The Fleet Admiral - Akainu
By CosmicEmperor 0 Comments
The Mad Dog of the Marines - Sakazuki
Introduction
Akainu, otherwise known by his epithet of Sakazuki, is the current Fleet Admiral of the marines; a position he won after he defeated Aokiji on the island of Punk Hazard, forever changing the landscape of the island as well as the pirating world as a whole. An extremely powerful, sadistic, and brutal man, he is willing to do anything to achieve his goal of eliminating all pirates around the world. He is a believer of "Absolute Justice" and is willing to sacrifice ally and foe alike to achieve it.
Some Scaling
Being the Fleet Admiral, Akainu operates in the highest echelons of One Piece power levels. Naturally, that would mean scaling above characters who are laughably weaker than himself that have accomplished island - country level feats. So first and foremost, we will begin with said characters that will allow for an easy chain of scaling beginning in Little Garden with the debut of the island eat and the two giants, Dorry and Brogy who are residents of Little Garden. The island received it's name due to it's various abnormalities as the inhabitants are so large, everything in comparison is considered to be small. Even as early as this mini arc we were introduced to the a creature known as the island devourer which would obviously eat islands and this isn't just hyperbole seeing as how the giants confirm this themselves.
What's impressive is that the giants were able to overpower the beast with air pressure alone from dozens, if not hundreds, of meters away. Sure there was two of them, but that part also requires a bit of context. The two giants have been on the island for hundreds of years doing battle. They were nowhere at their physical best and their weapons were explicitly states to have become rusty and run-down. Not to mention, Dorry was attacked with an explosion that went off inside his stomach so it would make sense to claim that each one of these giants carry island level power. With the island-eater, this isn't the first time the One Piece world has shown to have abnormalities wonders that exist. Aside from the island-eater, there was the legend of Oars who was known as the continent puller in the Vivre Card and an image of him doing in a One Piece magazine. He garnered a legend for creating an entire country by literally piecing together different countries like a puzzle which should put him above the Dorry and Boggy. Now, more showings that consistently gets brought up for good reasons are Luffy's feats against Chinjao and Doflamingo which bolster Akainu because even though Luffy at this point is closing the massive gap between himself and that of the Admiral, there is still a considerable amount at that point in time. G3 Luffy, who is obviously weaker than G4, can not only overpower Chinjao's drill, but completely change it back to original shape back during Dressrosa. The same Chinjao who split an entire continent of ice without much difficulty, which the aforementioned feat scales to.
So now we move onto Doflamingo and G4 Luffy not only overpowering Doflamingo's parasite through sheer power, but also completely overpower his awakened and Haki-infused strings. There is many reasons as to why is this is an incredible feat for Luffy, starting with the fact that Jozu himself wasn't capable of replicating that same feat and he has large-island level feats of effortlessly blocking Mihawk's slash. Mind you, Mihawk can casually slice through Aokiji's ice with air-pressure alone and his ice is many times more durable than steel itself. So what is this all for? To show you that even something like country level feats isn't enough to even faze a combatant like Akainu.
Magu Magu No Mi
Akainu is one of the strongest characters in the series and a lot of his offensive strength is employed through his devil fruit, the Magu Magu no Mi. It essentially turns Akainu into a magma human who can create, manipulate, and use an infinite amount of magma in his battles. According to Oda himself through the vivre cards, his devil fruit is the most potent in terms of offensive capability which doesn't necessarily mean it's the strongest, but rather the most offensive. This would put it on par, and even surpass the likes of Whitebeard's Gura no Mi and Enel's Goro no Mi. Despite being an early villian within One Piece, Enel still achieved feats that would reach into the continental level which only make Akainu look better because according to Oda, Enel wouldn't be a major threat if he tried ruling the Grand Line. Enel was an intersting character and his power was a great one, a power so destructive, that it could only be compared to that of an all-powerful deity as Enel would strike fear into the hearts of those living in his domain and Oda truly structured him to be one. His power was wonderous even a smaller version of Ragio could encompass entire islands and vaporize them without so much of a trace. And yet the power of that one pales in comparison to an even larger Raigo that was going to completely wipe Skypeia off the map permanently.
Skypeia is quite large, it took Luffy nearly 4 hours just to cross the smallest part of Jaya island so it would be reasonable to say that the small landscape is dozens of km in size which would make the upper-yard many times larger. Now, the original Jaya Island carries the shape of a skull but only half of it remained in the modern day so you get a general idea of how big Skypeia is as a whole. But remember, confirmed by both Enel and even Nami, the larger Raigo was going to eliminate all of Skypeia, including the upper and lower seas.
