Question Is Luffy the only character who has "run out of haki"?

[zetsu banned]

I'm trying to recall any time in the story where haki is described as something quantifiable that can "run out", and only Luffy is coming to mind. Now, on its head this comes across as sheer convenience so his fights can be dragged out to inflate some tension, giving him the underdog status in fights even though it doesn't really make sense at this point.

I partly ask this because characters who have CoC don't seem to use it when it would be ridiculously useful. If haki is a pool of magic that needs to be conserved and used carefully in fights, that'd be acceptable, but it's *never* talked about that way outside of Luffy.

My Marvel No-Prize is that the Nika fruit has an adverse effect on the user's haki, making it a consumable resource the more that the user approaches awakening.

 

[Agerdem]

Yes, and it is a plot hole

 

[Rein Avara]

Oda uses it to Nerf Luffy and create tension when often it's not needed he could just cut away from Luffys fight for a bit to focus on other members if he wants to show these long 12hr fights.

My thing is you can't call G5 the pinnacle of freedom then incorporate a limitation like "oh he needs food and he can only use it for like 5minutes at best" doesn't really seem like true freedom to me. Idk maybe my view on it is skewed.

 

[kkck]

I'm trying to recall any time in the story where haki is described as something quantifiable that can "run out", and only Luffy is coming to mind. Now, on its head this comes across as sheer convenience so his fights can be dragged out to inflate some tension, giving him the underdog status in fights even though it doesn't really make sense at this point.

I partly ask this because characters who have CoC don't seem to use it when it would be ridiculously useful. If haki is a pool of magic that needs to be conserved and used carefully in fights, that'd be acceptable, but it's *never* talked about that way outside of Luffy.

My Marvel No-Prize is that the Nika fruit has an adverse effect on the user's haki, making it a consumable resource the more that the user approaches awakening.

The only other instance is zoro. He struggled with controlling emma initially and during the fight with king he made the point that sustaining his maximum haki output could kill him, which is a more severe drawback than luffy has suffered. Oda handled this different from G4 luffy but I think it's a safe bet that zoro essentially overused his haki by the time he won against king and that compounded by the severity of his wounds.

And I would also argue this is plot relevant when it comes to cursed swords. The implication of the wano arc is that cursed swords are essentially like emma, though it stands to reason that to a lesser degree. Lesser swordsmen use swords which drain their meager haki which in turn gets quickly depleted and they die in combat as a result (hence the curse). With emma this didn't happen because the haki drainage is so massive and obvious that no sane swordsman would bother trying to use it (in fact, kinemon tried to talk zoro ou of using emma). But with a more subtle effect the consequences wouldn't be seen until it's too late.

 

[M3J]

Oda uses it to Nerf Luffy and create tension when often it's not needed he could just cut away from Luffys fight for a bit to focus on other members if he wants to show these long 12hr fights.

My thing is you can't call G5 the pinnacle of freedom then incorporate a limitation like "oh he needs food and he can only use it for like 5minutes at best" doesn't really seem like true freedom to me. Idk maybe my view on it is skewed.

Maybe it's a way to show that freedom is not easily achieved, that there are drawbacks to it.

 

[Rein Avara]

Maybe it's a way to show that freedom is not easily achieved, that there are drawbacks to it.

It could very well be the case

 

[catagon87]

The New World had:

1. Hody where Haki wasn't an issue
2. Caesar Clown where Haki wasn't an issue
3. Don Chinjao where Haki wasn't an issue
4. Doflamingo where Haki became an issue as G4 was required
5. Cracker where Haki was an issue but Luffy was sort of able to work around it by eating
6. Katakuri where Luffy depleted his haki several times
7. Kaido where haki was theoretically an issue but it was never an issue per se as Kaido defeated Luffy by other means several times

I chalk it up to Gear 4 being a special ability that trades off haki for power. Law mentioned something like that when Luffy was fighting Doflamingo IIRC.

My personal theory is that certain abilities / weapons are beyond their user and require "taming" to be usable for longer periods of time. For instance, Enma, which drains Zoro's haki, and G4 which drains Luffy's haki. Awakening (other than non-mythical zoan) also seems to be an extreme drain on the individual as both Law and Kidd couldn't use theirs too much. Also while we didn't witness Doflamingo and Katakuri "run out of stamina" from awakening, we can probably assume that the fact that they didn't spam the abilities means that there's a cost to using it. My hope is near the end of the series we can have a fight where the arbitrary timer of G5 isn't at the forefront.

 

[kkck]

The New World had:

1. Hody where Haki wasn't an issue
2. Caesar Clown where Haki wasn't an issue
3. Don Chinjao where Haki wasn't an issue
4. Doflamingo where Haki became an issue as G4 was required
5. Cracker where Haki was an issue but Luffy was sort of able to work around it by eating
6. Katakuri where Luffy depleted his haki several times
7. Kaido where haki was theoretically an issue but it was never an issue per se as Kaido defeated Luffy by other means several times

I chalk it up to Gear 4 being a special ability that trades off haki for power. Law mentioned something like that when Luffy was fighting Doflamingo IIRC.

