One Piece Power Level Discussion Thread

[goldb]

Ground Rules for the Power Level Discussion Thread
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It's important that discussions from a current chapter are spoiler tagged until 24h have passed from an english release.

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• We will strive to avoid repetitive discussions and any extensive battle topics will be guided to the Davy Back fight to existing threads or new ones can be made there.

As of now these topics are shelved due to repetitiveness or until the manga can present us with material to further discussions:

1. Shanks v Mihawk
2. Hand to hand fighters > Swordsmen
3. Zoro > Luffy
4. Zoro v Sanji
5. Is Smoker a top 30 character?
6. Mihawk's rank within the story
7. Law having CoC currently.
8. Katakuri > Kaido/Luffy/Etc.

If you wish to continue any of these discussion and remove it from the list, you will need to provide manga material as proof. If there's also anything you think we've covered numerous times, let me know and I'll update the list.

This is the only warning there'll be regarding these ground rules, anything no adhering will be removed. So please just check your posts before posting them.

 

[kkck]

The fact that this is the strongest reasoning for Kaidou not being awakened sucks. But it's totally true and makes sense for these three characters who fully embody their zoan DF to be the ones we've seen awakened. Then I think about ID Jailors and my brain hurts.

The ID jailors make sense though? Vegapunk recently confirmed what we thought about them, that in a sense they are essentially failed awakenings. Vegapunk talked about how awakened zoans tend to be consumed by their fruits. It's pretty clear this is what happened to them. I suppose the framing of them being failed is incorrect because they are in fact awakened though. Still, the difference here would be whether they dominate or are dominated by their animal half.

 

[HereNThere]

Who thinks Mallegan is awakened? His red venom was literally coming out of the environment around him, pouring out of the walls

It'd make sense if he were, but I don't think that was an Awakened technique. It was mainly constrained to his person like the Hydra was.

My gut says "duh, of course they are", but the lack of a title card spelling it out, a clear 'activation' moment, etc. It's just not something that should've been left open to interpretation.

This is where I'm at. They are both Pirates at the top of their game and at the pinnacle of the world. Of course they should have it. Kaido apparently knows the ins and outs of it. But we just don't have that clear indication of it. But, given how some Devil Fruits function and what we've seen of Awakening, it's not super clear or consistent.

With Big Mom, Soul Pocus doesn't feel like an Awakened technique as it really seems like the basic ability of her fruit to control souls. To me, anything involving Homies resemble what we currenlty know about Awakenings, whoever, that would imply that Mother Caramel was Awakened as well.

And perhaps most importantly, kaido lacked the cloud ribbon which luffy and lucci (and yamato) share.

The thing with this is, what if Oda threw in the cloud retroactively to make it clear who was Awakened and who was not. We have no idea if Yamato was actually Awakened as he had the cloud in both his regular Wolf form and his hybrid form, so that muddies up his situation. Kaido, on the flip side, had no cloud, but did show another distinct hybrid form that had unique features and sharp teeth, which seems to match Lucci's form of unique features and sharp teeth.

 

[grey matter]

The ambiguity of stuff like did Sanji know or use Hardening before Wano….Does ACOC hurt Lunarians…

I believe ambiguous scenes like these tie into the funky mechanics of haki. Like you mentioned Why or how is information about Haki as a power system so shrouded. It doesn’t make sense…..I don’t hate ACOC…but it’s similar asf to ACOA. ACoC should really be the deciding factor in a battle of those with it and those without

Sanji probably knew hardening, which wasn't visible because his pants are black + covered in flames.
Advanced conqueror's is heavily implied to hurt King, hence him blocking. Plus, one can argue Zoro cut him in the end when he had his flames on (all prior instances of King using flame was in his defence mode)


Yeah, advanced conqueror's being way too similar to advanced armament was a massive bummer.
I remember the chapter it was revealed (1010) and being very disappointed at that reveal

 

[HereNThere]

Sanji probably knew hardening, which wasn't visible because his pants are black + covered in flames.

I remember arguing that he demonstrated it in 976 when protecting Nami. But, given the panel was a small one and it was in black and white, it wasn't totally clear. However, the official coloring for that chapter came out not too long ago and did show it as him using hardening on his body.

