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We want to take a detailed look at everything we know so far about Luffy’s Devil Fruit:
- The origin of the name of the fruit
- Symbolic meaning of his power
- The Gear 5 and the Gear System
- Luffy’s awakening and its meaning
The name
There is a misconception that Luffy’s Devil Fruit is called “Sun God Nika”. This idea is wrong. The name of its fruit is simply “Nika” or “Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika”. The “Sun God” is not part of the name of the fruit.
We think it’s just an epithet what the previous user of the fruit had, this user being Joy Boy. He used his power to free slaves, leading them out of their captivity outside the dark dungeons into the “light” where they could witness the first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise once more. , spreading joy and laughter on the faces of the newly freed slaves and earning themselves the epithet “Sun God”. After all, the user of this fruit was also known as the Liberation Warrior.
The deification of something “natural” is not something new, neither for the real world nor for the world of One Piece. This wouldn’t be the first time someone with incredible Devil Fruit powers has been worshiped as a God in the World of One Piece, we’ve seen the same happen with Enel and Kaido.
Inspired by the story of the Sun God Nika, Fisher Tiger decided to do the same when he freed the slaves of Mary Geoise and in honor of this mythical person, he formed the “Pirates of the Sun”.
Powers
There’s been a big debate about what exactly Luffy’s powers are now that he’s awakened his fruit and we understand why. Luffy can apparently do a number of very cartoonish things, to the point that people have dubbed his new powers “Toon Force”. One really cool thing that Oda likes to do is write character powers to have some symbolic or thematic meaning. Simply put, it writes powers that match the user’s personality.
The best examples are the original 3 admirals as well as the villains that Luffy faced:
- Akainu is prone to outbursts of anger and has an explosive personality, so he has the fruit of magma.
- Aokiji is lazy, relaxed and “cold”. He doesn’t lose his temper and so ate the ice fruit.
- Kizaru is slow to react and slow when he speaks but he has a fruit which is the antithesis of this, the Fruit of Light which makes him extremely fast.
- Lucci is a bloodthirsty killer, a predator who kills for fun so he has the leopard pattern cat fruit.
- Enel has a god complex, so he receives a divine power, the Electric Logia, which makes him untouchable.
And the same goes for Luffy.
From an attack or a defeat, he keeps coming back and so it’s normal that he has the rubber fruit… but… Now that we know the real name of his fruit and the power he has, we know it is no longer just a rubber fruit. Luffy has the Nika Fruit, which makes him the Liberation Warrior. Does that mean his new powers are “Toon Force”? No. His powers are still rubber powers (as Gorosei mentioned), except Luffy now has greater freedom – he’s no longer limited by the laws of nature. He can now freely manipulate his body without any restrictions and we think that fits his character perfectly. Luffy wants to be the Pirate King. In his mind, the Pirate King is the freest man in the worldunopposed by anyone or anything, and that’s literally what his powers make him.
He is free in body and mind.
The Gear
This raises the question of the origin of Luffy’s Gears. Now that we know he is a Zoan and not a Paramecia, does that mean his gears are Zoan transformations ? No, we don’t think his gears have changed. In our opinion, the gears look like prototypes of Luffy’s awakening – Luffy trying to use his fruit’s power to its fullest but not being able to because he’s not yet awakened. Each of Luffy’s Gears features abilities that are also present in his Gear 5, but to a much more limited degree.
Gear 2
We know that Gear 2 works thanks to Luffy pumping up his rubber body and increasing blood flow to allow him to fight on another level. It increases his speed, his strength and and surely his durability. It’s a bit like doping. In Gear 5, we see Luffy doing something quite similar with the sound of his heartbeat. Luffy is able to change his heart rate to pump himself more energy and restart Gear 5.
The positions are identical and the smoke is there.
Interestingly, not only is this action very similar to what he did in his fight against Lucci and the stance he adopts while doing this is very reminiscent of his original Gear 2 stance, but the comments of Lucci and Kaido about Luffy killing himself doing this are very similar.
