One Piece’s Gear 5 transformation does more than just get Luffy closer to his dream
One Piece begins with the death of a symbol. Gol D. Roger, the King of the Pirates, is executed in front of a massive audience, some of which are young pirates that either idolize him or see his demise as a way to clear space for themselves. Not a lot is known about the big, grinning dude — few people are aware of the details of his life, what his personality is like, or how the navy even managed to catch him. However, the message that he imparts is anything but a mystery: He has left a treasure out there, a “One Piece” that will defy your imagination. And now it’s up to you to find it.
Fast forward decades later and Monkey D. Luffy, the main protagonist of One Piece and the captain of the Straw Hat crew, seeks that treasure. It’s his dream to be King of the Pirates, and with his latest transformation into the outlandishly fun “Gear 5” form, he gets one step closer to that goal. It’s a long-awaited new form, the kind of thing that leads anime fans into uproarious debates and fan theories. But perhaps its most important contribution is that it effectively brings the story of One Piece full circle, even though series creator Eiichiro Oda seems to have a decent amount of narrative left to go.
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One of the most important things to recognize about One Piece is that the symbolic quality of something is often just as important as its tangible reality. No one except for a scant few actually know what the One Piece is, but it represents both the ultimate call of adventure and a siren song for generations of pirates. The title “King of the Pirates” is less an indicator of the strongest person in the series and more so the person who serves as the aspirational emblem for their seafaring brethren. Early on in the manga’s
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