 

[Core D. Roy]

With Big Mom, Soul Pocus doesn't feel like an Awakened technique as it really seems like the basic ability of her fruit to control souls. To me, anything involving Homies resemble what we currenlty know about Awakenings, whoever, that would imply that Mother Caramel was Awakened as well.

Yeah Soul Pocus and actually the powerup ability she used against Kidd and Law that used her own soul seemed like basic abilities. Creating homies would make the most sense for an awakening technique- despite the fact she uses it willynilly, it is incredibly busted to just... create life like that. I'm totally fine with Caramel being awakened, if this is the case. She'd have to be one powerful mofo to deal with the WG the way she did.

The thing with this is, what if Oda threw in the cloud retroactively to make it clear who was Awakened and who was not. We have no idea if Yamato was actually Awakened as he had the cloud in both his regular Wolf form and his hybrid form, so that muddies up his situation. Kaido, on the flip side, had no cloud, but did show another distinct hybrid form that had unique features and sharp teeth, which seems to match Lucci's form of unique features and sharp teeth.

Maybe for zoans there are 'stages' to awakening, or certain flavors of it.

• The ID Jailors had a form that was incredibly similar to Chopper's Monster Point, which is long-guessed to be an imperfect and/or artificially induced awakening where the animal nature fully takes over.
• The 'distinct form' modes might be a sort of 'half-awakening'. There were a lot of parallels between Kaidou's different Shuron Hakke "modes" as there was to Luffy's G4 "modes".
• Then maybe the "true" awakening with the cloud wreathe is when the DF user truly catches up to the ability and aligns with it perfectly, which would fit the most for Luffy, Yamato and Lucci.

Now I demand to see 'distinct form' 'half-awakening' "modes" for Kaku. It'd definitely fit his fighting style to do some wacky special agent giraffe equivalent of Shuron Hakke and G4 modes.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 9, 2023, Original Post Date: Jan 9, 2023 ---

I remember arguing that he demonstrated it in 976 when protecting Nami. But, given the panel was a small one and it was in black and white, it wasn't totally clear. However, the official coloring for that chapter came out not too long ago and did show it as him using hardening on his body.

I've always hated the fact that Oda didn't just straight up retcon CoA to *always* be visible. The "hardening" debate, especially when it comes to characters like Sanji, has always been silly as hell to me. Even now Oda just uses the visible black "hardening" to show a more dramatic scene, it's never been consistent.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 9, 2023 ---

Yeah, advanced conqueror's being way too similar to advanced armament was a massive bummer.
I remember the chapter it was revealed (1010) and being very disappointed at that reveal

We had the grand mystery of the true nature of CoC and how the top-tiers use it to battle each other since Shanks and Whitebeard had that legendary clash years and years and years ago. Turns out, you just smear it on your attacks. Really weird that Rayleigh gave Luffy a heads up about the EXTREMELY rare ability of future sight, but didn't both to mention that the secret of advanced CoC was the simplest thing imaginable.

 

[kkck]

The thing with this is, what if Oda threw in the cloud retroactively to make it clear who was Awakened and who was not. We have no idea if Yamato was actually Awakened as he had the cloud in both his regular Wolf form and his hybrid form, so that muddies up his situation. Kaido, on the flip side, had no cloud, but did show another distinct hybrid form that had unique features and sharp teeth, which seems to match Lucci's form of unique features and sharp teeth.

It's.. possible? for now we haven't seen if the cloud is present when lucci uses his animal form while awakened.

 

[HereNThere]

Maybe for zoans there are 'stages' to awakening, or certain flavors of it.

• The ID Jailors had a form that was incredibly similar to Chopper's Monster Point, which is long-guessed to be an imperfect and/or artificially induced awakening where the animal nature fully takes over.
• The 'distinct form' modes might be a sort of 'half-awakening'. There were a lot of parallels between Kaidou's different Shuron Hakke "modes" as there was to Luffy's G4 "modes".
• Then maybe the "true" awakening with the cloud wreathe is when the DF user truly catches up to the ability and aligns with it perfectly, which would fit the most for Luffy, Yamato and Lucci.