My personal theory is that certain abilities / weapons are beyond their user and require "taming" to be usable for longer periods of time. For instance, Enma, which drains Zoro's haki, and G4 which drains Luffy's haki. Awakening (other than non-mythical zoan) also seems to be an extreme drain on the individual as both Law and Kidd couldn't use theirs too much. Also while we didn't witness Doflamingo and Katakuri "run out of stamina" from awakening, we can probably assume that the fact that they didn't spam the abilities means that there's a cost to using it. My hope is near the end of the series we can have a fight where the arbitrary timer of G5 isn't at the forefront.

Luffy ran out of haki against kaido at least once. He used a pretty big G4 attack against kaido's dragon form. At which point zoro, kidd and law presumably covered for him until he recovered.

IIRC G4 is specifically framed as being a combiantion of haki and luffy's devil fruit abilities. He uses haki to simply even stay in the form. At a minimum he permanently hardens his arms and legs with the flame patterned haki which is reasonable to speculate implies a lot of it being used (we have only seen big mom and katakuri use that iirc). On top of that luffy uses his haki for attacks like culverine. It's a relatively rare instance of haki being permanently active for someone.

There's no specific reason awakening has a connection to haki. The rookie awakening users we have seen are kidd, law and luffy and none of them have tied their awakenings to haki. This seems strictly a stamina issue which users can apparently circumvent by growing accustomed to the ability. In G4 luffy uses haki to manipulate his body in a couple ways, one being to alter the direction of his attacks and another to increase his elasticity to boost his attack power... With G5 he would be able to do that with his fruit ability alone which I would argue frees up haki for other stuff. As evidence I'd look at the fight with borsalino... luffy has run out of awakening juice twice but his haki has not run out once.

 

[Yoko75]

Oda uses it to Nerf Luffy and create tension when often it's not needed he could just cut away from Luffys fight for a bit to focus on other members if he wants to show these long 12hr fights.

My thing is you can't call G5 the pinnacle of freedom then incorporate a limitation like "oh he needs food and he can only use it for like 5minutes at best" doesn't really seem like true freedom to me. Idk maybe my view on it is skewed.

I fully agree with you. Oda has already stated he purposely nerfs Luffy for the reasons you mentioned. Luffy is too powerful so he has to find ways to hold him back from beating his opponents too fast. The stamina and Haki drainage, the G5 time limit etc.. All this needs to be in place to stall Luffy to move the plot. The freedom aspect that the Hito Hito no Mi DF gives along with being the Sun God Nika and Joyboy should eventually be in full force once Oda stops putting the breaks on him happen. I suspect it won't happen until the end of the manga though. We will continue to see Luffy fluctuate between dominating and struggling when Oda sees fit. It's frustrating sometimes. I wonder if there was a better way to balance out Luffy better without all these obstacles that Oda placed on him. Hopefully all this will get resolved soon.

 

[Buulord]

At least for Gear 4, I always chalked it up to Luffy continuously using Haki to maintain the form vs everyone else who only seem to use haki at the point of impact to block/attack.

 

[HereNThere]

I'm fine with the concept of Haki being a semi-finite source, but the speed at which it's recovered is what makes it more of a plot convenience than an actual flaw. Either make it something that needs a longer period for recovery, or make it so that "willing" yourself to go beyond your current physical limits have steeper consequences.

 

[Bradhimself]

I'm fine with the concept of Haki being a semi-finite source, but the speed at which it's recovered is what makes it more of a plot convenience than an actual flaw. Either make it something that needs a longer period for recovery, or make it so that "willing" yourself to go beyond your current physical limits have steeper consequences.

That is how I see it too. Haki reserves will get more and more over time. Just as with Luffy's gears, he gets better at holding the form as he gets used to it.

Haki being willpower, his Haki will increase over time as his Willpower will increase as he learns more about the corruption and world history.

 

[DeadlyBeast]

Law did comment when G4 was introduced that Luffy was using too much haki.

In the same chapter Doflamingo immediately concludes that G4 comes with drawbacks and that it has to be a time limited technique

This implies to me that everyone has a limit on how much haki they can use, hence Law's comments. And Doflamingo adds to this since its likely he realized same thing as Law that G4 would drain Luffy's haki and run out.

Additionally, I think its implied techniques like King Punch, Galaxy Impact, and Honesty Impact are powerful blows combining physical strength with a blast of haki. Garp was both strong enough and had enough haki that he could use these level attacks repeatedly. Koby and Elizabello both seem to have a limit of one punch, probably to not having the haki needed. Luffy is a little like them in that he uses a technique that uses up too much of his haki that he needs to overcome.

