One Piece: Powering Up Through Adventure and Joy
Going Super Saiyan, warp Digivolving, activating Dragon Force, transforming into a Titan, entering Sage Mode. Power ups are a staple of shonen anime, and like anything else that becomes so ubiquitous in a genre, the specific way it is utilized can tell us a lot about what that series is saying.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at One Piece.
This is a series that is over 1,100 episodes long (so far). Through it all, we have seen countless new forms, techniques, equipment, and other major and minor power ups amongst the crew of the Thousand Sunny (and before that, the Going Merry). In all this time, there are a couple ideas that keep coming back:
Adventure and joy.
But it’s not enough to just say these ideas are there, we have to set sail and explore how these power ups come about, and get into why I think their circumstances lean into these ideas.
This post will contain talk up through to the end of the Wano Country Saga.
The Adventures We Had Along the Way
Let’s start with the first major power ups in One Piece, when Luffy first goes into Second and Third Gear in the Enies Lobby arc.
Luffy creates out both techniques after having been defeated by CP9 – elite secret agents for the World Government – and their special Rokushiki fighting style in the arc prior. The defeat left Luffy feeling like he needed to get stronger to protect his friends, and CP9’s particular fighting style became the inspiration for him to invent these techniques for himself.
It’s worth noting that both Second and Third Gear aren’t Luffy reaching a new form in a traditional sense so much as using his power in creative ways to give himself a boost. Because of this, it’s easy to imagine that if he was defeated by a different group, with some other special fighting style, these power ups could have played out very differently.
This is an idea that continues with Fourth Gear. We first see this ability come out in Luffy’s fight with Doflamingo, but we’re shown in flashbacks in the same episode that this was something that came out of his training with Rayleigh – the first mate of the legendary pirate Gol D. Roger – whom he first meets in the Sabaody Archipelago.
Where Luffy taught first himself new abilities after being inspired by CP9’s particular style, this time it is from being trained on Rayleigh’s use of Haki (basically, spiritual energy harnessed for various purposes).
While not as flashy as Luffy’s various Gears, we also see Luffy learn Future Sight (a form of Observation Haki that allows glimpses of the future) during his fight with a master of the technique, Katakuri, on Whole Cake Island; and Ryuo (a form of Armament Haki that can blast out from their body) after being trained on it by Hyogoro in Wano.
In each of these instances, Luffy is coming to a new island, befriending or fighting against someone with a special ability, and learning from them. His entire arsenal is almost a roadmap of his adventure so far in the way that it’s so specific to where he’s gone and who he’s met there.
We can also see this with the Straw Hat Pirates as a whole.
Look no further than the timeskip where to see where this is most evident. Here is a two-year period in which each of the Straw Hats are sent to different islands where they spend the time learning and training.
We can see examples of Straw Hats who grow because of their location, like Franky building up a new body because he’s in the old lab of the genius Dr. Vegapunk, and Chopper studying the medicinal properties of herbs that only grow on the island he’s on. Or Straw Hats that grow because of the people they come in contact within these locations, like Nami with the weather-based scientists and Robin with the Revolutionary Army. Each of them is made stronger in ways that are incredibly specific to the islands they are sent to.
Outside of the timeskip, we can see a lot of micro instances of this constantly throughout their travels. Take the new equipment they find along the way, like Zoro’s new sword in Loguetown, Usopp using technology from Skypiea, Sanji’s raid suit from Whole Cake Island.
Of course, when it comes to the strength of the Straw Hats growing through their adventure, I’ve been kind of burying the lead so far. Their power increases most every time they gain a new crew member, and It’s only through travel that these specific crew members come together at all.
Each member of the Straw Hats is from a different island. In the East Blue Saga this means picking up the essentials to building a crew: a first mate, a sniper, a cook, and a navigator. While they all bring their own unique perspectives and histories, they have more in common than they have differences, because they all come relatively similar places (except Sanji, but he’s still found here).
But when we get to the Grand Line, the Straw Hats find a doctor who’s an animal, an archeologist who’s a survivor of genocide, a shipwright who’s a cyborg, a musician who’s a skeleton, and a helmsman of a race who’s persecuted against. Even just looking at the character designs for the second half of the crew, we see just how different each one of them is compared to the first half.
The creation of the full Straw Hats crew itself shows us how their strength comes, at least in part, from their diversity. Where the series could have started with Luffy stepping foot on Romance Dawn and finding a whole group there, the Straw Hats built slowly over time. They come together with people from all over the world, thanks to their adventure.
A bit of an aside, but the Log Pose is another fantastic device for reinforcing the importance of adventure in this series. This is a tool that is necessary for navigating the Grand Line, because of all its weird properties. It’s a compass that doesn’t point North, but instead to what island they should go to next. Notably, there isn’t just a single line of islands, depending on how the crew starts, they could be going to any number of different ones.
What this means for the world of One Piece, is that every crew is likely going on incredibly different adventures, seeing different parts of the world, meeting different people. The way the Straw Hats have grown in power won’t look the same as the Heart Pirates or the Kid Pirates or the Bonney Pirates. Even when they wind up in some of the same places, the ways they have gotten there have shaped them in their own unique ways.
