'One Piece' Takes Luffy's Fight With Katakuri Up A Notch

Luffy's fight with Big Mom's strongest son Katakuri has been one of the most intriguing parts of the Whole Cake Island arc as Luffy's never fought an opponent as strong as Katakuri.

But the latest episode took the battle one step further as it reached a terrible conclusion with Katakuri completely overpowering Luffy at the end of the episode, seemingly securing victory for him.

Luffy has been struggling against Katakuri for the last few episodes now, and every move that Luffy attempts has been countered by Katakuri with a stronger version. But despite the power difference, Luffy has been fighting his hardest and even promised the rest of the Straw Hat crew that he would make it back to them safely. But this episode Katakuri began getting frustrated.

Katakuri mentions that no one's been able to dodge his attacks for this long and thus picks up the pace of his attacks. Luffy increased his pace also to match Katakuri, and his dodging became more creative. Pulling out all the stops, Luffy tried all sorts of techniques in order to gain any sort of edge. Unfortunately, Katakuri was just a bit stronger.

Using his awakened Devil Fruit ability, which he had been holding back until now, he even kept Luffy from powering up. Bucking a major Shonen anime trope, Katakuri was not about to sit and wait for Luffy to power up so that he could get an advantage. Luffy wasn't able to go into Gear Fourth, and was buried under a literal mountain of mochi as Katakuri seemed to secure victory at the end as Luffy struggled to breathe.

Although it might have seemed like a definitive end, this is One Piece and Luffy surely has more tricks up his sleeve as the battle with Katakuri continues. In fact, it's amping up into the fight's climax as the two find out more about each other through their attacks.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and 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 over 430 million copies sold.