One Piece Reveals How Easily Observation Haki Comes to Luffy

One of the biggest shake-ups Eiichiro Oda introduced over the course of One Piece was Haki, which became absolutely crucial as Luffy began to battle the strongest opponents ever in the New World. The Whole Cake Island arc tested Luffy’s mettle as the entire arc saw Luffy battle against the seemingly invincible Katakuri in order to master the use of the Observation Haki. But now that the series has moved into Wano, Luffy’s growth is really starting to show.

With the Wano Country arc in full swing in the anime, the latest episode of the series was a good example of just how easily Observation Haki comes to Luffy now as he takes down some would be attackers without breaking a sweat.

As some members of Kaido’s forces begin to attack, Luffy keenly senses that one has a gun locked in on him and dodges the incoming bullet with ease. Along with this, Luffy — with his back still turned — winds up a punch and hits the incoming attacker with relative ease. This is a keen showcase of Luffy’s newest Haki abilities as he now can seemingly predict the future at will. The anime adds a bit of a flair with this in Luffy’s eyes, and it’s the same kind of aura he had in his fight with Katakuri.

Luffy’s fighting proficiency is one of his strongest traits as the Straw Hat captain as he grasps new techniques like this and has already mastered it. This should be great for fans to see after he struggled for so many episodes against Katakuri to reach this level, and now Luffy can instead direct his attention toward whatever he needs to learn next. Though his current strength is much stronger than before, Wano’s a pretty mysterious country full of opponents fans won’t be expecting.

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. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.