‘One Piece’ Takes Luffy’s Gear Fourth to a New Level

One Piece‘s battle between Luffy and Katakuri has only gotten more intense as the Whole Cake Island arc continues, and now that Luffy has gotten closer to figuring out Katakuri’s power things are getting serious.

Luffy’s finally been able to go into his Gear Fourth form, and to take Katakuri down has unleashed a complete arsenal of attacks.

After his Kong Gun sends Katakuri flying, Luffy keeps up the high impact fight. When Katakuri flies through walls as a result of the punch, Luffy gives chase by propelling himself with bursts of air from Gear Fourth. When he figures out that Katakuri’s Observation Haki makes it so it seems like Luffy can’t hit Katakuri, he says that Gear Fourth will allow him to land a hit.

For the most part it seems Luffy is right as his Leo Bazooka, Culverin, and Rhino Schneider attacks land on Katakuri successfully. Katakuri’s blocking for sure, but it’s not as if Katakuri is avoiding the attacks altogether. But things take a turn as Katakuri calms himself down.

When Katakuri calms himself, he gains control over his Observation Haki once more and Luffy’s attacks pass through him once more. When Luffy tries a much more widespread attack with his Kong Organ Gun, Katakuri counters this as well and traps Luffy within his mochi body. Though the fight took a turn again, Luffy’s not about to give up now.

Luffy just needs to find a way around Katakuri’s predictions, and Gear Fourth is just what he needs to utilize to succeed. The new opening theme of the series teases a different take on the Gear Fourth form coming ahead, and this is a key motivation to getting there.

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.