Vaping a country of this magnitude would bring in continental results but even that level of power is borderline fodder to the likes of Akainu according to Oda himself. However, while this scaling I've presented is all well and good, it gets even better when we actually see the guy fight on panel. He was one of the largest threats during the Paramount War and opened up with completely evaporating a large chunk of Aokiji's ice without so much of a trace. That's the important thing to understand about Akainu's magma, it is far superior to actual magma to an absurd degree in power and heat potency. Whether it's treating Aokiji's ice like it's nothing or completely sublimating a steel sword passively, going up against his magma is something a lot easier said than done. I mean, he even made Ace look like easy work, an extremely powerful pirate in his own right who has the Mera no Mi making him a flame human. What can Ace do? Well for starters, he can completely stop the snowfall on Drum Island with his haki alone which was compared to flames which is a direct reference to his devil fruit. This feat gets even better when you look at how big Drum Island is. We see a somewhat aerial view when Luffy stretches his arms here, we can see multiple towns, dozens of mountains, then towers that dwarf those mountains which are 5 km each and despite the massive view that we get, the island still stretches beyond the observable horizon. So the island is very, very big and it wouldn't be crazy to say it's closer to a small country. He can also use his fruit to create large-scale explosions on an island with dozens of mountains going across it. Yet despite all this, Ace was pretty helpless when he engaged with Akainu in battle, in fact Akainu took it as a bit disrespectful towards himself.
Not only did he outclass him in a direct confrontation, but he also could punch a hole through him like he was nothing. He also almost did the same Jinbei just as casually which might not seem that good at first, but do remember that Jinbei could take on Ace for 5 days straight without taking serious damage the way Akainu did. But a long with the insane heat potency of his fruit, Akainu has an absurd amount of power behind every attack he uses. He can easily stop an attack from Whitebeard's Naginata which was infused with his Quake fruit and then right after stop one of his Quake punches. This feat is beyond incredible, and gets even better once you try to put it into context. Whitebeard's quake fruit is confirmed by Oda to be the strongest Paramecia and Akainu can combat it on equal terms. Well how strong are the quakes themselves? We can use hard numbers to calculate their level.
No matter which way you go, the quakes are solidly MC - MC+ and Akainu directly scales to their power. I mean, this is extremely consistent with his feat regarding Punk Hazard. Pretty much, for the title of Fleet Admiral both Aokiji and Akainu fought on an island for 10 days straight that resulted in the island being ripped into a frozen tundra and a burning hell. Two years after the fight concluded, the island is still in the same condition which is pretty remarkable since eruptions continue to happen and the snowstorm caused by Aokiji wouldn't let up despite being in close proximity to an element superior to it which again, reiterates the idea that elements within One Piece can be far greater than those of real life. Now this feat was also calculated at MC for Akainu here which matches up with WB's quakes. Now I probably know what some of your rebuttals against these feats are going to be so let me get them out of the way. The first being that "the power is only the collective after 10 days worth of fighting." There are several reasons I disagree with this with the first being that his opponent is Aokiji and we know his range is immense. He can freeze the entire ocean to create a continent's worth of ice within seconds (his ice is far more durable than steel itself) and yet he was only able to cover half of the island meaning that Akainu would've had to match his ice in terms of power, range, and speed to not fall behind. Secondly, in a scan which I will post below, we come to find out that Akainu created active volcanoes as a side-effect of his devil fruit's powers that are still erupting constantly two years later. And again, because we know Aokiji's flash freeze is extremely fast with the feat I just showed, as well as flash-freezing Doflamingo before latter can move his arm a couple inches and pretty big chunk of the land, an estimate of 100 m would be fair visually seeing as how they are mere specks from a top view looking down, and when he instantly freezes the tsunami caused by WB's quakes and dwarfed the entire battlefield. As Naronu puts it in the calc:
In fact the total potential yield scales directly to the potency of his devil fruit, and is honestly probably a lowball of its capabilities considering our first Assumption, the vast majority of Akainu's firepower would have been aimed at Aokiji and not towards the ground around his back.
So this pretty much means that in order to keep it at a stalemate and eventually overpower Aokiji, Akainu would've had to continuously supply a constant amount of power that created volcanoes as a side-effect.
So, in a nutshell, we can summarize Akainu's powers in a few words:
- Akainu's heat potency is immense, which can evaporate substances without so much of a trace upon contact and can even passively sublimate durable metals such as steel.
