Hello everyone! This is my first thread on here but I'm super confidant with this theory and I've been working on it for a while
My idea for gear 5th would essentially be a powered up version of gear 2nd.
now this sounds kind of stupid, but hear me out,
the idea here is that Luffy's body will be hot enough to the point that when he moves at the speed that he does (which will be probably too fast for the naked eye seeing how fast gear 2nd already is) his body will catch on fire.
Here is a fun fact i learned on vsauce, when blood boils the bubbles formed make it so your body increases in size by 2 times! now this much heat definitely should not boil Luffy's blood, but this IS one piece we are talking about and being exactly scientifically accurate isn't oda's specialty.
Also i read somewhere that rubber stretches farther when it is hot but I'm not sure how accurate that is. in any case, one piece logic helps us out here as well.
I saw a great theory on gear 5th made by mr morj (
)
the tldr is as follows: gear 4th specializes in 4 abilities: power, speed, durability and stretching (although for the last one i think attack speed is more accurate) and each gear 4th form specializes more in one of those abilities (tankman with durability and snakeman with stretching/attack speed). Gear 5th will need to have each of those categories as strong as they are in their gear 4th form (so that means gear 5ths durability is as strong as tankmans its stretching is as good as snakeman and so on) this idea for gear 5th covers all of that: Speed will come in the form of the absolutely EXTREME adrenaline boost, stretchiness goes without saying but attack speed is sort of a problem here. attack speed will for sure be the weakest out of these 4 because it only uses the movement speed we have discussed which wont be on par with stuff like gear 5ths durability or power (but don't worry, I've got a solution for that later;) ), durability will come in the form of the stretchier skin being able to tank blunt attacks and the speed will be able to basically doge any blade, and power is sort of a combination of all of the above as well as other things, speed and stretchiness will add to the attacks momentum plus the amount of fire caused by it (think like red hawk with times 10 as much heat) will be basically equivalent to the mera mera no mi (fire fire fruit), lastly i had another idea i like a lot for the power, that being the idea that his fist (or whatever part of his body he choses to attack with) will be hotter then the rest of his body and therefore the boiling will be of higher level, that way you're basically getting a miniature gear 3rd with every attack.
now the main problem here is that this whole schabang sounds kind of boring in a fight since its essentially like fighting with gear 2nd and third just a lot stronger. but what do we do when Luffy's fighting style gets boring? We turn to more gears! adding gear 3rd to gear 5th will result in a much much MUCH stronger attack but it is also quite a bit slower (which is already a weak point to gear 5th) but remember the solution to attack speed i mentioned earlier? The solution is..... (drumrolllll) snakeman!!!!
obviously we had to introduce gear 4th into the mix here and what better then snakeman?
its pretty clear that normal gear 4th wont do, as it cant really stretch backwards to gain momentum (which is the strongest part of gear 5th) but snakeman on the other hand can indeed! I'm not sure if snakeman can actually stretch his arms back the same way that base Luffy can, but what he can do is as follows: subtract your hand into itself as gear 4th does, then instead of releasing it onto your opponent, you can shoot it backwards as you would with base Luffy. This combined with snakeman potentially being able to use the redirections of his attacks to move it farther (redirecting it long ways instead of making sharp turn) would increase the momentum from the attacks length by like 5 times!!
but Booder, you ask, how does this affect attack speed? Well I'm glad you asked. for starters i would assume snakeman has a bit of a higher attack speed in general but the main point here is this: Theoretically, luffy could use the same technique of redirection he uses with culverine but just redirect it backwards, that way it comes back waaaaaay faster. The redirection is essencially the moonwalk technique sanji uses just on luffys hand so i dont see the issue with it being used with the palm of his hand to shoot it backwards.
Now this next part is sort of not connected to the main theory and this thread is getting kind of long so you can skip this part,
i had an idea where maybe instead of the redirections being sharp turns, it instead is a clean turn. that way the turn is a bit slower but it will retain the original momentum of the attack, which I'm assuming the normal redirections don't do as the sharp turn probably cuts the momentum. this would expend more energy as he is basically using haki for the entire duration of the turn instead of doing one little push but it would be super worth it when working with gear 5th
ok tangent over.
Using gear 4th with gear 5th will absolutely make luffy strong enough to take on kaido and probably even stronger opponents like potentially Imu or shanks or blackbeard (even though we dont actually know the power levels of those three but I'm assuming theyll probably all be stronger then kaido)
That whole think is well and good but there's a whole other reason that makes me so absoloutley confidant in this theory.
and that is narrative
One of the strongest narrative themes of one piece is inherited will, and this idea for gear 5th would be the embodiment of luffy's inheritance of aces will. that would make a lot of sense considering the next couple of fights we know for sure are coming are all people ace had unfinished business with (Kaido, Blackbeard and potentially Sakazuki)
outside of the inherited will part this connects loose threads regarding the gear system:
Gear 3rd is a bone balloon, 4th is a muscle balloon so now all we have left is blood and skin. and gear 5th has that covered. Also the final special gear being a powered up version of the first special gear is a nice callback in my opinion.
Also, i have a fan theory that says that the new world sagas mirror the pre timeskip sagas and by that logic the yonko saga mirrors the water7 saga which means wano should mirror enies lobby. we have already seen set up for Zoro to learn to use ashura in some way (finally using it again for the first time in the new world) and most theories i've seen about Sanji suggest a powered up version of diable jambe which would mean that each member of the monster trio is getting a powered up version of their original enies lobby upgrade (if my theory for gear 5th is indeed correct)
Now for final little details that make me confidant with this:
Just as a sidenote that i forgot to add earlier: Luffy uses both his legs and his hands for this circulation instead of just his legs
Another side not:
Gear 5ths design will look like this: Luffy is about 3 meters 40 centimeters (170 centimeters times 2) and his palms, forearms, feet and forelegs (?) are a little bigger then the rest of the body since that's where the circulation of heat begins.
In the colored manga snakemans original debut had the smoke colored as fire instead, I'm not sure why that is but it might be some way that the editors are sort of saying "this would look really cool, make it" .
90% of the concepts you will find when looking up "gear 5th" are just slightly different snakeman drawings so having an original special design for gear 5th while having the super "strongest version" be that combined with snakeman would serve as a great way to please the audience
3 meters 40 centimeters is almost exactly the same height as Blackbeard which is perfect as he will definitely use it in his fight against Blackbeard and that would also make for a nice callback to the scene in impel down where Blackbeard and Luffy meet and Blackbeard looks down on him.
Thank you for reading this thread. I have thought so much about this theory and i have been dying to share it with someone. It is now 4 AM so i will go to bed.
