Have you ever wondered how the characters in the One Piece series are so strong? And do we need to talk about their unique powers? Probably not.
Well, as far as we know, the fascinating world of One piece consists of so many such things that provide the characters with their unique powers and their strengths. The power sources are rather very interesting, from Raid Suits to Devil Fruits that even turn them into mighty Dragons. The devil fruits can even turn some of them into Bubbles and giraffes. Not really battle-friendly I guess.
Among these powers, there’s one that stands out from the rest and is deemed to be the strongest power in the series -The Haki.
Haki was a power believed to be inside everybody in the One Piece world. However, only some were able to truly awaken it and use it. Luffy was also among the characters who successfully awakened his Haki and also a rare one that is.
Luffy learned to master Haki when the Straw Hat Crew went on a two-year hiatus to work on themselves. Before learning how he did it, let us know more about this mysterious power.
What is Haki?
Haki is a mysterious power that resides within everybody in the world. It allows users to utilize their spiritual powers for various purposes. Even though it resides within everyone, only a few of them can awaken them.
It can be used to sense other people’s spiritual energy and predict their moves and actions. Its unique powers give the user a special protective coating of spiritual energy. Some rare Haki wielders were able to overpower the willpower of others.
Origin of Haki
Unnamed at that time, it was first seen used by Shanks. He used it to scare off the Lord of the Coast to save Luffy when he was just a child, from the wrath of the Sea King. However, while commenting on Luffy’s bounty in Jaya, Blackbeard used the term Haki and hinted at Shanks’ visit with White Beard.
Though hinted at several times, Haki was not introduced properly before the Marineford Arc, which was just before a two-year time skip that marked the halfway point of the series. The concept of Haki was introduced during the Sabaody Archipelago and Amazon Lily Arcs. It was more clearly introduced to the audience when Rayleigh explained it to Luffy on Rusukaina Island, where they would train for two years.
Haki is dormant in every person, but it is rare for most people to awaken it. Also to awaken it one has to go through intense training. It is very difficult to master as Rayleigh states that only learning the basics could take up to years.
Since Haki originates from an individual’s spirit and not from their physical body, one is still capable of using it even if their spirits are transferred to another body. The ones who have successfully mastered the Haki, are also able to maintain and use it even in an unconscious state.
The Haki is believed to be the only power that surpasses all the other powers in the One Piece piece world. Even the immense power of the devil fruits cannot hold a candle to the true power of Haki.
Gol D. Roger, with his awakened Haki, was able to conquer the Grand Line and matched Edward Newgate who had the power of the Strongest Paramecia, the Gura Gura no mi, which was strong enough to destroy the whole world.
Types of Haki
The Haki possessed by living beings is mainly categorized into three types. However, during the whole series, we got to see many subtypes of the Haki. Here are the three main types of Hakis explained.
Kenbunshoku Haki (見聞色の覇気 Observation Haki)
The first type is The Kenbunshoku Haki. It is a special kind of Haki that provides the user with a sixth sense of the world around them. With such powers, they can sense the presence, strength, and even emotions of other people around them.
Along with this, they also gain precognitive abilities that allow them to sense their opponent’s intentions and predict their actions and attacks before they happen. This gives a massive advantage to the user on the battlefield. With the advanced level of Kenbunshoku, the users can foresee a short period into the future. However, the only downside to this is that the precognitive abilities are limited.
Busoshoku Haki (武装色の覇気 Armament Haki)
The Busoshoku Haki, unlike the Kenbunshoku Haki, enables the user to use their spiritual energy as armor to defend against attacks. The users are also able to use their spiritual energy to make their attacks more powerful. This type of Haki can also be used to dodge Devil Fruit defenses such as the Logia intangibility.
With an advanced type of Busoshoku, the users can emit the armament to a short distance even without a medium. And with an even higher grade of the advanced Busoshoku, the users can make the armament flow through the opponent’s body and destroy them from the inside. What’s fascinating about this type of Haki is that the person who holds this Haki can apply the armament to any parts of their body. They can also apply it to their whole body and even infuse it onto their weapons.
