Luffy’s Moves
Each and every one of Luffy’s moves have to be well though off and allow for extreme creativity.
Let’s think of his most basic move. Gomu Gomu no Pistol. Luffy throws a literal straight punch. It’s the most basic technique you can learn, but with Luffy’s abilities it becomes an expectacle. Because of his power instead of just punching, he can stretch around, for that he will do really deliberate moves like swinging his arm around or throwing it backwards alloeong it to stretch and then recoil back which call attention and put enfasis on the power of the blow making even a simple hit extremely cinematic.
And until this point it sounds good but that’s not close to all of it. I for example am a sucker for martial arts. I love when realistic fighting is integrated into series. And while I cannot say One Piece has realistic fights… a lot of their powers ESPECIALLY Luffy’s skills make a lot of sense and would be a really smart use of the abilities if you had them.
Each and every one (or at least most) of Luffy’s skills and even the moments where he uses them in the series makes sense, both situationally and in the whole picture of him as a character… Hell even his backstory and how he learned to use his power made sense.
Let’s go back back to the Gomu Gomu no Pistol for example. Normally throwing your arm backwards and swinging it around is a really bad idea on fighting. You call a swing for example a half assed punch that is done without proper alignment of the actual direction of your body weight and your punch thus losing a lot of strenght, you don’t throw a punch with your arm strenght either so throwing your hand backwards isn’t an effective strategy and is a dead giveaway of someone who doesn’t know shit about real punching. But when you take into account how Luffy’s power works it is incredible:
- Luffy first starts swinging his arm around, because of how Luffy’s power works he quite literally is making his arm spin with his shoulder included, that allows him to store a lot of momentum for when he finally throws the punch.
Then he throws it backwards, throwing his body like if he was throwing a straight punch backwards, with this it adds all the momentum from a heavy straight punch that carries all the strenght of Luffy’s arms, back and legs which was already massive because remember he already stored a lot of power spinning spinning first. But it’s not all.
Luffy then starts pulling his punch aiming at his enemy. He quite literally is pulling his punch, accelerating it more and more as it gets closer. Like if he was pressing the pedal of a car which is his punch.
- Then when the punch gets close to his body he does the straight punch motion again, which adds once again the power of his arm, back and legs to the punch. If the enemy moves, however the punch is not static, Luffy quite literally can adjust the punch movement at the last second with this last punching motion, by aiming at another place his arm will work like a whip changing the direction of the punch last moment. Also if he waits a bit more Luffy can change the direction of the punch last second making the whip effect after it landed in the enemy or while it is landing which makes him effectively land 2 punches or more with one.
This is the base of most of Luffy’s directs attacks and even more advanced attacks like the Gattling Gun are based on it. But adding changes to the formula based on his necessities. It not only makes for a believable fighting style in the circumstances but gives a lot of versatility and different usages to the basic moves of the protagonist.
