Luffy’s Backstory and how it makes it even more believable and complex
Have you realized how Luffy has this reaaaally complex moves by now right? It’s not like Luffy just figured them out instantly. Oh no.
By the start of the series Luffy knew basic fighting moves of unarmed combat, proper kicks, punches headbutts, probably teached by his brothers, his grandpa and the land pirates. He quite literally only knew 4 moves really. The pistol. The rocket. the balloon. And the finger net. Not really those. But the concepts behind them.
You see Luffy spent 10 years training to even be able to use his devil fruit in proper combat. It took him years between growing strong and skilled enought to not be thrown around by the massive momentum of any stretch based movements at all. He then learned to aim hits and strenghten them with that momentum. And later to control his body in weird ways to change the angles of his attacks.
He spent a lot of those years finding ways to make up for the problems he had when he figured those out. He made use of his fingers with the shield and net as a way to protect himself from his much more agile brothers by trying to catch them, discovering the utility of using his extremities as tools to grapple, carry or move persons around from far away.
He probably made the rocket as a way of making up for the low mobility he had when using his other techniques, thus getting his characteristic spiderman like wacky mobility in the process.
And he probably discovered he could use air as a tool to his advantage because of his rubber body along the way. Most likely messing around making jokes and silly faces.
Those became then the basics of most if not all of his moves.
AFTERWORD
I am just pleasantly surprised and left speechless at the amount of thinking and research that comes from Luffy’s fighting style.
In an era of simple Shonen protagonists who go punch punch punch without any thinking whatsoever Eichiro Oda made one of the most believable, complex, and creative yet simple fighting styles of all of Shonen for their main protagonist.
I do understand this is highly likely to get lost in new forever, but I just recently came back to One Piece after leaving it for a year and immediately remembered why I fell in love with the series in the first place. This is my personal way of showing my thanks for it.
*Theory by DaHost1