Haoshoku Haki (覇王色の覇気? Conqueror’s Haki)
The last type of Haki is the Haoshoku Haki. It is a very special type of Haki, as it allows the user to unleash their willpower to overpower the willpower of others. This makes the victims become mentally overwhelmed by the Haki users. The comparatively weak-willed opponents instantly lose their consciousness.
The users who achieve an advanced level of Haoshoku can infuse their conquering spirits into their weapons and physical attacks as well. This helps them to increase their powers massively. The Haoshoku is the rarest type of Haki and only one in several million people are born with this ability. So being a rare Haki to awaken, even to reach the advanced level of this Haki is rarer and only a small handful of the most powerful Haoshoku users can achieve this.
These are the types of Haki, as far mentioned in the series. Most of the people who can use the Haki, tend to have only one type of Haki, which they use a lot in the battles and focus on polishing the same type with intense training.
Since there are different levels of usage for Haki, two people having the same type might not be at the same level. However, it is still possible to use two types of Haki at once. Though extremely rare, one can possess all three types of Haki.
Luffy, Ace, Whitebeard, Shanks, and Gol D. Roger are some of the characters who had all three types of Haki.
Luffy’s Haki
When the Straw Hats realized that they needed to get stronger on their own, they decided to take a two years hiatus to focus on themselves and meet in Sabaody. Luffy went to Rusukaina, a deserted island northwest of the Amazon Lilly, to train for two years.
There he learned to use Haki. Although he had already awakened Haki way before the hiatus, he was only able to master it with intense training under Rayleigh. Since Haki was one of the rare powers, it was very difficult to even learn the basics.
However, Luffy had a noticeable talent for Haki and was able to learn the basics of all types of Haki within one and a half years. Luffy even strengthened his skill with each form of Haki to the highest degree and was able to use their advanced applications.
Luffy was one of the only two people confirmed to be not only capable of using all three forms of Haki but also the application of their advanced level as well. The other person was Kaidou, Governor-General of the Beast Pirates.
When and how did Luffy use all three forms of Haki?
Being the rarest Haki-type user, Luffy certainly garnered the attention of the audience. Besides Kaidou, Luffy was the only one who was able to master the advanced level of all the forms of Haki.
The Haoshoku Haki
Along with the other two types of Haki, Luffy also possessed the Haoshoku Haki which was believed to be the rarest of the kind. With such Haki, Luffy had abilities like that of the Kings.
Luffy already had this power lying dormant in him, and first used it at the Flying Fish Riders’ base to stop Motobaro.
Unknown of such powers, Luffy once again used it unintentionally in the arena at the Amazon Lily to save Marguerite’s group. Similarly in Level 5 of Impel Down, Luffy used the Haki to knock out the wolves. At Marineford, he used it to knock out the executioners who were about to kill Ace. All this time, Luffy was still unknown to his powers.
During the two years time gap, Silvers Rayleigh trained him to fully utilize his powers. After learning the basics of all the forms of the Haki, Luffy reunited with his crew mates. Luffy used his newly learned powers to knock out The Fake Straw Hat Crew. He was also able to defeat nearly 50,000 members of the New Fish-Man pirates on Fishman Island.
Talk about some crazy powers.
Luffy even fought against some fellow Haoshoku Haki users such as Chinjao, Charlotte, and Doflamingo. He was still able to use this Haki after Kaidou knocked him out. During his fight with Kaidou on Onigashima, Luffy first realized that he was able to infuse his arms and legs with immense spiritual energy using Haoshoku Haki to increase the power of his attacks. Since this was an advanced technique, Luffy was still getting used to it, when Kaidou stated how clumsy it was. Despite that, Luffy was able to land powerful blows on Kaidou without even touching him.
When Kaidou and Luffy went against each other for the third time, their intense battle split the sky in half. With their conflicting Haoshoku, they were able to part the sky and the clouds. Their fight was on a par with the battle between two of the Four Emperors. Which made many fans believe that Luffy’s Haki might have advanced to the same level as that of the strongest pirates in the world.
