第193回：Dealing with a Light Headache

Luffy’s non-nonsense kick to Kizaru makes for a great callback to when Rayleigh famously collided with the Admiral back on Sabaody Archipelago.

In fact, Luffy’s impact carries an even more impressive speedy impact sound effect of ZUDOON! versus Rayleigh’s DON!! Not only that, while Rayleigh’s kick connected with Kizaru and seemed to surprise him, unless he physically blocked Luffy’s strike, it almost seems like that strike might have hurt him!

So now we’re left with an interesting conundrum. Not only Luffy, now his CREW are much more powerful than they were on Sabaody and this is their chance to completely redeem that massive L from two years ago. With the Strawhats having only run from Issho(Fujitora) or watching Aramaki(Ryokugyu) from a distance we still don’t know exactly how they’d fare against an Admiral.

Now…Luffy just beat the ‘strongest creature on the planet’. So at this point, the odds are certainly in their favor. In fact, I’d say at this point, the brave one is Kizaru waltzing up there alone! But just the same, not all battles are purely based on strength and Kizaru, albeit his aloof nature, is certainly more clever than he leads on and his speed, well, the man is light itself.

How are they to deal with such an adversary, one who could very possibly negate any sort of advantage from Color of Observation by striking down Luffy before he even *considers* seeing the future? Thus far we know of one Strawhat who might actually be Kizaru’s natural born enemy, and no, I don’t just mean of the Devil Fruit variety. I would suggest that of all the Strawhats…given the proper conditions…Nami has the potential to be the biggest threat to Borsalino!

She has an uncanny knowledge of the atmosphere and can, to a degree, manipulate it to her will. Back in Enies Lobby she displayed how refracted light could be used to her great advantage in battle so she’s already shown the ability to manipulate (if not control) Kizaru’s body to a certain degree. The most important part of this is that she understands *how light works* and therefore could use her environment, techniques, and her possessions to her advantage.

I have a few ideas on this topic and it involved a recent acquisition of Nami’s in Egghead. Remember how she found a hefty bag of manufactured jewels? I can think of a number of ways such a seemingly innocuous creation could come in handy against one of the Marines’ most fearsome forces of justice! And let’s not forget how when we were introduced to Egghead, we saw how Vegapunk was manipulating light in order to create various illusions through his wearable tech.

Ultimately, when Luffy told Kizaru how much stronger he was (while also being a clever callback to Shakuyaku’s comment about Rayleigh from two years ago) notice that Luffy didn’t just say *he* was a 100 times stronger, but that *we* are a hundred times stronger! Luffy proved that he can trounce the strongest creature in the world, but it’s time for the crew to prove that *they* can stand up to an Admiral. I fully expect to see the crew show off their own skills in the effort to escape Egghead!