One Piece: Everything You Need To Know About Gear 5

Luffy One Piece Gear 5

If you’ve been watching the One Piece anime, the latest episode might have come as a shock to you — provided you weren’t spoiled by a Japanese train station. After over 20 years, we finally got to see what’s likely to be Luffy’s most powerful form, and it was absolutely not what most people were expecting.

Dubbed Gear 5, the new form is a visual feast, but it has much bigger implications for the series as a whole too. After over 1000 episodes, you might not remember everything, and there are some details that haven’t quite made it to the anime yet, so just be aware there may be some spoilers in here.

Here’s everything you need to know about Luffy’s latest form, Gear 5.

One Piece: What Is Gear 5?

Put simply, Gear 5 is Luffy’s Devil Fruit awakened. You might have seen other characters fully awaken their Devil Fruits, and this often comes with powerful, and sometimes frightening, abilities. One big example of this is with Katakuri, whose Mochi Mochi no Mi normally allows him to transform any part of his body into mochi. Once awakened though, Katakuri can turn other objects around him into mochi too, greatly increasing his capabilities.

Luffy’s awakening is a bit of a special one, though, as it also reveals something special about the Gomu Gomu no Mi: that’s not what it’s called, and that’s not what it is. For 20 years, we believed that Luffy’s rubber powers came from a Paramecia-type fruit, which typically allows a user to change their body to a specific material, in this case rubber.

As it happens though, the Gomu Gomu no Mi isn’t actually a Paramecia-type fruit, it’s instead a Mythical Zoan-type fruit called the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika, which gives its wielder the powers of a literal god, Nika. The World Government covered this up, and we actually have a pretty good idea why, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For now, all you need to know is that Gear 5 is Luffy utilizing the powers of the sun god Nika.

One Piece: What Does Gear 5 Do?

Gear 5 is one of the most powerful abilities seen in One Piece to date. It essentially breaks the laws of physics, turning Luffy and everything around him into whatever he pleases. Luffy says that he can do everything he ever wanted, and judging by how he uses his powers in Gear 5, that’s probably not too far off.

Luffy can seemingly transform himself, the world around him, and even his enemies into anything he pleases, effectively turning it all into rubber and then stretching that rubber into fantastical shapes and forms. As we see in the anime, this pretty much makes Luffy the architect of a rubber hose cartoon of his own making, bending the world at his will to enact silly little skits that do devastating damage to his enemies.

It cannot be overstated just how ridiculously powerful Gear 5 is. There seems to be effectively no limit to what Luffy can do when in this form, and though it takes a lot of stamina and can’t be sustained forever, once Gear 5 is pulled out of Luffy’s bag of tricks, the fight is as good as done.

One Piece: Who Is Joy Boy?

When Luffy first activates Gear 5, Zunesha says that he hears the Drums of Liberation, later saying that Joy Boy has returned. The Drums of Liberation is a special rhythm that echoes from the heartbeat of the user of the Model: Nika fruit, and usually signifies a huge change that’s about to take place in the world.

But who exactly was Joy Boy, and what relation do they have to Luffy? Well, to put it simply, Joy Boy is the reason One Piece exists. The treasure, not the series. 800 years ago, Joy Boy traveled the world, going to places like Fish-Man Island, where he apologized for breaking a promise to the residents there, saying he’d make it up to them someday.

Joy Boy claimed he would come back in 800 years’ time, but not before hiding a treasure, One Piece, in Laugh Tale. Gol D. Roger would later find this treasure, and his proclamation prior to his death encouraging people to go find it kickstarted a new age of piracy.

Joy Boy is closely associated with the Drums of Liberation, so it’s probably a safe bet that the original Joy Boy also had the powers of the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika. We say probably because there’s no way to know for sure, but there’s a lot of evidence that stacks up in favor of the theory. For example, Luffy’s Devil Fruit was missing for over 800 years, despite extensive searching by the World Government, which roughly lines up with when Joy Boy was last seen.

Either way, as Zunesha says, Luffy now carries the title of Joy Boy too, being the only other person than the originator of One Piece to hold the title. This is probably a good sign that Luffy will end up with the treasure, but that was never really in doubt, was it?

One Piece is available to stream on Crunchyroll, with new episodes being released every weekend.