The Kenbunshoku Haki
During his two-year training, Luffy was also able to learn to use the Kenbunshoku Haki. With the help of this form of Haki, Luffy could sense the presence and intentions of others, which gave him an upper hand in the battles, as he dodged attacks and even bullets very easily. Rayleigh believed that Luffy had a noticeable talent for Haki and was more accustomed to sensing the emotions of living things. With such proficiency at using the Haki, Luffy was able to dodge attacks such as lasers, a barrage of water droplets, and weapons.
He went up against a fellow Kenbunshoku user, Charlotte Katakuri. He mastered this form of Haki, enabling him to see a little bit into the future. Pushing it to the limit and applying the Kenbunshoku Haki, Luffy was finally able to look into Katakuri’s next moves and dodge them. Even in the Wano country, Luffy was able to dodge multiple strikes from the sumo master Urashima with no difficulty.
Further, Luffy developed his ability to see the future, and just like Katakuri, he was able to see a short period in the future. During his time of imprisonment, with his developed abilities, Luffy was able to instruct Hyogoro to dodge multiple attacks from Alpacaman and Madiloman, seconds before they happened. He also stopped Warden Babanuki’s Excite Shot attack before he launched it because he was able to see a terrible future.
The Busoshoku Haki
Along with the other two forms of the Haki, Luffy was able to learn the Busoshoku Haki. He used this form of Haki mostly in the New World to increase his defense and attack powers. With such powers, he was able to grab and defeat Logia users synch as Caesar Clown and those with similar powers like Katakuri. He was finally able to incorporate Busoshoku Haki into his Gear 4 which took on the shape of flames.
The Busoshoku Haki turned out to be a great asset to Luffy’s power. He looked weakened when he was unable to use it. While recharging, Luffy had no hope of defeating his opponents as he didn’t have enough strength. Luffy’s Bushoshoku Haki had the potential to get to an advanced level, which he eventually did. Using his more advanced level, and concentrated Busoshoku Haki along with his Gear 4, Luffy was able to counter and break past both Cracker and Katakuri’s extremely powerful Busoshoku Haki.
Luffy later started to learn the advanced Busoshoku Haki to surpass Kaido’s tough scales. He trained persistently under Hyogoro’s supervision for a week and was able to strike a thick steel block using his hardened arms. From his training, he was able to emit the Busoshoku Haki at will, with which he even removed Yamato’s explosive cuffs.
Because he was now able to use the higher level of the Busoshoku Haki, he easily inflicted damage to Kaidou using his hardened Gear 3, whereas previously he was unable to do so even while using his Gear 4. The power made him able to endure Kaidou’s attacks and land successful attacks as well. The intense battle came to an end when Luffy combined both the advanced Busoshoku and Haoshoku Haki through the Emission Technique and landed a power attack on Kaidou, defeating him instantly.
Does Luffy have other powers besides Haki?
Now if you think Luffy is only strong due to the Haki, then you are wrong. Because besides Haki, Luffy has many abilities that make him one of the strongest characters in the series.
Strength
Being one of the strongest characters in the series, Luffy had immense physical strength. He had a significantly high level of strength that matched with the world’s most powerful fighters. Time and again, Luffy was able to prove his high strengths by defeating stronger opponents. Even without the powers of the devil fruits, Luffy had great strength. It was all thanks to his grandfather, Garp.
At a very young age, Luffy was left alone in the wilderness by Garp. Tying Luffy to balloons to make him float away, and throwing him into a bottomless pit, Garp used every unorthodox training method so that Luffy would become strong. And what would we know, all those rigid training in the harsh environments of Mt Columbo and Rusukaina made Luffy grow into a strong man.
Devil Fruit
When Luffy was just seven years old, unknowingly he ate the Devil fruit, Gomu Gomu no mi, believed to be a Paramecia type devil fruit, that gave Luffy rubber abilities. But later during the Wano country Arc, it was revealed that it was a Mythical Zoan-type Devil Fruit, Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika. It allowed the user to become an incarnation of the sun god, Nika. The Five Elders even called Luffy the “ Warrior of Liberation”.
