I understand if you're shitting on Lucci for the memes but try to be objective in this thread.
While toon force is inherently terrible imo, Oda still handled this fight well powerlevel wise if one puts in enough effort.
First off I want to highlight something about Nika, his strength increases when he laughs more, not when he's angry or increases his size (until further notice)
Meaning Goofy was at the height of his devil fruit power against Lucci
Lucci disobeyed orders at first and attacked Luffy without a second thought, however with Sentomaru's presence Lucci had to switch targets to eliminate him.
So Lucci never actually tried attacking Nika in this chapter, and this was literally reiterated 3 times.
All that considered, Lucci took these attacks unguarded, simply because Luffy outskilled him with his freedom fighting and also because Lucci was concentrated on eliminating Sentomaru.
I guess some people were right when they assumed toon force didn't activate due to absence of direct contact
Lucci tanked this new Gear 5 move to the face and recovered immediately
Note that:
-Nika is smiling and being Goofy, meaning he is using his awakening strength effectively.
-Luffy's CoA is strong as shit relatively. Remember that barrier haki he used against Kaido's Flame Dragon to avoid making contact? Well that's the same CoA he's using here only not channelled with emission lol.
-The use of the "Don" sfx
Luffy was also likely using FS here, there's no other scenario where it makes sense for him to appear from beneath the ground here
This is the punch that fucked Lucci up, the main difference from the other 2 is the application of toon force here (and maybe internal destruction?)
But the main points stand:
-Lucci was unguarded when he received any of these attacks
-He wasn't putting much effort into fighting Luffy as securing the seraphim was a far more important objective
This still doesn't forgive him for not reacting to these attacks by dodging/using Tekkai to minimize the damage, but it's not bad for a character of this rank to withstand these peak laughing Goofy attacks while unguarded.
Ofcourse we can't forget the one time where they directly clashed, Luffy was most likely not using CoC but regardless, this fist clash was equal and Luffy was even closing his eye from the intensity, resulting in both characters being sent flying
What was also super impressive is bypassing Sentomaru's barrier without trouble and still dealing that massive damage.
Without this barrier Sento might as well have completely died
It took ~1min for Lucci to get up as good as new, and in the meanwhile Luffy was suffering from stamina issues (goes to show that he was actually trying lol)
By the time Lucci sprung back up, Luffy returned to normal.
Kinda reminiscent of Enies Lobby if you ask me
But yeah Lucci achieved his objective of reclaiming the Seraphim and is looking well for the rest of the arc, too early to meme on him imo
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