One Piece Reveals Its First Drafts of Gear Fifth

Luffy’s Gear Fifth Transformation in One Piece allows the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates to access some wild new abilities, giving him the powers of a living cartoon. In his fight against Kaido, he was able to change the ground beneath his feet into a rubber-like substance while also plucking lightning bolts from the sky. With the shonen manga on hiatus as Eiichiro Oda continues to prepare for the series’ finale, the mangaka has revealed the first sketches of Luffy’s most powerful form.

One Piece’s “Road To Laugh Tale” has been the publication that offered both sketches and notes from mangaka Eiichiro Oda in creating the Wano Arc, with the likes of the Nine Red Scabbards and the newest Straw Hat Pirate, Yamato, having some drastically different designs when the artist originally put them to paper. Such is also the case with Luffy’s Gear Fifth form, the swashbuckler’s most powerful transformation that revealed unknown secrets when it came to Monkey’s Devil Fruit. While Gear Fifth has already been heavily featured in the manga, it has yet to appear in the anime adaptation proper, though based on the current episodes, we’re inching fairly close to its arrival.

Twitter User New World Artur shared Eiichiro Oda’s first sketches of what would become Gear Fifth, with the mangaka clearly having the cartoon-ish new form ready to go when it arrived as a part of the battle that was tearing apart Wano between Kaido and Luffy: 

Several unique ideas of Luffy playing with Gear 5th pic.twitter.com/QZCkygQMmP

— Artur – Library of Ohara (@newworldartur) July 18, 2022

With the television series continuing to release new episodes, the eve of Gear Fifth is around the corner, though many fans have been wondering if Luffy’s new transformation will be a part of the upcoming fifteenth movie of the franchise, One Piece: Red. While the movie has confirmed the return of Shanks and the introduction of his daughter Uta, the timeline of the film is still up in the air, as the creative minds behind the movie have yet to say whether this takes place following the end of the War For Wano Arc.

What is your favorite transformation in Luffy’s arsenal? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the Grand Line.