Cycles, Joy, and Fifth Gear
If you’re familiar with One Piece, you may have noticed that when talking about Luffy’s power ups, I left out a big one, Fifth Gear. And that’s because I don’t think it fits into the theme of adventure in quite the same way as the rest of the power ups. So, let’s put a pin in that idea for the moment.
To get into Fifth Gear, we’re first going to need to dive into a whole other topic: what I’m calling the grand cycle of One Piece.
In terms of its sagas and story arcs, One Piece is essentially split into two halves. There is the “Sea of Survival: Super Rookies Saga” and “The Final Sea: The New World Saga”. If we step back and look at the major events of the halves, we see the beats repeating themselves in a way that cycles. I’m going to go over the most major beats here, but I’ll also throw in pictures to help expand on this.
·Years ago, an execution caused the world to be reborn. Now, the Straw Hats come together and cross the Red Line to enter a world that’s wilder than anything they’ve ever seen before.
Luffy befriends a princess and saves her father’s kingdom from a Warlord who has turned the citizens against the father.
A member of the Straw Hats leaves because of their past coming back to haunt them. In getting them back, the Straw Hats destroy something that puts them at war with a force that’s too powerful to totally defeat right now.
Luffy and his crew separate as Luffy follows behind a path once taken by Ace. Luffy loses a fight to someone terrifyingly strong, leading to a need for a prison break, and eventually to a war to attempt to stop an execution.
A pirate dies.
Executions are the turning points in these cycles, and because of this, it’s worth looking at how they change in each of the three occurrences.
Gol D. Roger’s execution goes off without event. The world isn’t prepared to do anything to stop it. And from his death, the world is reborn, kicking off Great Pirate Era.
Ace’s execution creates a giant battle of pirates vs the marines. Gol D. Roger’s death changed the world into one that could fight back. But it’s not enough. And from his death, the world is reborn again. We’re off to the New World (the name of the second half of the Grand Line), a journey that begins after a two-year timeskip, to make it feel more literally like a new world.
Then comes Momonosuke’s execution. Another huge battle is fought to save him. The biggest figures this time around are pirates of the “Worst Generation”, the pirates who grew up entirely in the Great Pirate Era. Now that they have had enough of their own adventures to find the strength to fight back, they kick some ass and save Momonosuke. But even with him saved, there’s still a world changing death occurring at this execution: Luffy’s.
With that, let’s go back to pin we put in the theme of adventure.
In focusing on how the adventure leads to Luffy and his crew getting stronger, I’ve left out that this is a two-way street. Luffy isn’t just affected by his travels, he’s having an effect on the world.
Luffy brings inspiration and hope. He fights for freedom and saves people who were being oppressed. Everywhere Luffy goes, he brings people joy.
Luffy’s very inclusion in the world has been changing it through his adventure, so when it comes to Luffy’s death at the third major execution of the series, the world isn’t reborn, he is. His death awakens his Devil Fruit, giving him the power of Nika the Sun God, the power once held by the mysterious Joy Boy.
This awakened power, Fifth Gear, isn’t him turning into some massive powerhouse, it’s turning him into a cartoon (sound effects and all). The whole world playfully bends and stretches to his will. His power is the silliness, the fun, the joy.
Awakening a Devil Fruit essentially means unlocking its full potential or strongest possible abilities. Unlike Second through Fourth Gear, Fifth Gear is a power up that is built into the source of his abilities. Meaning, this is the only one of his powers that aren’t specific to his adventure, this is something that theoretically could have been possible regardless of how he got here, but it’s through his adventure he proved himself worthy enough to unlock it.
If every other power up across One Piece is representative of how the adventure the Straw Hats have taken has affected them, Fifth Gear is instead representative of the joy that Luffy has brought to people he’s met throughout his adventure. And by adding onto this the series long structure that builds into a cycle, we’re shown that joy has the power to break the cycle of oppression that the world has been trapped in since before he was born.
Conclusion
One Piece is a series about a lot of things: following your dreams, the right everyone has to freedom, the importance of understanding history, and more. Looking at different elements of the series, we can see arguments for any number of things. But looking at the power ups, I hope I made a strong case for how they push toward a narrative about the importance of adventure and joy.
In episode 400, “Roger and Rayleigh – The Pirate King and His Right Hand”, Luffy and his crew meet Rayleigh, one of the only living people who have ever seen the One Piece. When a Straw Hat tries to ask for more information on it, Luffy stops him:
“That’s enough! I don’t want to know where the One Piece is hidden. I don’t even want to know if it exists. Every single one of us put our life on the line without knowing anything. I’d rather give up being a pirate than know. I won’t go on a boring adventure. We need to sail and find out for ourselves!”
This is a fun moment where Luffy’s essentially shouting “no spoilers”, but it’s also protecting so much of the purpose of the series. And after looking at how the Luffy and the Straw Hats gain power in the series, it becomes clear that if they just skip to the end, they won’t be who they need to be to finish this.
After Wano, we’ve entered into what has been titled the Final Saga. Luffy’s adventures have given him and his Straw Hat pirates the power they need to finish this, and the joy he’s brought to the world has broken the cycle to allow their final actions to create real change.
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