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The story
On 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G (“Anything Goes Live”) board, a single panel from the latest chapter of “One Piece” became a hot topic. A giant swings a hammer down, Luffy jumps in the way, and as he’s getting crushed flat — pulling an absurd face the whole time — he just keeps charging straight at the final boss. Confusion set in first, since the panel alone barely conveys what’s actually happening. From there the discussion snowballed into a debate over the artwork itself: some compared the rough, panel-skipping style to “Higanjima,” others got nostalgic for the careful, single-illustration artwork of early One Piece, and still others praised the new style for its brisk pacing.
What people said
The giant winds up a hammer swing at the enemy
↓
Nika-Nika Luffy cuts in
↓
Gets crushed flat and charges forward on the hammer's momentum
That has to be the worst explanation ever
Wild that this explains it better than the actual manga panel
Is that the vibe he's going for?
Honestly I think this is straight-up Higanjima now
Like, *schlorp schlorp* (stabbing sound effect)
Oda-kun has mobs explain things instead so he can skip the character motion — it's a bit different
Higanjima's pacing is some of the best in the whole manga industry
Have you even read it?
No other manga is such a goldmine of wasted panels
That's super clear though
You instantly, intuitively get exactly how he fell
This is way too satisfying to read
Haven't seen that one in a while lol
・The world (territory) just keeps expanding instead
・The retroactive powers and settings keep getting more absurd
Higanjima = One Piece
The amazing thing about Higanjima is that it feels like rich flavor text meant to expand the world — that's all thanks to Koji Matsumoto-sensei
It's not padding to drag things out pointlessly, it's more like a secret sauce aged and refined over and over
The guy's just amazing
Cutting out the actual fight scene is honestly kind of genius
These days his main personality's been completely taken over by Nika, so…
These days that sea king's eyeballs would be popping out with all the background mobs freaking out around it
These days Makino would have her eyeballs popping out screaming 'WHAAAAAAT?!'
Honestly this art is boring in its own way too
Because he likes Tom and Jerry
That's the classic mangaka disease of wanting to do the opposite of whatever readers react to
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Since 2023, when Eiichiro Oda introduced Luffy’s new form “Nika” in “One Piece,” the artwork for battle scenes has leaned heavily into Tom-and-Jerry-style exaggerated, panel-skipping “toon force” expression. “Higanjima,” which the thread brought up for comparison, is a separate manga known for boldly cutting explanatory panels in favor of raw visual impact — pairing the two is actually a go-to comparison that shows up regularly in 5ch manga threads. The dispute splits over whether to read this shift in art style as “the inevitable evolution of expression that comes with going Nika” or as “a decline where the art gets rougher for the sake of pacing.” Many posts line up early-volume artwork against the newest chapter not out of simple nostalgia, but because the debate itself is really about how a character’s role and art style shift over the course of a decades-long serialization — context that’s easy to miss from the replies alone.
※This article excerpts and summarizes the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Monkey D. Luffy Gets Crushed Flat by a Hammer and Charges the Final Boss Mid-Grimace.”
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