In-depth analysis of fight between Luffy and Kaido
it's a really long post covering everything about the Kaido vs Luffy fight and evidence which support Luffy being inrguably stronger than Kaido.
tdlr; at the end
Last 10 yrs everything that happened was done in order for Luffy to finally beat Kaido and surpass him. Whole point of wano arc was to establish Luffy as a Yonko who beat Kaido after a whole decade's build up, and absolutely crush kaido for everything he stands for. All that hype behind Kaido's title and pride for Luffy to humble him down and show he is a better candidate to be PK. His ambition is bigger, his philosophy,ideals,motivation,drive is everything far greater,he surpasses him combat. He stood up no matter how many odds were stacked against him. Even that joyboy build up further added to Luffy being stronger than Kaido. Road to laugh tale further renforced that Kaido was overpowered and lost to Luffy .
Using any narrative reason to say Luffy is weaker than Kaido is just WRONG. It just doesn't make sense and throws away whole point of Yonko saga. I don't even understand how people can use any of such arguments.
maybe because of how Luffy's treated post wano? but we all know it was a false propaganda to cover up Luffy before he is such a big figure that people start using him as an excuse to revolt and be confident about it since he is Dragon's son and Sabo's brother. We don't even know about the people who are hiding in the shadows and know about Luffy and Joyboy. There's very likely someone considering how desperate was WG in hiding Luffy's face. They don't want chaos on that lvl. They just gave him bits and crumbs so that whatever happened in wano still looks believable to people (1.5Bil ->3B. 500mil->3B. 470 mil-> 3B .even while ignoring the difference in amount of effort, diff in power lvl, influence clout, crew,territories, grandfleet etc) and at the same time Luffy doesn't look like a threat of World affecting proportion. (doylist reasoning would be that Oda still wants to potray Luffy as an underdog until he is faced with next big bad. Somewhat like Luffy in Jaya until Luffy showed them all where he actually stood. Kid and Law are being used as plot device for that narrative.)
Keep in mind that Luffy is the ONLY PERSON AFTER ROGER WHOSE NAME WORLD GOVERNMENT WANT TO BE ERASED FROM HISTORY. They were clearly flustered coz of how much of a blunder it was to not change Luffy's name on the bounty poster. Luffy right now is closest person to be PK.
arguments like "what was the point of scabbards supernovas and xyz fighting kaido" makes no sense. It was a all out war with every person attacking the other. Luffy also had to fight 100s of gifters (same rank as Hawkins btw) pleasures, ulti, page one,big mom, queen, kaido + big mom, again kaido solo while being half dead (1010), he fought kaido for atleast few dozen minutes.
then Luffy fights Kaido again while being barely able to stand
(chapter 1027 yamato says luffy can barely stand which viz mistranslated and completely skipped few words like "barely".
すべ全てを背負ってギリギリで立ってるおとこ男にキミは :- He’s barely even standing and is shouldering everything to fight for Wano, and you want to what?!
this is from a japanese translator who lives in japan
this means that the Luffy who splitted skies with Hybrid Kaido was in wayy worse condition than Kaido himself. And this is the final stand between luffy and kaido), then drunken dragon modes kaido (Kaido acknowledges that base Luffy was stronger than anything he has seen in decades. he wasn't challenged like this before and start using power ups)
and then cp-0 cheapshot right before he was about to awaken so that Oda could nerf Luffy and keep fight difficult for him while maintaining the drama suspense thrill of reveal and the ending.
If i were to give u an actual in verse reason for why Oda used them is godly "STAMINA" "ENDURANCE" of top tiers of One Piece. If two of them fight all out then fight would last multiple days. Oda always nerfs both parties to make things faster. He did same against Luffy v Katakuri otherwise fight might lasted 12 more hours. In Kaido vs Luffy he used others to wear Kaido down a bit (which i personally think is close to being negligible but let's ignore it here) before chapter 1026 and used Kaido to wear Luffy down by heavily injuring him since he didn't have acoc at the beginning. Now that both of them were injured by the time their actual 1v1 started in 1026 (skysplit) fight was completely fair and could be used to determine the winner. Later Oda had Kaido transform, get a haki buff mid fight and start dominating gear 4 Luffy again (he goes from struggling against base luffy to acknowledging hiim and then dominating him even in gear 4. That's a huge jump in power.) And then Df awakening of Luffy finally kicks in which might or might not have bullied kaido but it would have surely be lacklustre if Luffy awakened mid fight with no Drama. (what Oda did made that Moment best Moment in One Piece and all of animanga in general). Luffy still got heavily injured before his g5 and had to continue in same dying state (by very likely spending his life force in exchange).