Now I demand to see 'distinct form' 'half-awakening' "modes" for Kaku. It'd definitely fit his fighting style to do some wacky special agent giraffe equivalent of Shuron Hakke and G4 modes.

I've always been a proponent of the idea that the ID Jailers and Chopper are examples of Pseudo-Awakenings, so I definitely agree with your take. It would also go well with Vegapunk's comments about Zoan Awakenings often overtaking the minds of the fruit user.

I don't think Shuron Hakke: Bloodthirsty Drunk or Gear 4th are half-way modes of Awakening. Bloodthirsty Drunk, I really do think is Kaido's true awakened form and he just didn't have a cloud because Oda hadn't thought of putting it on all Awakened users at the time due to it being largely unexplored for Zoans. Gear 4th still has the cloud as well after all, despite it not being an awakened form. Speaking of, I personally see Gear 4th as Luffy's version of Pasta Machine, Brachiohiss, and Imperial Stake. But that's because I have a theory that Zoans have complete control over their animal bodies due to them being that animal through and through due to the Lineage Factor. He's just brute-forcing aspects of it through breathing air into his muscles.

 

[albertwv]

One Piece is just a huge freaking story that not even Oda knows how to reach the ending. He knows the ending but is still figuring it out as he goes. That creates so many inconsistencies that upset the reader.
He initially wanted a quick story but created a whole universe. I understand what happened to Crocodile since he was very early on, but after MarineFord I expected Oda to have the road to the ending on concrete ground. I guess I understand why he didn't use Hardening pre timeskip to show it and I forgive him for that but anything after the timeskip should have been fixed.
He shouldn't leave his readers wondering if Kaido or BM the strongest pirates have all 3 advanced forms of Haki + awakening. I expected them to have it and to demonstrate it but Oda failed to do that.

 

[Core D. Roy]

I've always been a proponent of the idea that the ID Jailers and Chopper are examples of Pseudo-Awakenings, so I definitely agree with your take. It would also go well with Vegapunk's comments about Zoan Awakenings often overtaking the minds of the fruit user.

I don't think Shuron Hakke: Bloodthirsty Drunk or Gear 4th are half-way modes of Awakening. Bloodthirsty Drunk, I really do think is Kaido's true awakened form and he just didn't have a cloud because Oda hadn't thought of putting it on all Awakened users at the time due to it being largely unexplored for Zoans. Gear 4th still has the cloud as well after all, despite it not being an awakened form. Speaking of, I personally see Gear 4th as Luffy's version of Pasta Machine, Brachiohiss, and Imperial Stake. But that's because I have a theory that Zoans have complete control over their animal bodies due to them being that animal through and through due to the Lineage Factor. He's just brute-forcing aspects of it through breathing air into his muscles.

I think it can go either way. Oda retconning a physical design of something wouldn't be out of the blue, but the fact he's known for like a decade that one of the Emperor's crews was going to be entirely zoan, and then just... didn't bother making zoan awakenings consistent at the very last bit of Luffy and Kaidou's fight- while having Kaidou himself expositing full knowledge about how zoan awakenings work... it's just a mess.

I wonder if Sengoku has a further awakening mode that has the wreathes, and the form we saw in Marineford was a weaker form that he's been relegated to using after his prime. Would make sense since logically he should be insanely strong to be one of the few people Roger acknowledged back in the day and Garp's partner.

Gear 4 having the wreathe may just be a physical coincidence as an evolution to Gear 2's more natural steaming. Or: it's all just Rule of Cool and Oda will never elaborate lol. Sadly I think that might be the case.

 

[kkck]

I've always been a proponent of the idea that the ID Jailers and Chopper are examples of Pseudo-Awakenings, so I definitely agree with your take. It would also go well with Vegapunk's comments about Zoan Awakenings often overtaking the minds of the fruit user.

