In Chapter 1026 Kaido and Luffy attack one another with their Conqueror’s Haki, not even touching one another and causing the skies and the heavens to split apart.
This is a milestone moment, along the lines of Luffy punching the Sea Monster, perfecting his devil fruit, defeating a Warlord, and unlocking Haki. Luffy is now a Great Pirate, just like Linlin, Kaido and his idol Shanks. From a sobbing brat begging to join Shanks’ crew to matching a damn Yonko, Luffy’s come such a long way. He is no longer a rookie. No longer the underdog. He is now a king among kings. All that’s left is standing above them.
The sheer genius of this chapter is amazing when you look well enough. One page before the heavens splitting, Oda put a large number of small panels and showed all the major characters currently involved in the battle, you read each of these panels carefully and pay attention to the details which peaks your focus and interest as you look carefully, even the panel where Luffy and Kaido lunge toward each other is small.
Then as soon as you turn the page, you find a monstrous panel that covers the whole page by the most epic plot device in the story, the splitting of the heavens. A feat only performed by Yonko level individuals.
As you take in all that epicness and hype due to the close attention you paid in the previous page, you think of how impressive this feat is and how far our boy Luffy has come, possesing enough power to literally shape the heavens and standing on equal grounds with the strongest creature in the world.
I wanna take a moment to appreciate how insanely tenacious Luffy is. People have been hyping Kaido for fighting nonstop, but that applies to Luffy too. It’s even more impressive because while Kaido has been continuously winning, Luffy doesnt lose steam even when he loses. He ran through the castle, fighting Gifters, Apoo, Page 1, Ulti and Yamato. Then he fought Big Mom and Kaido on the roof until he got knocked out. But he got up and decided to up the stakes and solo Kaido. Then he was defeated, fell off the island and almost drowned. But again he got up, refuelled and immeditely went after Kaido again despite losing to him 2-3 times already.