Using the powers of the devil fruit, Luffy was able to stretch his body parts to attack the enemies. The Devil fruit also allowed him to access certain special powers known as the Gears.
Gear 2
The Gear 2 was first introduced on Enies Lobby. While using Gear 2, Luffy was able to increase the speed of his blood flow. Thanks to the rubber nature of his blood vessels and organs, he was able to withstand the pressure. Due to such an increase in blood flow, he got more oxygen and nutrients ultimately resulting in an increase in his movement speed and power.
Gear 3
By blowing a massive amount of air into his thumb, Luff was able to inflate the bones of a particular part of his body, making it gigantic and activating the Gear 3. The inflated parts were able to inflict tremendous damage to the opponents. It was also strong enough to break through the steel doors and large structures with ease. Luffy was able to magnify Gear 3’s power by infusing Busoshsoku Haki and Haoshoku Haki, with which he defeated Kaido.
Gear 4
It was created during Luffy’s two-year training on Rusukaina and was first used on Dressrosa. By infusing the Busoshoku Haki on his inflated body parts, Luffy was able to take three forms namely, Bondman, Tankman, and Snakeman. He was capable of retracting his arms and legs inside of his body which allowed him to unleash blows of devastating powers as well as change the direction of his attacks.
Gear 5
The Gear 5 was created during the Raid on Onigashima. It was created as a result of Luffy awakening the true power of his Mythical Zoan-type devil fruit. It was the first time since the Void Century that the true powers of the fruit awakened. With the help of such new powers, he was able to freely manipulate the shape and size of his body.
Speed and Agility
With such powers from the devil fruit and Haki, Luffy had tremendous speed and agility, and reflexes as well. Even when knocked out he was able to quickly escape from a point-blank explosion during his fight with Foxy. When he fought with Blueno and Rob Lucci on Enies Lobby, he was able to keep up with them despite them having incredibly fast Soru movements. However, he kept up with them without even using the speed boost of his Gear 2 form. With intense training, he upgraded his defensive and dodging speed using Gear 3.
Durability
His durability is one of his greatest strengths. Despite taking great amounts of physical attacks he remained conscious and continued fighting. Even after being brutally beaten he didn’t give up. No matter how many times he was beaten, poisoned, or defeated, he was always able to get up on his feet and fight the opponents until they weren’t defeated.
During his fight with Charlotte Katakuri, Luffy fought for over 9 hours and was severely injured. He was also pierced by Katakuri’s trident Mogura. Despite all this, he was able to get up and defeat Katakuri.
Instinct
With his simple way of thinking and making bad decisions, Luffy was often considered to be a dumb character. However, his high-level intelligence in battles was what stood out most in the series. He possessed an uncanny instinct that led him to perform unusual actions that would somehow end up helping him. He also was very good at analyzing the situation and frequently came up with atypical methods to use against his opponents.
Endurance
Luffy had great endurance that came from his incredible durability and willpower. Because he had to grow up in a harsh environment under intense training from his grandfather, Luffy developed great endurance. Growing up into a strong man, he proved his ample endurance when he went up against Charlotte Cracker for 11 hours without resting and even using Gear 4 twice.
Charisma
Having an optimistic and kind nature, Luffy easily made friends with those around him. He was able to recruit allies to his side, which was described by Dracule Mihawk as the most dangerous ability in the world. Even those who had enmity with Luffy at the beginning, soon joined forces with him and eventually became his friends.
Aside from all these great powers and abilities, Luffy has a very prominent ability. That is his artistic skills. Have you seen his sketches of how a Fish man looked? True Masterpiece. Judging from Luffy’s works, he could have very much become the Picasso of One Piece world instead of a Pirate.
On top of being a natural wielder of such strong power Haki, Luffy, with all these powers and abilities is surely one of the strongest characters in the series.
