Gear 5 left anime fans wondering whether it was a historic change for the shonen or an over-hyped transformation, but it went down in history either way.
The One Piece franchise has been around for 25 years, ever since author Eiichiro Oda's manga began serialization in 1997. Against all odds, One Piece has remained fresh, exciting and highly imaginative even after more than 1,000 episodes and chapters, well past their prime. to the point where any other series would have become obsolete or finished. A recent example of One Piece's indefatigable imagination is Luffy's Gear 5 transformation, which has totally broken the Internet, according to many fans.
There's no doubt that Luffy's Gear 5 transformation in episode 1071 of One Piece went down in anime history with its impact and audience. Some fans say it's a historic transformation, while others think it's overrated, but this debate actually makes the transformation more historic and memorable, not less. There's no right answer, but the intensity of this debate is always flattering for One Piece, proving that it's still relevant and compelling after all these years.
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Why do some One Piece fans say Gear 5 is overpriced?
Some One Piece fans wonder if Gear 5 is a bold new definition of shonen power-ups, or if it's just another splinter like many before it. One Piece was once much more alone in the shonen world, having mainly series like Hunter x Hunter for company, but then the "big three" took shape when Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto and Tite Kubo's Bleach arrived. In the 2010s, other shonen stalwarts like Gege Akutami's Jujutsu Kaisen , Kohei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia and Koyoharu Gotouge's Demon Slayer arrived, making One Piece part of the pack.
One Piece was and still is the biggest and oldest of them all, but its uniqueness as a shonen story can seem more diluted, with these other series having their own legendary moments, characters and fighting techniques to try and compete with One Piece's . Now, fans have to think about Naruto's jinchuriki and Sage mode transformations , Ichigo Kurosaki's final Getsuga Tensho form, Nezuko's adult demon form and Izuku's awakening of One For All's built-in quirks . This means that shonen manga/anime fans are spoiled for content, which may diminish Gear 5's impact in their eyes. It may feel like we've been there, done that by 2023, with so much competition. This, in turn, could lead fans to describe Gear 5's revival as overrated, a fun but otherwise mundane development that felt like a predictable obligation rather than something revolutionary.
| Discover our Luffy figure in Gear 5 |
In addition, some One Piece fans may feel that the flamboyant nature of Gear 5 detracts from the immersion of the series, giving Luffy a bizarre new power that is disconnected from the more serious Gears that Luffy has trained so hard to create. Luffy has always been about training and fighting hard to get ahead, which allowed him to narrowly defy the odds when he defeated Arlong, Sir Crocodile, Doflamingo and Charlotte Katakuri. Then Luffy lost to Kaido, the pirate emperor, only for his Gum-Gum fruit to save him with a brand-new power he'd never trained for. In retrospect, Luffy's Haki training with Silvers Rayleigh and his innovative Gears 2, 3 and 4 could almost seem like a waste of time. Yet fans argue that One Piece actually left enough clues about Nika the solar god and Luffy's connection to this character, making him less of a deus ex machina, even if it's true that Luffy never underwent the shonen-style training to unlock it.
Why are other One Piece fans defending the Gear 5?
On the other hand, many One Piece fans have defended Gear 5's wacky development, not only out of loyalty to the anime, but because they believe that Gear 5's nature and sudden awakening keep One Piece fresh in a way that its younger shonen competitors never would. have thought. It's true that impressive bonuses are now commonplace and can be taken for granted, from the additional quirks of One For All to Hinokami Kagura and Ichigo's new bankai in the TYBW arc . However, these bonuses were a linear progression of their own series' fighting systems, whereas Gear 5 overturns all the rules to provide a hardware reset of how Luffy's fighting style works. Gears 2, 3 and 4 were indeed a linear progression, with Gear 2 being little more than "Luffy hits harder and faster". But even Gear 4's superb Snakeman and Tankman forms were just Gum-Gum Fruit+, and this threatened to become obsolete.
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Gear 5 propelled Luffy in entirely new directions and, in the process, turned many heads with its reckless and creative innovations. Whether intended or not, Gear 5 provided commentary on the increasingly routine nature of shonen power-ups, and in the eyes of fans, this meant that One Piece was still relevant after all this time. Many fans loved Gear 5's debut, as it surprised even seasoned fans with its offbeat innovations. It was about old dogs learning new tricks and ensuring that One Piece wasn't just an old series that stubbornly outlasted its heyday. According to Gear 5's supporters, this means that One Piece hasn't yet reached its peak, and that a 25-year-old series can still reinvent itself and refuse to fall into a rut.Eiichiro Oda's robust imagination and clever storytelling strategies put One Piece on the map and kept it there for so long against the odds, and now Mr. Oda's unpredictable imagination is back. He continues to do what has made One Piece such an enduring success, and Gear 5 is just the latest in a long line of bold creative decisions, and many fans respect that. Never before has a shonen series broken its own rules so brazenly and humorously with Looney Tunes physics and sound effects like this, and more broadly, it's this kind of zany but bold creativity that convinced so many fans to start watching and reading One Piece to begin with.
After all, even the early days of the series included a rubbery pirate captain, a three-bladed swordsman and a talking reindeer doctor . Gear 5's awkwardness is just the next logical step that longtime fans didn't see coming, but in retrospect, they may feel that this kind of development was bound to happen sooner or later and fits One Piece's storytelling style . This is perhaps one of the main reasons why so many One Piece fans appreciated Gear 5 and embraced it as the most logical development in the series, rather than dismissing it as an immersion-breaking deus ex machina to get Luffy out of trouble in his toughest fight yet.
| Discover our Luffy figure in Gear 5 mode |
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