Train Stations In Japan Are Spoiling One Piece's Biggest Secret

One Piece certainly has some pretty major spoilers that new fans have to look out for. We won’t go into them in this paragraph, but this is a warning to anyone reading that if you don’t want to be spoiled for One Piece, especially content that has appeared in the manga but not yet in the anime, you should probably click away right now. For those still sticking around, boy do we have a story for you.

So yeah, there are some pretty big spoilers to avoid if you’re a big fan of One Piece. What happens to Ace and Sabo are up there, of course, but there are some others. One of the biggest ones that people will want to see for themselves, though, is new powers, upgrades and abilities. And if you’re an anime-only fan living in Japan, you may have to shut your eyes when exiting the train*, because one of the series’ biggest secrets is now plastered across the walls of some train stations.

*For legal reasons, please do not close your eyes when embarking or disembarking any transport vehicle, least of all a train.

In a clip shared to Twitter by mo_official0511 (the user’s profile says it’s the official account of Maki Otsuki, but we’re not so sure), there seems to be a new promotion running at some train stations in Japan. There’s a big, lit-up billboard running the length of a platform, and it’s playing a promotional One Piece video showing off some of Luffy’s forms and transformations.

We’ve got Gear 3, followed by Gear 4, which then cycles through each of Gear 4’s forms. There’s Boundman and Snakeman, of course, though Tankman is sadly missing. What happens next though could come as a shock to some One Piece fans — Gear 5. This is your last chance to bounce before some major spoilers.

Gear 5 hasn’t been revealed in the anime yet (though it should show up very soon), but it showed up in the manga earlier this year. Luffy used it in the final fight against Kaido, one of the Four Emperors and the iron-fist ruler of Wano Country. It’s a little more than a technique or a transformation though, it’s actually a huge reveal.

See, despite Luffy’s rubbery powers purportedly coming from a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit, Gear 5 shows us that the Gomu Gomu no Mi isn’t actually what it seems. It’s actually a Mythical Zoan-type Devil Fruit, originally called Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika, before it was covered up by the World Government.

Nika was a trickster sun god, and that god’s powers were seemingly placed into the form of a Devil Fruit, which Luffy eventually ate. Every time we’ve seen Luffy use his rubbery abilities so far, he’s actually been tapping into the power of a literal god, which explains a lot about how Luffy gets through so many wild situations.

Seeing this reveal while getting off the train would be, to say the least, quite annoying, especially since the reveal in the anime is likely less than a week away. Still, as the series starts to get to its endgame, One Piece spoilers are going to become more and more common. Maybe it’s time to start reading the manga — you can read the entire manga online, after all.