 Even if I'm not that strong, I have friends that I want to be with so I've got to be stronger than everyone or I'll lose them. So I've thought of a way to fight with my all so that I won't lose to anybody. You won't be able to keep up with me anymore. All of my techniques have evolved to the next level. Hello and welcome to One Piece 101, the series that breaks down everyone and everything in the One Piece world. Today we are going to be delving into the very luffy specific topic of Gears. Gears are an evolving set of combative forms created by our series' protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy, in order to deal with the ever-escalating challenges of the grand line and the new world. These body enhancement modes are accessible only to Luffy, as they were crafted specifically to take advantage of his devil fruit, the Gomu Gomu No Mi, a paramecia-type fruit that grants its user a body that takes on the properties of rubber. And within the series, these gears currently take on three different forms, which are rather straightforwardly referred to as Gears 2nd, 3rd and 4th, each of which focuses on enhancing a particular aspect of Luffy's devil fruit in conjunction with the general idea of combat. So commencing with Gears 2nd, this form sees Luffy increasing the size of his blood vessels, and before we all say that, stupid, let's remember that he is a rubber man and he can do whatever the hell he pleases. But in any case, this allows his body to pump oxygen and other assorted nutrients at a significantly higher rate, resulting in greatly increased strength and speed, as well as becoming very visually shiny and steamy. And a good general comparison for the level of which these attributes are boosted would be to look at its first featured use in the series during the Enesobi arc. Prior to the activation of Gears 2nd, Luffy in base form was very much able to keep up with Blueno, but immediately after activating Gears 2nd, this fight became so one-sided that it puts a mobius strip to shame, with Luffy capable of breaking through even Blueno's strongest of superhuman techniques. Now currently, this whole Gears 2nd thing sounds pretty fantastic, yeah? A huge boost in speed and power. It's essentially like turning Super Saiyan, right? Well, not so much. The big issue with invoking Gears 2nd and Gears in general really is that there are consequences for their use. In the short term, Gears 2nd expands an absurd amount of energy, causing Luffy to become tired and even more importantly, hungry at a much faster rate. And once these bodily nutrients are completely depleted, then Gears 2nd will automatically deactivate. However, it does get worse, much worse, as prolonged use can leave Luffy in a state of paralysis, and oh, there's also the whole thing of Luffy shortening his lifespan with every use of the form, you know, just minor issues like that. Although it should be stated that post-time skip, Luffy seems to have found a way to reduce the cost of his lifespan, which may very well have to do with his mastery of the form in regards to now being able to use it in select portions of himself, rather than needing to activate Gears 2nd through his entire body. Quite notably, the majority of Luffy's attacks in Gears 2nd form carry the name Jet, many of which are just upgraded versions of his normal moves. For example, Gomogomono Bazooka becomes Gomogomono Jet Bazooka, and so on and so forth. The exception to this naming scheme comes when Luffy uses Haki in conjunction with Gears 2nd. To illustrate, the Red Hawk attack is essentially a Jet Bullet coated in Armament Haki, which is also somehow able to ignite into flames. Exactly why the latter happens isn't what I would call clear at this point, and there are great amounts of speculation, but none of which I'll be going into here. What I will be getting into is Gears 3rd, and this represents a rapid departure from the ideas presented in 2nd, choosing instead to focus purely on enhancing the strength of singular attacks. Gears 3rd achieves this by seeing Luffy bite into his thumb joint and inflating his bones, once again remembering that he is rubber, so making a hole in your bones isn't too difficult to think to achieve. The result, however, is a super-sized limb capable of devastating power if it were to hit an opponent. And that last part is very important because Gears 3rd is not the form that Luffy can simply whip out on a whim. It takes a bit of time to prepare, and all of his attacks using the form are quite obviously telegraphed to the opponent. Whether or not that opponent is strong or fast enough to actually do anything about it is another matter, but it does leave them with the potential to counter. Gears 3rd also came with an incredibly massive side effect in the pre-time skip error of one piece. As immediately following its use, Luffy would shrink into a chibi Luffy for roughly the same amount of time as he engaged in Gears 3rd, which significantly reduced the form's utility beyond a pure finishing move due to how vulnerable it left Luffy afterwards. However, just as with Gears 2nd, Luffy has greatly improved Gears 3rd post-time skip and is now able to use it without fear of shrinkage, and furthermore Luffy is also capable of using it in a more precise manner. For example, whereas previously he had to inflate his entire arm, Luffy is now able to condense the inflated area just to his fists. And of course in the modern era, Gears 3rd attacks are more often than not also coated in armor metaki to greatly increase their damage output. And that brings us to the next incarnation, Gears 4th. And when you first see it, Gears 4th looks like a bit of a Frankensteining of everything that previously made up Luffy's combat arsenal, like you have the colouring and steam effective Gears 2nd with the inflation of Gears 3rd and the Haki of well, Haki. And that's more or less what it is, a creative fusion that takes all of these individual ideas and sculpts them into a fearsome fighting force. In order to achieve this form, Luffy first coats his arm in armor metaki before biting into it, Gears 3rd style. However, instead of inflating his bones, Luffy instead goes on to inflate his muscle mass and distributes it amongst his body, depending on his particular needs at the time. For example, the most commonly seen use of Gears 4th is the Bound Man form, whereby Luffy places great emphasis on inflating the upper half of his body. Although at least two other forms are available, including Snake Man, which focuses more on adapting Gears 4th to be optimally used for speed, as well as Tank Man, which focuses on using Gears 4th after eating one too many biscuits. Whatever the incarnation, Gears 4th offers Luffy a physical upgrade in near every manner. He gains access to devastatingly powerful attacks such as the Kong Gun, as well as a funky utility attack called Python, whereby Luffy becomes able to redirect his punches mid attack rather than needing to retract his arm and try again. Now, as a result of Luffy's inflated rubber body being coated in Haki, he also becomes significantly more resistant to attacks, as they will just generally bounce off him. Although as a side effect to this, Luffy also becomes unable to properly stand up, and is forced to constantly bounce his way to victory. The other incredibly detrimental feature of Gears 4th is that there is a limit to how long it can be used for, and following that use Luffy is left exhausted, and in some cases completely unable to move. Plus, he loses the ability to use Haki for 10 minutes, which might not sound like a long time, but when there's a birdcage incoming or a man made of mochi gunning for your head, 10 minutes is an eternity, and were it not for sheer fate, Luffy would have been defeated by this side effect on several occasions. Some more fun facts about Gears. In regards to the steam generated by Gears 2nd, this is explained by the idea that Luffy's metabolic rate is so high that his sweat is being vaporized, so as to make it appear that he's generating steam. Gears 2nd also bears a striking similarity to the Kaio-ken technique from Dragon Ball, particularly in the animated medium, with both Luffy and Goku's skin turning pink for their own mechanical reasons. In regards to the Gears 4th form of Tankman, it is entirely possible that we have not seen its base form, as it was implied that this transformation was a situational adaptation called the Manpuku version, literally meaning full stomach version. As for the general aesthetic of Gears 4th itself, in the SPS of Volume 79, Oda revealed that the designs were based on the two Guardians of Buddha known as Nio. And finally, a truly useless fact. In a curious case of numbering, the first debut of Gears 2nd occurred in Chapter 387, while the debut of Gears 4th would come 486 chapters later, giving it the exact opposite numbering, as its existence was made known to the world in Chapter 783. But that pretty much does it for Gears. 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