'One Piece' Reveals the Winner of Luffy v Katakuri

One Piece's Whole Cake Island has been building to the climactic battle between Luffy and Katakuri, and after Luffy unleashed a new Gear Four form in order to fully battle Katakuri in the previous episode things seemed to be nearing a conclusion.

Well, with an episode title that begins with "Finally It's Over!" the fight between Luffy and Katakuri indeed reached its finale, and a winner between the two has been crowned. But not without a few fakeouts.

After hitting each other with a full powered punch at the end of the previous episode, Episode 871 reveals that Luffy is the definitive winner of the fight. It seemed to go the other way at first, however. When Luffy's Gear Four Snakeman dissolved away, Katakuri was left standing over a huge crater that Luffy fell into. But while he seemed to still be standing strong, Katakuri falls face first on the ground.

Luffy then climbs out of the crater and is impressed that Katakuri still doesn't fall on his back when defeated. He's out of energy, so Luffy can't do much beyond crawling on the ground. But it's revealed that Katakuri still has one final push of energy and stands over Luffy. Luffy gets to his feet, and Katakuri uses the last bit of his strength to ask Luffy an important question.

He asks Luffy whether or not he's going to return to take down Big Mom someday. Luffy responds, "Of course! Because I'll become the King of the Pirates!" After staring down one another for a few more seconds, Katakuri smiles a bit and remarks that Luffy's seeing "quite far into the future." It's then he falls on his back, defeated. Luffy, left standing over Katakuri, is the clear winner of this bout, and he covers Katakuri's mouth with his spare hat before leaving his side as a showing of good faith between the two warriors.

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.