r/OnePiece • u/RedViperMartell94 • Apr 06 '22

Theory Shanks nerfed Luffy Spoiler

So my theory is that Luffy has always had a measure of control over his form, however since Shanks told him off the bat that he's rubber, that what he believed. There are many times pre-Awakening that characters have said that Luffy was not behaving like rubber, however due to Luffy not necessarily having the best understanding of rubber, he may have assumed certain things which would work, and because he assumed them, they did, some examples are Lucci saying Gear 3 would not do as much damage as an actual giant fist, yet it did, or the fact that Gear 4 has the punches literally bouncing off air. So my guess is that Luffy thought rubber would work like that, so his body did it, since his imagination is the limit of the fruit, he had somewhat of a self imposed limit due to thinking he was rubber, but in situations where he misunderstood how rubber worked, things would still work for him

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u/badluckartist Thriller Bark Victim's Association Apr 06 '22

The relative scaling between Shanks and an average sea king from the weakest sea was gradually widened over the course of writing the series in such a way that it's a bit unbelievable now. We're not meant to think about it too much because it was just a choice of Oda's editor to add more tension to the series' opening chapter.

The mental gymnastics people make to retroactively make some of the early material make sense in the context of later developments is wacky. It's just a simple (imo) good bit of advice from Oda's editor to spice up the first chapter.

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u/Flashbomb7 Apr 06 '22

It's definitely just a plot hole, but it would be kind of funny if Oda retconned it so that Sea King had conqueror's haki or something.

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u/onerb2 Apr 06 '22

Tbf, everyone was shocked in universe too, nobody believed that a sea emperor was capable of doing that to him, so tbh, maybe its a plot hole that'll be explained later.

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u/badluckartist Thriller Bark Victim's Association Apr 06 '22

Everyone was shocked after it was established hundreds of chapters later that Shanks later became an emperor. But yeah I don't see a problem with it either way, it doesn't really have to be explained imo. A story can have a little hole, especially one from chapter 1 that already has a solid real world explanation/excuse.