I don't think Shuron Hakke: Bloodthirsty Drunk or Gear 4th are half-way modes of Awakening. Bloodthirsty Drunk, I really do think is Kaido's true awakened form and he just didn't have a cloud because Oda hadn't thought of putting it on all Awakened users at the time due to it being largely unexplored for Zoans. Gear 4th still has the cloud as well after all, despite it not being an awakened form. Speaking of, I personally see Gear 4th as Luffy's version of Pasta Machine, Brachiohiss, and Imperial Stake. But that's because I have a theory that Zoans have complete control over their animal bodies due to them being that animal through and through due to the Lineage Factor. He's just brute-forcing aspects of it through breathing air into his muscles.

ID jailers have specifically been said to be awakened. We don't really have any reason to doubt they are awakened, without further context it's simply a fact that they are. The framing we have here is that zoan awakenings have two possible results:

1.- Your mind is consumed by your animal part.
2.- Your mind is not consumed and you retain your own personality.

But the context here should be that both are in fact awakened.

Chopper would be a tad different because he used drugs to alter his form. I could see his transformations having something to do with awakening though. Perhaps an awakened chopper wouldn't need drugs to freely use any power he has shown. I suppose that in a sense this would be comparable to what luffy does. Gotta wonder if perhaps lucci can alter his hybrid form. I suppose we should assume he can because he could do that back in the day with rokushiki but now this could perhaps be pushed further.

It's also worth noting that oda has been clear in that zoans do in fact have control over their transformations and how they play out. He mentioned this in an SBS about black maria IIRC. King also has a mostly unusual hybrid form.

 

[Nie Li]

Gotta wonder if perhaps lucci can alter his hybrid form. I suppose we should assume he can because he could do that back in the day with rokushiki but now this could perhaps be pushed further.

With Seimei Kikan*. Entirely unrelated to your post but I wanted to remind everyone that Lucci is a master of several arts.

He's surely capable of it, but his bodily transformations are surely still a lot more limited than Chopper's.

 

[Core D. Roy]

He mentioned this in an SBS about black maria IIRC. King also has a mostly unusual hybrid form.

I think he mentioned Black Maria has some drug that alters her form (and the implication is that Jack takes the same drug as her, since he also has a 'centaur-like' hybrid form). How was King's hybrid form unusual? IIRC he was just insanely good at instantly switching between forms.

 

[kkck]

I think he mentioned Black Maria has some drug that alters her form (and the implication is that Jack takes the same drug as her, since he also has a 'centaur-like' hybrid form). How was King's hybrid form unusual? IIRC he was just insanely good at instantly switching between forms.

King's hybrid form should have been something between a lunarian and a pterodactyl. However in the manga it's weirdly slim, his arms were his pterodactyl wings and had no wings on his back.

https://www.opfanpage.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/VWX1WyK-1024x496.png

You'd think his hybris form would be closer to pell's who retained his wings and arms in it.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/onepiece/images/3/38/Tori_Tori_no_Mi%2C_Model_Falcon_Human-Beast_Form.png/revision/latest?cb=20160928131012

 

[Nie Li]

King's hybrid form should have been something between a lunarian and a pterodactyl. However in the manga it's weirdly slim, his arms were his pterodactyl wings and had no wings on his back.

https://www.opfanpage.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/VWX1WyK-1024x496.png

You'd think his hybris form would be closer to pell's who retained his wings and arms in it.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/onepiece/images/3/38/Tori_Tori_no_Mi%2C_Model_Falcon_Human-Beast_Form.png/revision/latest?cb=20160928131012

tbh Pell sounds more unnatural, but you've got a point.

It's possible that King could simply control his transformation like Marco, who could turn specific body-parts and his arms also turned into flaming wings in hybrid.

 

[HereNThere]

I agree with the King take. I was really hoping he'd have a 4 wing form and use all 4 as blades or something.

 

[kkck]

tbh Pell sounds more unnatural, but you've got a point.

It's possible that King could simply control his transformation like Marco, who could turn specific body-parts and his arms also turned into flaming wings in hybrid.

Maybe? Marco has been weird to me because as far as I can tell he hasn't actually shown a hybrid transformation. He has shown a full animal transformation and sort of a partial one. As in, he transforms his legs or arms into wings and chicken legs (the wiki frames this as his actual hybrid form though). I think zoans can indeed simply learn to control their transformations. Though marco being a doctor perhaps allows him some chopper like sciency benefits.