 

[zetsu banned]

My biggest problem with haki is that *all* of this is speculative. It's such a pointlessly vague power system, when we have something like chakra right next door in Naruto that largely sidestepped a lot of these incredibly basic questions we're still asking like "is there a haki pool?" and "is haki visible in-universe?" (in the first few chapters, no less). These should not be up to interpretation going into the final arc when haki is going to likely be the end-all-be-all ability in the world.

 

[kkck]

I hadn't thought about king punch. I don't think it's a stretch that this is a haki based punch but the consequence of using it is yet again different from other characters. Zoro said he was going to die from haki overuse (he didn't but he was worried), luffy needs 10 minutes to recover his haki and king punch leaves the user pretty much in a normal state until he can use the punch again (next day?). Oda definitely plays it pretty loose with the rules.

 

[Kyo3ooo]

Another example is conqueror outburst to knock out fodder.
Whitebeard wanted to use to save Ace from impaling/beheading but couldn't due to illness (just for Luffy to do it instead).
Also most users seemed to not be able to do it twice in a row like if it needs a cooldown period (the example was Rayleigh who was couldn't do it two times in a row the first time we met him in the Sabaody auction but I'm not sure if that was anime only).

 

[zetsu banned]

I hadn't thought about king punch. I don't think it's a stretch that this is a haki based punch but the consequence of using it is yet again different from other characters. Zoro said he was going to die from haki overuse (he didn't but he was worried), luffy needs 10 minutes to recover his haki and king punch leaves the user pretty much in a normal state until he can use the punch again (next day?). Oda definitely plays it pretty loose with the rules.

It's similar in ways, but I don't think King Punch is haki unless stated. As it stands, it's just another weird ability that *seems* like it's haki but never confirmed to be, like Lao G's whole thing or the Rokushiki techniques.

 

[kkck]

It's similar in ways, but I don't think King Punch is haki unless stated. As it stands, it's just another weird ability that *seems* like it's haki but never confirmed to be, like Lao G's whole thing or the Rokushiki techniques.

Hmm, my take here is that oda has sort of left hints to tie some of those abilities you mention through haki without outright saying it. I can't explain all abilities of course but I think some can be connected to haki fairly neatly by connecting different explanations given in the manga about combat. How I see it:

First we have zoro cutting metal all the way back at alabasta. At the time he mentioned the breath of things and we saw in a flashback his master explaining how to cut things he wants to and not cut others. He demonstrated this by not cutting a piece of paper (or was it a leaf?) with a sharp samurai sword. Zoro, being a stupid kid, could not comprehend how this was his master showing at least pretty damn advanced swordsmanship.

Hundreds of chapters later we get hyoguro explaining haki to luffy. He explains how he was taught samurai could cut and not cut why they want and demonstrates haki emission. This is the bit that ties these two very far apart explanations together and relates them to haki. it is a bit awkward that obviously at alabasta zoro could not use armor haki but it doesn't change that oda is basically tying these two together.

Ranged slashes are something I've been trying to explain with haki but the manga doesn't support this yet. So far it appears these are simply the result of sufficient skill tied with sufficient strength and speed. Which also fits with rokushiki users. A bit of unhinged speculation I've been toying with is that learning to cut what you want results in learning to cut air which results in air slashes. But as I said, unhinged speculation.

Taking in consideration how haki relates to swordsmanship skills even before active armor haki is available I don't think it's a stretch that these principles can be applied to rokushiki (mostly shigan, tekkai, rokugan) though in a different manner. Soru doesn't need explanation beyond the physical component as far as I can tell. Geppo/blue-walk could use a haki related explanation but I don't want to go further than unhinged speculation here...


Lao-g is definitely weird. Maybe his ability is similar in principle to kami-e but in the context of this discussion I can't find a damn thing where it has anything to do with haki.

 

[M3J]

Another example is conqueror outburst to knock out fodder.
Whitebeard wanted to use to save Ace from impaling/beheading but couldn't due to illness (just for Luffy to do it instead).
Also most users seemed to not be able to do it twice in a row like if it needs a cooldown period (the example was Rayleigh who was couldn't do it two times in a row the first time we met him in the Sabaody auction but I'm not sure if that was anime only).

I thought Whitebeard's illness prevented him from using the haki at that moment, as he couldn't concentrate or exert his will due to sudden intense pain.

 

[zetsu banned]

Oda uses it to Nerf Luffy and create tension when often it's not needed he could just cut away from Luffys fight for a bit to focus on other members if he wants to show these long 12hr fights.

My thing is you can't call G5 the pinnacle of freedom then incorporate a limitation like "oh he needs food and he can only use it for like 5minutes at best" doesn't really seem like true freedom to me. Idk maybe my view on it is skewed.

My Oda-copium is that this limitation for Luffy's awakening is actually going to lead to something at some point. He keeps doing stuff to both muddy and clear the waters when it comes to awakening, especially for zoans.