If it’s not obvious, what we wish to state is that Luffy’s Gear 2 is his attempt to replicate this ability, but is limited by his elasticity.
Gear 3
It seems to us that it is quite obvious. In Gear 3, Luffy can breathe air into his body to make him bigger. Originally, this ability had the downside of making it chibi but after training during the time-skip, this inconvenience disappeared. After the time jump, Luffy can freely manipulate his body by blowing air into it.
In Gear 5, Luffy no longer needs air to enlarge his body parts.. Not only he can freely manipulate the size of its limbs (without needing to blow air) but it can also expand completely and turn into a giant. The best thing is that so far there are no downsides to this ability (at least no Luffy chibi for a while).
Gear 4
Presented in chapter 783 (784 to be exact), the Gear 4 immediately stood out. His appearance was so different from anything we had seen before. It seems to us that this is the first moment when we can affirm with certainty thatOda planned to make Luffy’s fruit into something else. Interestingly, the reveal of Luffy’s Gear 4 is where the nature of the Gomu Gomu no Mi was questioned. The Gear 4’s uniqueness didn’t stop there, as soon after we were introduced to two more forms of it with Tankman and Snakeman.
Not only did Luffy’s Gear 4 transformation look like a Zoan transformation, but he also had different forms, like Chopper and his Points. It’s also funny that the name of each of his Gear 4 forms had the word “-Man” in it, which is funny in hindsight, since we now know his fruit is actually “Human Human Fruit.”
Bound Man’s greatest addition to Luffy’s arsenal is his pumped up muscles. By covering his body in Armament Haki and blowing air into his musclesLuffy was able to inflate its size in order to inflict greater damage on his enemies (according to Luffy, he did this to fight giant animals).
In Gear 5, Luffy is able to pump up his muscles at will, without having to blow air into them, and now not only does he cover his body with armaments, but according to Kaido, he also adds Conqueror’s Haki by -above.
It seems that Luffy has fully used everything he has learned so far to create his Gear 5. It is not only the fruit awakening that makes Gear 5, but also all Gears that have it. preceded and everything he learned about Haki after his fight against Katakuri.
Luffy’s Gear 5 is the use of his previous gears, but on a higher level.
awakening
Since we have already established that Gear 5 is a combination of several things Luffy learned before, what is his awakening? As said before, the real power granted by his awakening is greater freedom and strength which comes in the form of a new transformation he gets, hence what makes him a Zoan.
Along with this transformation comes another ability that seems to cause the most confusion. Luffy’s ability to turn his surroundings into rubber and freely manipulate it.
It’s the typical Awakened Paramecia ability that can create a substance, seeing Doflamingo and Katakuri for example and Luffy turning the floor into rubber isn’t weird on its own. The confusion comes specifically from this board, where Luffy appears to punch through Kaido.
In fact, he didn’t literally pierce him. Kaido’s face simply stretched from the punch. Luffy’s awakening apparently allows him to turn other living things into rubber when he interacts with them. This is confirmed by Kaido’s words in Chapter 1044 when Luffy swells inside him and Kaido wonders how his body swells when it’s not rubber, as well as the scene in chapter 1046 where we see Kaido’s body swell. stretch more clearly under Luffy’s punches.
What’s the point of Luffy turning the people he punches into rubber? Wouldn’t that negate the damage he inflicts on them? First, Haki is a thing, so no matter what, it continues to deal damage, as the weaponry bypasses the rubbery character. Second, we believe the goal is for Oda to have more freedom to show more exaggerated expressions in order to exaggerate the impact of a hit. Kind of like the old cartoons did back in the day.
Whereas before only Luffy was affected by this “cartoon logic”, now everyone he fights is affected. Ironically, but fittingly, this gives Oda the freedom to exaggerate everyone now. After all, that’s what Oda always wanted to do but couldn’t so far.
