'One Piece' Just Brought Back Gear Fourth Luffy

One Piece's Whole Cake Island arc has reached a major turning point in the anime as a raging Big Mom begins her counterattack as Bege and the Straw Hats are all trying to escape from the Tea Party successfully.

But as fans know about Luffy, he doesn't take running away lightly as he soon finds himself squaring off against Big Mom with the returning Gear Fourth form in the latest episode.

The last time fans saw the Gear Fourth form, it was against Cracker in the living forest several episodes ago with the debut of his Tankman special form. But he returns to the base Gear Fourth form when Big Mom calls him a coward. She eggs him on by asking why he's retreating when he made claims that he would get the last laugh, and Luffy takes the bait.

So after jumping out of Bege to save Reiju, Luffy asks for "just one punch" at Big Mom and suddenly turns into his Gear Fourth form. But even with this power, Big Mom is able to counter all of his Haki infused punches with her own Haki.

To make Big Mom seem even more fearsome, Luffy doesn't actually last too long in this form. After Big Mom manages to counter several of his attacks, she eventually overwhelms him as Luffy ends up in his standard unconscious state after transforming into Gear Fourth. This then leaves Sanji and the Vinsmoke Family in a more precarious situation that before as the episode comes to a close.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece's future at Jump Festa 2018. Not only will the manga see Wano sooner rather than later, the next villain of the series is "one of the legends which lurks in the One Piece world. The greatest enemy ever for Straw Hats will hinder their way...Can you believe Marineford Summit War will look 'cute' compared to that?

The new live-action One Piece series also got some new information as it was revealed that the series will portray the Straw Hats' adventures from the very beginning, and will take place in the East Blue. One Piece's anime series is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.