Watch 'One Piece' Bring Luffy v Katakuri to a New Level

One Piece has hit a major turning point as the Whole Cake Island arc reaches its climax, and the battle between Luffy and Katakuri has reached a whole new level of power. Luffy, thought defeated, managed to finally get the upper hand on Katakuri.

Not only was the "perfect" Katakuri knocked down from his high horse, but Luffy even figured out the trick to dodging Katakuri's Observation Haki.

Katakuri buried Luffy under a pile of mochi and left him for dead, but as fans know, that wasn't enough to defeat him. Soon after eating his way out of the mochi mountain, he interrupts Katakuri's "merienda" and reveals Katakuri's mouth and less-attractive side to the world. This changes the tide of the battle immensely.

Katakuri's not holding back anymore, but his emotions and frustrations are leaving openings which Luffy is keen on exploiting. When Katakuri comes in for a major attack, Luffy is able to dodge and counter before Katakuri realizes it. He mentions that he's figured out Katakuri's Observation Haki technique, and is able to avoid Katakuri's attacks without much problem.

The battle shifts so much in Luffy's favor that he's even able to get an opening long enough to change into Gear Fourth, something that Katakuri continually kept him from through the first half of the battle. The end of the episode even sees Luffy knocking Katakuri back for the first time in their entire battle, and now things are only going to get fiercer as the two of them reach new levels of power.

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.

Oda revealed some news about One Piece's future in a recent interview as well. Stating that he was about 80 percent done with the manga at this point with the Wano arc, fans are worried that the series may be coming to an end sooner than they thought. But it wouldn't be wrong to infer that the ending will most likely still be years away given how much of the world there is to explore and just how well it's selling week to week.