One Piece: Does Luffy Have Toon Force in Gear 5? Explained!

It’s August 6, 2023, and after a year and a half after its manga debut in Chapter 1044 (which debuted on March 28, 2022), Luffy’s Gear 5 has finally been animated! Fans of the series will know how big and important this is, and based on that fact, it only makes sense that we are going to dedicate an article to Gear 5. Gear 5 is Luffy’s strongest form at the moment, and since it came with the activation of the true nature of his Devil Fruit, it made Luffy exceptionally powerful, so powerful, in fact, that some might even comment that his level of power is ridiculous. In light of that fact, in this article, we are going to discuss whether Luffy now has toon force with Gear 5.

It cannot be denied that Luffy, in his newly-achieved Gear 5 state, has toon force, as his movements and actions in Gear 5 completely contradicted everything we know about regular physics, even more than usual when it comes to One Piece. So far, despite showing some mild toon force elements, One Piece has mostly respected the logic of its own world, but Luffy’s Gear 5 has gone completely bonkers and has allowed Luffy to do feats that are ridiculous even for Oda’s usual standards.

The rest of this article will focus on Gear 5 and the type of power-up it has provided Luffy with. Namely, Gear 5 deserves a proper explanation, and with all the power-ups it has provided Luffy with, we can discuss their impact on the plot of One Piece. This article will explain the main aspects of toon force and compare them to the power-ups Luffy received as part of his Gear 5 transformation. The article might contain some spoilers, so be careful how you approach it.

Luffy’s had toon force from the beginning, but Gear 5 is just ridiculous (in the best way possible)

Now, before we actually tell you about toon force in One Piece, allow us to tell you what toon force is. Toon force is actually a term for cartoon or animation physics, which is a concept that illustrates how physics may be defied or bent by animation to create funnier or more dramatic scenarios.

A character can, for instance, continue to move freely in a horizontal straight line after falling from a cliff until he realizes what has happened. In the 1930s and 1940s, when animated films from Warner Bros., MGM, and Fleischer Studios started to be regularly marketed, these regulations were more or less consciously formalized. There are certain rules to cartoon physics, but they can also be applied to other natural laws broken in cartoons, such as biology or chemistry.

Also, cartoon characters have, on more than one occasion, been aware that they are breaking natural laws (especially in early Warner Bros. cartoons), and the protagonist trio Yakko, Wakko, and Dot of the Animaniacs have even explained that cartoon characters are allowed to do that for special purposes. Notable examples include:

• Any suspended body in space will stay there until its position is understood. The regular laws of gravity will thereafter be in effect. (The protagonist walks past a cliff’s edge, hangs in the air, and doesn’t fall until he glances below.)
• A perforation with its perimeter (referred to as the “passage silhouette”) is left behind by any body that passes through solid matter.
• If they paint a tunnel, some bodies can pass through solid matter or walls while others cannot.
• When someone is scared, they can perform inconceivable jumps in the air, defying all laws of physics.
• Any re-distribution of feline matter through violence is temporary. In other words, cats either recover quickly or have endless lives. Addendum: Cats can adapt to unusually small spaces.
• Anything may fall more quickly than an anvil. The character’s skull is either driven into the ground or flattened (folded like an accordion) whenever an anvil lands directly on it.
• Any hole or container that is smaller than a body causes it to constrict and take that shape. A person entered into a guitar case will emerge shaped like a guitar, just as a cat entering a mouse hole will emerge as a sausage (whose portion will match the form of the hole’s entrance).
• Until the character enters a vehicle, it is impossible to determine its state. (For instance, the wolf crosses a road and is immediately struck by a bus.)
• When a character is falling from a height, he can stop himself by pantomiming stopping or by holding on to his garments.
• A character can easily land on the earth after falling from a tremendous height while riding in a car or inside a house if he jumps out just in time, but the object he landed into would break.
• Without experiencing the water’s brake, he can walk on the bottom of a lake or a sea.
• A balloon that has been inflated by the mouth will act like one that has been inflated with helium. A character can float when filled with helium or given an air pump, which causes them to expand like a balloon.

As you can see, there are numerous standardized examples of cartoon physics, but anything that directly contradicts natural laws and allows cartoon characters to bend or completely break them can be called cartoon physics. This is, of course, mostly present in Western animation as anime usually has different laws that govern their respective worlds (especially shonen, which explains its breaking of natural laws with supernatural powers), but anime is not completely immune to these standards, although the standardized tropes we’ve listed above are actually rarely present.

So, now that we have told you what toon force is, we can tell you whether Luffy’s Gear 5 constitutes an example of that. First of all, we have to say that some characters from One Piece, Luffy included, have already had toon force, and there are numerous examples of it in the series, but they were never as clear and as straightforward as in Western cartoons, and they were generally explained by the characters having certain supernatural powers and abilities that allowed them to bend natural laws.

But, even in such a world, Luffy’s Gear 5 is ridiculous and is a prime example of toon force in One Piece. Namely, the physics-bending abilities that Luffy has gained in Gear 5 are certainly on par with some of the tropes we’ve listed above, as Luffy was able to completely reshape his body to adapt to the shape of Kaidou’s weapon so that he wouldn’t be hurt.

He also seemed to be practically invincible in this form, as none of Kaidou’s attacks did any real damage, implying that Luffy’s body had been transformed into rubber. On top of that, there is also the fact that Luffy was able to change his size as he wished, he was able to change the shape of solid matter that wasn’t his own in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable, and he was even able to create rubber thunder and control it as if it were a spear.

So yes, Luffy’s Gear 5 is a prime example of toon force. It might not be as traditional as the examples we’ve written above, but there is absolutely no doubt that Gear 5, Luffy and One Piece have come as close to Western animation as anime traditions allow it. And while this might seem quite strange for anime fans, it isn’t too strange if you know One Piece and how Oda’s worldbuilding works.