 

[Core D. Roy]

I agree with the King take. I was really hoping he'd have a 4 wing form and use all 4 as blades or something.

I file this under the long list of reasons I found King to be thoroughly disappointing. It felt like his power level had to be hamstrung by the plot so Zoro could surpass YC1 in a very, very short amount of time.

 

[HereNThere]

I file this under the long list of reasons I found King to be thoroughly disappointing. It felt like his power level had to be hamstrung by the plot so Zoro could surpass YC1 in a very, very short amount of time.

Honestly, that describes Onigashima and a decent chunk of the Beast Pirates in general.

But yeah, King deciding to ease up on his fruit ability for some reason at the end was pretty blatant.

Same with Queen's nonsensically ineffective lasers as well as his apparent forgetfulness of his other forms of artillery.

Then you got the Numbers who were being one shot left and right.

You got the various Headliners and Gifters who inexplicably were absent for a good chunk of the Raid until Tama came in.

Just a mess in general.

 

[kkck]

I file this under the long list of reasons I found King to be thoroughly disappointing. It felt like his power level had to be hamstrung by the plot so Zoro could surpass YC1 in a very, very short amount of time.

TBH king and the other calamities seemed like an appropriate for their positions, the issue was the neverneding parade of powerup asspulls that have polluted the plot since WCI. Luffy has had like 4 haki asspulls since WCI. Zoro got his own haki asspull powerup while training with emma and then another when learning how to use his haki against king. Thanks to that zoro is in the orbit of a yonko powerwise. Sanji got an asspull powerup by becoming the most absolute perfect version of a germa warrior. Congrats judge. When sanji's mom looks up she will get to see judge's triumph in advancing humanity into it's next phase. Franky didn't get a specific powerup but him defeating a pirate worth 500 mil can be easily placed in the same BS category as the earlier stuff mentioned. Robin didn't exactly not have feats but her victory also feels wrong. She kinda reacted to cavendish's speed once so, um, that hints at something? Nami defeated ulti after yamato and big mom softened her up. The rest of the strawhats are at worst a powerup away from foderizing akainu. But yeah, the calamities mostly seem to hold up powerwise.

 

[albertwv]

ID jailer beasts awakenings are official, but it was Oda's fault for not building a solid ground from there on up. We DD and Kata have awakening really similar so it matches up. I suppose for Zoans, Oda had yet to think about the clouds around them as marking for their awakenings when he first created them in ID, so he retconned it. But he did a poor job at it.

The Beasts Pirates fights were underwhelming. King's fight was intense at the beginning but towards the end it was more anticlimactic. I guess after seeing what Luffy went through fighting YC level characters, hyped me up for Zolo vs King and Queen vs Sanji. Zolo skipping ACoA and going straight into ACoC even after not fully confirming he had CoC in the first place was such a huge asspull.
Sanji being a cyborg or whatever was pathetic. I liked Sanji just being normal.
Dont even get me started on Jack's fight.
The flying 6 were disappointing too. The straw hats should have been giving some development before Onigashima but instead they were sidelined for the longest time. Brook and Usopp didn't even get their own time to shine.

Oda overwhelmed himself into packing so much into Wano, believing it was going to be epic, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. Whatever happened to a small centralized story where even minor characters are remembered but are not obscuring the limelight from the main cast? Look at Alabasta, 60 chapters and the story was wrapped up amazingly, even having Luffy fight Croco 3 rounds.
Or Enies Lobby 60 chapters too with such a huge dramatic event at every corner, with a flashback and everything.
Dressrosa at 100 chapters, was overwhelmed too and maybe that is where the problem started, adding a bunch of new characters that were supposed to be sidelined but overshadowed the main cast.
Wano had the 9 red scabbards, nameless Samurai that kept popping up, the Yakuza bosses (worthless), various enemy headliners that were worthless too, Minks (should've stayed in Zou), the Orochi ninjas that served no purpose, the even more worthless Mimawagarumi samurai, the Numbers, CP0, Otama and her ability, Big Mom Pirates, and Greenbull at the end.