Powers & Abilities What is the narrative purpose of the time limit to Gear 4 and 5th

#21
It is actually pretty clever to add a time limit to some of Luffy's Gear-stages. Take for example Dragon Ball: Akira Toriyama had to come up with more and more ways for Son Goku to always become stronger and show how much he did so by inventing more stages of transformations. We had Super, Ultra, etc.. With a manga, that focusses mostly on fights, Dragon Ball mostly served the readers, who wanted to see interesting fights - and we got those!

With One Piece however, it is different: Oda is not solely focussing on interesting fights. I remember that once Oda told in an interview that he has gotten tired of drawing fights. His tiredness may however not be the reason for this time limit. But with this statement, we can see, that he does not focus on the fights in his manga this much, but on the plot. Actually, he sometimes sacrafices fights for the plot, as seen with Kizaru vs. Luffy (They will clash later with Kizaru not even shown, what he can do, yet.). And this priority comes also shining through with Luffy's fighting abilities. Oda tries to always add something to Luffy's inventory - an ability more. And with every arc, we see him gain more and more powers. But, he does this very slowly and carefully as to not exhaust Luffy's possibilities to get better. This way, he can add more wothout having to invent another stage or "Gear" just yet.

With Dragon Ball and the ending of the Boo-saga, I sometimes had the feeling that the Super Saiyan 3 was only added to give Son Goku that one transformation to top everyone. It felt odd to be honest. And I think Oda does not want it to be felt this way. So, to not always have to invent new Gear-stages, he slows the progression with how fast Luffy can master them and adds therefore a time limit to some. This way he also can also add more tension to fights and arcs (seen in Dressrosa). And this felles more harminizing with the plot, in my opinion. But I am also not the person, who reads the manga because of the fights, if I my be honest here. I am rather a fan, who likes good plot rather than a good fight. 😊 Therefore, a time limit does not bother me as much as it does you, maybe... .
Can you not comprehend that with the time limit, current Luffy is weaker than Zoro? And weaker than the Admirals.

In a one vs one Kizaru wins
 
#23
QUOTE="Kiiro, post: 5377137, member: 9409"]G4 is still too OP for it to not have a drawback. Lets say he can use it for 30 minutes, but after it still uae haki. If not, Gear 4 can already defeat top tiers imo.[/QUOTE]
He gets beat by other Yonko while in base with gear 4. It’s to weak for his pears.
 
#25
Why did Oda write such a stupid weakness to these powers? Like I don’t understand how dumb of an author someone has to be to write some bullshit like this

Why can’t he just write Gear 4th and 5th and make Luffy be able to use them indefinitely? Super saiyan didn’t have time limit? Bijuu Mode initially had time limit which was annoying but I like that it was never mentioned again, Devil Union in Black Clover had a time limit which is also annoying, Bankai didn’t have a time limit

I just wish Oda was a better author and wouldn’t include stupid elements into his story
Why is Zoro's koh limited? Why does Ichigo have a limited range of empty? Why does Kenpachi have limited Bankai? Why does Naruto have a limited sage mode? Why does Gats have a limited Berserker mode?
 
#26
It might as well not have a time limit.
He just lost G5 a chapter or two ago, ate some nasty stinky expired shark meat, and this chapter he's back using G5 again like nothing happened only to be humiliated by the man, the myth, the legend : His Worship, St. Wopman Warcury
:gouno: :steef:
 
#29
Can you not comprehend that with the time limit, current Luffy is weaker than Zoro? And weaker than the Admirals.

In a one vs one Kizaru wins
I see - your thread is driven by the fear/concern of Luffy not being able to live up to your expectations. I unfortunately cannot take those concerns away from you. But what I can do, is, ask you the following: Why are you even concerned? You don't have to. Luffy is one of the strongest characters in the One Piece world. And even if there are people, like the one commenting on your answer to my entry above mine in a rather provocating way, it is nothing more than that - a provocation. Their rude comment does not let the fact go away that Luffy is the main character and called `Yonko´ - not Zoro or anyone else. It is Luffy alone.

Fact is also: Oda did not say with one word that Zoro is stronger than Luffy. What he does however is make Luffy face Kaido - the head of the beast pirates, while Zoro faces Kaido's right hand man - an underling. I don't want to begin a fight with the Zoro-fanbase (many Zoro fans are good), but some of them can either accept this or deny the inevitable fact that Luffy is stronger and search for details in the over 1000 chapters this manga is long to feed their denial/fear of Zoro not living up to their expectations.

And this is exactly the point, where you fall pray to them. You let yourself get baited by their provocations. Be the cleverer person and don't fall for that - it is a provocation only, with nothing to back it up. 😉 The reason they are able to do that is your unfounded lack of confidence in your favorite character, Luffy. (I bet you read too much of those provocative comments, right?)

If you want to get more angry, you can fight them verbally in power scaling threads, or you can see it a little more calmly, and get a little more confident about Luffy's abilities.
 
#32
Gear 4 still having a drawback is crazy or rather theres barely any improvement. Gear 5 is just too broken.

We'll likely see Oda continue to nerf Luffy until he fights Imu.
 
#33
So he has more control over the story and narrative...for example Lucci would be out of the story at the beginning of the arc, but with the drawback he can just turn Luffy off.
 
#35
Time is not only a central theme, but Luffy's entire narrative. The gears in that sense are almost heavy handed but I guess after all these years, it still goes over heads.

Also funny bonus in someone complaining that OP is doing something that DB and Naruto didn't.
 
#37
G4 has timelimit because haki is finite, and G4 overuses armament haki. Similar reason why KoH mode has a timelimit, because it overusing advanced armament/conqueror's

G5 having the timelimit is questionable though. No other zoan awakening has shown this kind of stamina issues, I guess we will have to wait for other mythical zoan awakenings to see if there is a pattern
 
#38
G4 has timelimit because haki is finite, and G4 overuses armament haki. Similar reason why KoH mode has a timelimit, because it overusing advanced armament/conqueror's

G5 having the timelimit is questionable though. No other zoan awakening has shown this kind of stamina issues, I guess we will have to wait for other mythical zoan awakenings to see if there is a pattern
Again I’m not talking about the in-story reason, I already know why he’s having the time limit.

I’m asking why Oda made it this way
 
#39
For fake tension and to take Luffy out of the story for a while because Luffy is usually to strong to allow to plot driven drivel Oda is trying to push through
 
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