Luffy’s Awakening
Since the battle with Doflamingo at Dressrosa, Luffy’s awakening as been a really hot topic within the One Piece commuinity. People have been speculating for a while what his awakening could be and when we’re going to finally see it. With all that said let’s jump in.
PART I. Luffy’s Evolution
In recent chapters Luffy has trapped himself in Brulee’s mirror world with the 2nd son of Charolette family, Katakuri Dogtooth. This is probably the most dire situation Luffy has been in since the Straw Hats entered the New World. Katakuri has a bounty of 1 billion berries and is essentially the right hand man of Big Mom. From what we’ve seen so far, Luffy doesn’t seem to be a match. It’s possible that Luffy is going to have to evolve during this fight in order to win, similar to how he surmised Gear 2nd during his fight with Blueno (below).
Notice Luffy sort of thanks Blueno for teaching him how to use Gear 2nd (Soru). Luffy was able to analyze his opponents abilities and make it his own. The reason this is important is because many (myself included) believe that Luffy is going to have a similar experience here during his fight with Katakuri in order to win. To me this is almost a certainty for several reasons:
- Katakuri’s Mochi Mochi No Mi (MMNM for short) is extremely similar to Luffy’s Gomu Gomu No Mi (GGNM) and Oda has said as much below. Think about it, if Luffy were going to learn more about the capabilities of the GGNM you would think it would be when he’s fighting a more experienced user of a similar devil fruit. Right?
- Awakening a Devil Fruit was described as “extremely rare” by Doflamingo. If Luffy is going to do it, I think he’ll need to be pushed to his absolute limits first. As of chapter 879, we’re on track for that sort of development.
- Finally, Luffy is fighting an enemy similar to himself in Brulee’s mirror world. A “mirror match” so to speak. This is too much irony from Oda to not be a hint at something more. My guess is that Luffy once again is going to mirror his opponents abilities and evolve.
Conclusion:
So far I’ve established that it’s likely Luffy will evolve during this fight by mirroring Katakuri’s MMNM. Keep this in mind as it’s going to be important later.
PART II. Mister Fantastic
If Luffy was going to awaken his GGNM, I wanted to try and speculate what it might actually be. The logical place to start is with Doflamingo who was able to turn his surroundings into string. No matter how I look at it though, I can’t really think of a way turning things into rubber can benefit Luffy in any way. I was thinking maybe I was stuck too much in my preconceived notions of Awakening and thought maybe I should look for inspiration. Who else is a rubber man beside Luffy? The one that immediately came to mind was Mister Fantastic. Knowing Oda has taken many of his ideas from western culture, I started investigating.
For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Fantastic is a member of the Fantastic 4, a Marvel comic series about mutant heroes. From the Marvel Wiki:
Below is a synopsis from the Marvel Wiki on Mister Fantastics abilities. Being a rubber man, Luffy has many similarities to these abilitis. I’ve highlighted the ones we’ve seen already in Red. The potential abilities that seem plausible for Luffy are highlighted inGreen. Feel free to read the rest of the information, but i’ll be focusing on the highlighted sections.
From the Marvel Wiki:
-
- Dense Flesh: Due to the great malleability and elasticity of his molecular structure, Mister Fantastic is able to absorb the impact of any type of man-made ballistic projectile by deforming his body along the path of the projectile’s trajectory at the point of initial impact.
- Contain Explosions: Mister Fantastic may use his elastic form to contain explosions by enveloping them and allowing their force to expand him. He can enclose and absorb the energy of a large explosive, on the order of 8 to 12 pounds of TNT (excluding exotic, high density explosives). Such shocks to his system are physically exhausting.
- Redirect Projectiles: After his body absorbs the kinetic energy of a ballistic projectile’s impact, Mister Fantastic can expel the object back along its trajectory by flexing his body like a trampoline if he is adequately braced.
- Elongation: Mister Fantastic can extend his limbs, torso, or neck to great distances: the maximum length he can distend before his body segments become painful is about 1,500 feet. (Although he can extend discrete body parts, such as a single finger, an ear, or an eye, he seldom if ever isolates such parts in his elongations.)
- Grappling: Mister Fantastic may restrain opponents very efficiently by using his elastic form to entangle them.
- Movement: Mister Fantastic can move at great speeds by stretching to his destination.
- Shape Changing: Mister Fantastic can stretch, deform, expand, or compress his entire body or parts thereof into any contiguous shape he can imagine for a variety of uses:
- Imitation: Mister Fantastic may alter his basic physical features, allowing him to take on the appearance of any other man with similar hair and skin tone. One time, Mister Fantastic actually increased his size and mass density, in effect bulking his body to “Thing”-like proportions while increasing his strength to the same levels as well. The force of his strikes was enough to stagger even Onslaught.[61]
- Canopy, Parachute or Sheath: Mister Fantastic can extend his body in two directions, creating a canopy, parachute, or sheath, its thickness determined by the extent of its distention.
