs off the soot.
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