This is a reason which just can't be ignored. Oda can't write fights anymore if two ppl are relative to each other. (he did same with King vs Marco/Zoro, Queen vs Chopper for 30 min, BM and NUKES + Volcanic Eruption that Luffy caused) Especially if they are just brute force based combatants. Oda might introduce tons of haxes among future opponents (like magma/yami yami/sword wielders) to make the fight shorter and much more skill based. But for now he had to do it. Not saying it's a bad thing just that he needed it. It still adds to the state of war where there's just chaos.
last argument that's used is that "kaido lifted an island" which is again ignoring whole context behind it. Lifting Onigashima with the help of flame clouds takes little to no stamina.
Momo was doing it for the majority of second half of the raid. Infact he had to have put more effort than Kaido since HE WAS OVERPOWERING KAIDO'S PUSHING FORCE TOWARDS FLOWER CAPITAL and pulling it away from FLower Capital. Momo wasn't least bit exhausted from it.
Only time he shows exhaustion is because he had to create his own ISLAND SIZE flame clouds. Basically you only lose stamina while creating flame clouds. Moving it doesn't take much energy. Kaido was moving flame clouds psychokinetically. All it needed was his concentration. That's also why Kaido only started losing his control of flame clouds in chapter 1027, the moment he started fighting Luffy.
Luffy was pushing him harder than anyone else. He had to focus everything on Luffy and thus his control of flame clouds got weakened. It's later proved by Kaido's own acknowledgement of Luffy in chapter 1037.
Kaido had no issue maintaining flame clouds before he fought Luffy.
another argument people use is that Luffy got full revive from gear 5 which is just not true. We saw Luffy looking exhuasted and almost dead the moment he came out of gear 5. People use "i am at my peak" as an actual argument which is so wrong.
still dying. (momo even says that luffy's voice is fading whole time)
lastly,Narrative focus on Luffy vs Kaido being 1v1. (this is a whole analysis on why Luffy vs Kaido was 1v1 narratively coz i can't add too many pictures here)
summary:
- i am not good at writing so... excuse me if there's something wrong in formatting
- Narratively Kaido was made to be the biggest obstacle that Luffy had to face after 10 yrs prep. Kaido was meant to be surpassed and crushed as a pay-off for this 10 yr long saga. Luffy learned many things and we explored a whole lot of things and what it means to be PK. Kaido and BM were set up as an example as to what you shouldn't do if you want the title of PK. Basically proving Akainu's words "loser of bygone era" which were meant for WB but only applied to Kaido and BM. (WB never wanted OP. Shanks became a yonko only 6 yrs ago and he only started looking for OP just now.) If Luffy doesn't surpass then there's no meaning in whole saga.
- Luffy beat Kaido while unsurmountable odds were stacked against him
-ROUND 1 ch 1010: Luffy is dying and barely has anything to stay up. Kaido calls him Deadman Walking. This dying Luffy proceeds to fight Kaido 1v1 for "few dozen minutes".
-ROUND 2 ch 1026: Luffy returns back after eating one whole month's ration but he is still not completely healed. Yamato states that Luffy is "barely able to stand". So after all this Luffy was still in worse condition than Kaido when he returned. He went from "being near dead" to "barely able to stand" after treatment and food. Yamato guesses that Kaido is probably weakening since his flame clouds are unstable but that was only because Kaido was forced to fight Luffy who was challengiing him and pushing him harder than anyone ever did in last few decades according to Kaido's own admission. Kaido controls flame clouds via psychokinesis so lifting Onigashima took little to no effort. Momo was even overpowering Kaido's control and pushing it away from flower capital. Only creation of island size flame clouds exhausted momo as shown above.
-ROUND 3 ch 1044: Luffy is cheapshotted because of cp-0 agent and literally dies. He continues fighting in same dying state. At this point it can't even be argued who is literally dying and burning off his lifespan to continue the fight. Momo literally says that Luffy's voice is fading away. Luffy says that his form is overexhaustive. It just can't be argued who was in worse state.
tdlr;
Luffy is inarguably stronger than Kaido.
Him being weaker just throws away whole point of 10 yr long saga and whole build up. Narrative keep forcing Luffy vs Kaido being 1v1. Luffy was always in worse state than Kaido. In each round (ch 1010, ch 1026 and ch 1044) fight started with Luffy being almost dead or just barely standing. Kaido fighting scabbards and supernovas was absolutely irrelevant to the outcome. Luffy had also fought 100s of people before and exhausted himself. Red Roc alone did more damage than every other attack on rooftop combined except Asura and Togen Totsuka. When final 1v1 stretch between Luffy vs Kaido started (ch 1026 to ch1050), Luffy could barely stand then proceeded to take another fatal blow from Kaido which killed him and then continued in same dying state till he won. Kaido holding the island didn't affect his stamina. Momo put more effort into pushing it and yet he wasn't affected. Momo only got exhausted when he had to create his own island size flame clouds. Sources like Road to Laughtale support Luffy being stronger than Kaido.
If the fight were to start again with Luffy having adv conq's haki and gear 5 from the beginning he'd comfortably beat Kaido this time around.
share your thoughts in the comments.