- Gliding: Mister Fantastic can transform himself into aerodynamic shapes such as parachutes or hang-gliders. In this form he can support an additional 1000 pounds (enough to hold the rest of Fantastic Four, even the Thing).
- Cushion: Mister Fantastic may form his elastic form into a trampoline and other cushion-like objects, allowing him to safely catch falling people and objects.
- Sling Shot: Mister Fantastic may use his elastic form as a slingshot to hurl objects with great force.
- Geometric Shapes: Mister Fantastic has compressed his body into the shape of a solid sphere, a cylinder, a cube, a toroid, and a rectangular prism: he can assume the shape of any solid that he can envision clearly, of a volume no greater than 1.7 cubic feet (a sphere about 18 inches in diameter). He can generate thin-walled shapes that enclose great volumes of space.
- Fist Weapons: Mister Fantastic may form his fists into large hammers, maces, etc., which improve his physical effectiveness in hand-to-hand combat.
- Bouncing Ball: Mister Fantastic can transform himself into any of a number of resilient shapes, such as balls or springs that allow him to leap or bounce great distances.
- Two-Dimensionality: Mister Fantastic can flatten himself to the thickness of an average sheet of typing paper (.0035 inch) or narrow himself to a diameter small enough to pass through the eye of a #10 beading needle (about .045 x .06 inches).
- Infiltration: Mister Fantastic can lower his body’s cohesion to such an extent that he can actually flow through minute openings.
- Open Locks: Mister Fantastic may form his fingers into various types of keys, allowing him to open most forms of mechanical locks.
- Wind Generation: Mister Fantastic may form his hands into fans, allowing him to generate wind by twirling them at great speeds.
- Semi-Solid Liquid State: Mister Fantastic can willfully reduce his body into an almost liquid state in order to flow out of small cracks or passages, even through needle-sized holes.
- Dense Flesh: Due to the great malleability and elasticity of his molecular structure, Mister Fantastic is able to absorb the impact of any type of man-made ballistic projectile by deforming his body along the path of the projectile’s trajectory at the point of initial impact.
There’s a lot to digest here and some of it is more plausible than others. Looking at the Red highlighted text, you’ll notice several desciptions that match what we’ve seen Luffy do. Redirecting bullets, acting as a cushion to save falling friends, grappling people, throwing objects, and obviously stretching his limbs. We’ve also seen him turn his legs into springs vs. Doflamingo. Keep the highlighted Green text in mind as I get to the next part.
While reading more on the Wikipedia page, I found something extremely intriguing:
Remind you of anything?
Thats right! Gear 4th: Bounceman! As soon as I read that description it’s what I immediately thought of. Going back to the list of abilities, “bouncing ball” also ties into Gear 4th.
Conclusion:
With all these connections as evidence, the point I want to make here is that it’s clear that Oda has shared Mister Fantastic abilities with Luffy.
PART III. The Mochi Mochi No Mi
With the assumption that Luffy was going to somehow copy Katakuri’s ability, I went back through the past arc to try and find hints at what that could be. At the same time I was looking for anything that resembled Mister Fantastic, as a more serious clue. While re-reading, I came across a couple curious things.
Refer back to the green highlighted text in part II: Mister Fantastic can turn himself into a “semi-liquid state”. That’s exactly what we’re seeing here from Katakuri. Could this be a hint to the hidden connection between Luffy, Katakuri and Mister Fantastic?
First I want to clear up some initial problems. It’s been said that Katakuri’s MMNM is a “special paramecia” by Jinbei, but we don’t really know what is “special” about it. However, what we do know for sure is there is a reason that we specify between paramecia and logia.. because they don’t share the same properties. So then why did Luffy’s punches pass right through Katakuri even though he used haki? One common explanation has been that Luffy’s haki isn’t as strong as Katakuri’s, which is probably true for CoO, but definitely not the case regarding other forms of Haki. Luffy has conquerors Haki and was trained by Rayliegh himself so he should be able to stack up with guys like Katakuri from a haki perspective. Regardless, this doesn’t explain why a paramecia appears to have logia qualities. And if he did have logia qualities, why does he instead meet Luffy’s “Red Hawk” with an aramament punch instead of just letting it pass through him again.
What if Katakuri has already awakened his MMNM? Perphaps that’s why it exhibits logia-like qualities including his Mochi bullets and ability to evade punches. What if Luffy notices this and finds a way to do the same thing with his rubber? In other words what if Luffy’s awakening will allow him to create and turn into liquid rubber. It is an ability Mister Fantastic has shown and we’ve already seen how many similarities the two have. This is all speculation of course, but I dont think we can rule it out! This would be an amazing defensive powerup for Luffy, something that I imagine could help him a lot versus Kaido.
*Theory by yond
