One Piece: When Will Luffy’s Gear 5 Be Animated?

Monkey D. Luffy is the protagonist of the One Piece manga and anime. He is an incredibly powerful character who wishes to become the new Pirate King by finding Gol D. Roger’s One Piece treasure. The source of his powers is the Gomu Gomu no Mi, i.e., the Gum-Gum Devil Fruit recently turned out to be a much more powerful, divine Devil Fruit known as Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika. These new powers allowed Luffy to use his Gear 5 powers in the manga, but anime fans will still have to wait a bit to see Gear 5 animated. This article will reveal when Luffy’s Gear 5 will be animated in One Piece.

Technically, Gear 5 has already been animated in the One Piece Film: Red, but due to the issues related to the movie’s canon status, no one considers it to be a serious thing. As for the anime, we can confirm that the debut of Luffy’s Gear 5 in the main narrative happened on August 6, 2023, when the 1071st episode, titled “Luffy’s Peak Attained! Gear 5”, premiered and finally introduced anime fans to Luffy’s Gear 5.

The rest of this article will focus on Luffy’s Gear 5, his newest set of skills and abilities recently introduced in the manga. We are going to explain everything surrounding the debut of Luffy’s Gear 5 in the anime series, which will help you understand why this was one of the most important moments in the series and why we generally think that it deserves a lot of attention. Of course, this article is going to be focused on the events seen in the most recent episode of the anime, which also means that this article will contain some spoilers, so be careful how you approach it.

What is Luffy’s Gear 5?

Gear Fifth is the name of a Monkey D. Luffy fighting technique that first appeared during the Onigashima War. This is the awakened form of his Fruit. Luffy covers himself with Armament Haki and Royal Haki when he activates Gear Fifth. The awakening of the Gomu Gomu no Mi, real name Hito Hito no Mi Model: Nika, gives the user’s rubbery body greater strength and freedom, limited only by the user’s imagination.

For this reason, it is said that the consumer becomes the “incarnation of freedom,” being able to bring joy to the people around him, making it “the most ridiculous power in the world.”

The most notable physical characteristic of the awakened form is Luffy’s complete discoloration (turning entirely white), the conversion of his hair and eyebrows to a lighter shade and a flaming form, as well as granting effects similar to those of cartoons, not only for the consumer but also for their opponent, an example being the googly eye effects.

It allows him to use both Gear 3’s limb inflate and Gear 4’s muscle inflates, but without physically pumping air into his body, as well as allowing him to elasticize and stretch the terrain around him. When Luffy first used it against Kaidou, he was able to grow his arm to an enormous size so that he could grab Kaidou’s transformed body and drag him out of the skull dome.

Despite Kaidou’s massive girth, Luffy could swing him from side to side thanks to his expanded limbs. As demonstrated when Luffy lifted a portion of the ceiling and used it to deflect Kaidou’s Boro Breath back at him, Luffy’s rubbery nature may expand to the surroundings. Even though the boron breath attack was intense enough to level a castle, it is interesting to note that the altered ground, despite being elastic, did not burn or melt.

Given that Luffy could extend the interior of Kaidou’s body and even his eyes, it is possible to alter the elastic qualities of living things as well. At this stage, Zunesha refers to Luffy’s heartbeat as having the melodious cadence of the “drums of release.” Gear 5 uses the fruit’s awakening as the foundation for the technique, which devours tremendous energy and stamina. Kaidou claimed that he might kill himself if he used it too frequently.

The techniques that Luffy has demonstrated in his Gear Fifth form are:

• Gum-Gum Balloon: A larger version of the original Gum-Gum Balloon. First used while in Kaido’s womb, which also caused the Emperor’s body to grow and expand.
  • Gum-Gum Escape Rocket: From inside Kaido’s body, Luffy can swing his arms through Kaido’s eyes and grab onto his nose before doing a Gum-Gum Rocket to break out of Kaido’s body.
• Gum-Gum Giant: Luffy projects himself into the clouds with his breath and then becomes much larger. His body thus rivals Kaido’s dragon form in every aspect.
  • Gum-Gum Jump Rope: In “Gigant” mode, Luffy uses Kaido’s dragon-form body to do jump rope like a child.

When will Luffy’s Gear 5 be animated?

Luffy’s Gear 5 actually debuted in Chapter 1044 of the One Piece manga. The chapter was titled “Warrior of Liberation,” a reference to the Sun God Nika from the story, and came out on March 28, 2022; it is now part of Volume 103 of the manga. Originally, we wrote this article some weeks before the premiere of Episode 1071, so at the time of writing this article, we had only anticipated this major event, but now, we can actually confirm that it happened. Let us see how the story developed.

Now, the anime debut of Gear 5 is a major event and all One Piece fans knew that the episode was going to be one of the most important ones. There are two main reasons for this. First of all, the wait for this episode, for the anime debut of Gear 5, lasted roughly a year and a half, so it makes sense that the fans actually wanted to see one of the biggest moments in Luffy’s life as a pirate and one of the most important moments in the series. And the latter is, of course, the second reason. Namely, Luffy activating Gear 5 was important for several reasons.

First of all, it gave Luffy another power-up, proving that he is definitely on track to become the series’ most powerful character and someone worthy of becoming the next Pirate King and the successor of Gol D. Roger. Secondly, it was a pivotal moment in the Wano Country arc and the culmination of one of the series’ best and longest sagas; at the time, Big Mom had already been defeated, and in that aspect, all that was left was Kaidou, and with Gear 5, Luffy was finally on track to defeat him. This brings us to the third segment of this reason – Luffy’s rivalry with Kaidou. Gear 5 finally enabled Luffy, after so many losses, to gain enough power to make Kaidou look like a weakling, which was a great moment for fans as justice had finally been done here.

So, now that we have explained the importance of this moment, we can actually confirm that Gear 5 premiered in Episode 1071, whose title was “Luffy’s Peak Attained! Gear 5”. The episode premiered on August 6, 2023 in Japan and around the world in subbed format, and it finally brought Gear 5 to the anime. Its appearance was foreshadowed in Episode 1070 and finally, Gear 5 made its full debut in Episode 1071.

And yes, we know you’ll argue that Gear 5 has already been animated in the One Piece Film: Red, which is technically true, but it was such a brief scene that most people forgot about it. Also, there’s the fact that the movie’s canon status is dubious, as it generally is with One Piece films, which is why no one really considers this as Gear 5’s debut, although facts from the movies have subsequently been confirmed as canon, especially those related to Shanks’ and Uta’s past and their families.