People really throw this term around often, but Kizaru is HIM
Maybe one day we get to see a serious Kizaru, but at this point I wouldn't bet on it.

Maybe one day we get to see a serious Kizaru, but at this point I wouldn't bet on it.
You'd think a light power user would be a one trick pony, just spamming speedblitzes and lasers while never getting touched until he finally gets tapped.
Meanwhile le Kizaru:
- Heavily favours head on fighting with kicks, blocks, lightsabers and evasion, mainly using lasers and LS as special moves, finishers etc.
- Most defensive Admiral with remarkable tankiness.
- One of the most versatile fighters in the verse who is a master marksman, hand-to-hand fighter and Jedi Knight.
- After seeing how clean he is at the end of EH I'd not be surprised if he could rival Akainu and Kuzan in stamina.
Idk why people are still doing this dated argument of "Oh, Oda stopped Kizaru from being defeated or going all out at Egghead, so that means he was simply too strong for Luffy at the time!". We know this isn't true because Oda was literally holding Luffy back too. It's not just shit like him not using ACoC, but he also somehow couldn't just pump his heart back up with the Drums of Liberation like he did in Wano, which makes no sense because it's very clear that Kizaru didn't exhaust him as much as Kaido did. With Kizaru, all the damage that Luffy had before and during the fight was the laser barrier damage (something we see get outdone by Kaido's Zoan Boro Breath anyway), and then the light clone grazing his cheek with a sword. That is not nearly enough to make Luffy completely unable to get back up and fight. It's painfully obvious that Luffy was being held back because Oda didn't want him to get up and ruin Saturn's entrance. He had to present Saturn as an unknown and scary force that was capable of beating Sanji, Franky and Bonney without much trouble. Luffy getting up and fighting him ruins that quickly. That's also the reason Zoro was locked down playing patty cakes with Lucci for like a hour when we know that he could have won off the rip if he put a little more effort in (seeing as the one named attack we saw him use immediately ended the fight).
"I'm at my limit!" He says it himself.
And this whole narrative of holding back is just dubious. Luffy knows Kizaru, he called him by name and the first thing he says is a callback to Sabaody.
The whole point of LvK is to parallel Garp v Kuzan/Ray v Kizaru and we know that Luffy's "counterparts" Garp and Ray were serious in their fights.
On top of that we know Kizaru held back too.
- He could easily have tag teamed Luffy with his clones instead of fucking off to go fondle Usopp.
- His nuke level lasers from MF could easily wreak damage to giant Luffy especially given that Luffy even in G5 usually tries to dodge or toonforce his way through Kizaru's lasers.
- Almost every time Luffy grabs or hits him he's completely distracted which wouldn't happen in a real fight.
- The whole mental nerf thing - it's been canon since Water 7 that emotional conflict can massively fuck up your stats.
Look, there's two ways to view it.
Either you can say that Kizaru was weaker but Luffy got plot nerfed and matchup diffed.
Or you can say that Kizaru is way, way stronger than people think he is or want him to be. I feel that it's the latter personally.
I'd say the same goes for Gucci as well. Either Zoro got his skills put on cooldown until Oda gave him the go ahead; or Wucci was just that strong.
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