I know how many people has milked this theory dry, but I still felt a need to share my thoughts. I also want to write this so I can compare to how it actually will look like when it is finally shown. So this is my theory on how Snakeman would possibly work and what it would look like.
The majority of the theory is based on a BBC article called.
“Almost all snakes have the same, mindboggling superpower”.
I have chosen some interesting parts from the article:
“An average snake strike lasts somewhere between 44 and 70 milliseconds. To put that in perspective, it takes humans around 200ms to blink an eye. In the same time, the most ruthless snake could theoretically have carried out four strikes.”
“Essentially the prey doesn’t stand a chance in most encounters,”
“We’re talking about animals that can strike out and reach their target before the prey is even perceptually aware that it’s under attack.”
So snakeman should obviously be an improved version of gear 2, where Luffy becomes incredibly fast. Maybe so fast that Katakuri won’t be able to dodge him even with the five seconds he can see into the future. The article mentions “perceptually aware” and I think we should take this into consideration since Luffy is fighting a beast on the art of perception.
Another interesting thing the article is the reasons snakes are capable of generating these accelerations, and I think I know how Luffy would be able to replicate this.
“This is down to snakes’ unique physiology, which has been finely honed over millions of years.
For one thing they have a lot of muscles. The human body contains somewhere between 700 and 800 muscles. Snakes, even those so small they can sit on a coin, have between 10,000 and 15,000 muscles.”
So basically, Snakes are able to do this because of the amount of muscles they have. And do I need to remind you what gear fourth is exactly? It’s basically Luffy inflating his muscular structure, making his movements more explosive and sudden. In addition to this, the author says.
“We do not yet know how snakes exploit these muscles to move quite so explosively. Some believe that they all connect together, building up energy for the strike before springing in one elastic movement, like a rubber band.”
That’s right, a rubber band. Maybe it’s just me but I see so many connections here. This is also an explanation on how Luffy’s punches works in gear 4, when his hand goes into his arm, he basically builds up energy like the article explained.
Apart from this explanation, the article mentions something that sounds like a possible sound effect:
“It is almost inconceivably fast, and it means that snakes are far better at striking their prey than we are at moving any part of our bodies. In fact, if we were to move at the sort of accelerations that snakes do, we would black out.”
So basically our human brains wouldn’t be able to handle this speed, but since Luffy is made of rubber, the speed wouldn’t affect his brain as much. But in the long term, this could be a side effect to Snakeman. After extensive use in this form, Luffy simply passes out. It all depends on if Oda chooses to create an additional side effect to Snakeman, apart from the 10 minute haki pause.
And I actually believe that this is how the battle will end. Luffy actually winning, but then passes out, making it look like a draw. And I believe this is where Sanji will come in to save his captain.
Another thing I want to bring up is how Snakeman possibly will look like, and I know that many people has brought up this image where Luffy has a really long neck.
I do support this, because I think it looks really goofy and could fit in with the snake theme, I also want to bring attention to a panel from Luffy’s fight with Doflamingo:
Here, Luffy says “after him, python!!” and his arm keeps stretching without shrinking back, as Doflamingo remarks.
In a similar way I believe that Luffy will extend his arms, legs, and maybe even neck to become long like a snakes body, and keep them elongated without shrinking back. This would be cool because Luffy could essentially become as tall as Katakuri, and we won’t have that ridiculous size difference anymore.
In the fight between Luffy and Hody Jones we also se an attack which Luffy calls Snake shot, where his arm swerves in a snake like movement and then grips Hody in the chest which causes Hody great pain, like a snake bite. He could maybe even actually bite his enemy if he takes his snake form this far.
Another thing I have seen people talk about is the gorgon sisters, and how Sandersonia in particular uses “Snake dance” to avoid Luffy’s attacks.
Maybe this will be Snakemans version of dodging, in contrary to Katakuri who just changes his body shape to avoid attacks. The snake dance could also be similar to how the CP9 agents uses Kamie-e (paper art), where their body becomes like paper and they sway, bend and float to avoid enemy attacks.
So, I believe that snakeman Luffy would look like a combination of a longleg, a longarm and a snakeneck. I made a sketch on how I think it will look like:
I made his neck curl up like a snake would because I thought it looked good and could be a good homage to Katakuri’s scarf.
Conclusion/TLDR:
- Luffy will stretch out his limbs and become a combination of longleg longarm and snakeneck, with his neck curled up like a snake.
- He will have increased speed which even Katakuri has a hard time to catch up with.
- His attacks will be incredibly fast punches and kicks, and he will maybe even use his long neck to bite his enemy.
- He will be able to dodge incoming attacks through “Snake Dance”, which could match Katakuri’s dodge through reforming.
I know this theory won’t be much since we probably will see this form in less than a week, but I hope it was a good read!
*Theory by Charlotte Q Charlie