- His strength is greater than most, reaching levels such as MC - MC+ with his feats against Whitebeard as well as
- Even experienced fire users like Ace who is better than most is nothing but common fodder to the likes of Akainu.
- Can easily transform the battlefield the way he did to Punk Hazard giving him the ultimate advantage against someone like Noelle who would struggle to maintain her water magic.
A Battle of Attrition
One of Akainu's best qualities is his endurance and durability. He has a massive amount of damage soak and can continue fighting even after being on the receiving end of possibly fatal attacks. I mean, he can tank being sneak attacked by Whitebeard himself and then even after he took one of his quake infused attacks again point-blank, got up quickly after like nothing happened, and then fought all 16 of Whitebeard's commanders which he got the upper hand in pretty easily. Punk Hazard showcases both his endurance and his durability because for one, he fought someone who was his equal up until the end for 10 whole days straight (which would also put Aokiji on the same tier of power) and second, he was able to take attacks directly from Aokiji. As we've already established, Akainu is MC at the very least so in order to fight him on equal terms his opponent has to be at that level too. Then to take, and presumably tank multiple, attacks yet still come out as the winner would also put his durability at that level too which is consistent with Akainu tanking WB's quakes.
Now speed is where things are going to get tricky, I acknowledge that this part of the debate will go heavily in your favour and I won't try to argue against it. However, with all that being said, I will at least show some feats that Akainu benefits from to establish a certain level for his speed but I am going to say right now and very clearly, Akainu isn't a character that is going abuse his speed in battle. He is primarily a guy that's going to stand in front of you and use his overwhelming power to crush you and make sure you don't get up. But in order to do that, you need to have at least some speed in the process and we can begin with Marco intercepting Kizaru's lasers which are light-speed and yet he couldn't handle taking on Akainu. Luffy fresh out of the time-skip was capable of dodging Kizaru's lasers from a Pacifista to the point where he refers to them as slow which are also LS.
There are other feats that work for Akainu as well. With the introduction of raid suits, it allows fodder like Niji and commander tier characters like Sanji move at LS. Before you try and call out the fact that I'm using an anime panel, keep in mind that Oda has direct supervision over the anime production.
Characters like Sanji can get intercepted by the likes of King and Queen who are nothing to the top-tiers showing, or Niji being absolutely no threat to Big Mom even with the raid suit, or we can look at Ichiji who uses his own laser projectiles with his Sparkling Valkyrie being stomped by Katakuri. Even characters like the pre-timeskip Supernova while they couldn't actually defend against it, could perceive Kizaru's casual attacks which again, are light-speed such as Hawkins and even Luffy during the Paramount War. Then you have characters like Kuma who, even going as far back Thriller Bark, has attacks that move at light-speed which were easily dodged by PTS Zoro. Then you have characters like Foxy who shoot out photon projections that are all dependent on whatever the light strikes.
A remarkable and hard to notice speed feat is Ivankov saving Luffy from one of Kizaru's lasers. She's reacting to the laser then using death wink, blowing Luffy out of the way before he gets hits. Some might argue Ivankov reacted before the laser started moving, but that is not true.
As explained, the SFX is outright indicating a fast moving projectile is approaching. Not the charging sequence which we already see prior in the left side of the panel where Kizaru charges an attack. This link will tell you the meaning of that SFX as well. In case there's still any doubt, the anime also shows the Death Wink moving before the laser can tag Luffy while its actively being fired. What does Akainu do against someone like Ivankov?
Blitzes past her, with ease.
I bring all this up because I've had the debate on whether One Piece caps at LS because of Kizaru way too many times. The idea that just because Kizaru is a light-light human that means that he, and by extension everyone else in OP, caps at light-speed is just foolish to me. Kizaru can move at light-speed even when he's being extremely casual, and it would make absolutely zero sense that Kizaru, being one of the strongest characters, caps at a speed that is achieved by mid-tiers is so absurd. LS is a tier of speed that has been achieved by mid-tiers such as Ichiji who are fodder to Katakuri who is beyond fodder to Akainu, the Admiral would obviously be way beyond LS just through scaling and looking at other characters. And with characters such as Sanji going FTE to someone like Queen who was already invisible (who would greater than the likes of Niji and Ichiji given he can use their abilities) FTL is a more appropriate level for someone like Akainu.
Weapons to Amplify the Attack
Being an Admiral, Akainu is a confirmed user of both Observation and Armament Haki. Haki, is the spiritual energy that resides in every single person which coexists with the soul that allows a user of Observation Haki to sense. The thing is, the level of spiritual energy is directly tied to the level of power any one person possesses as we come to find out when Rayleigh was teaching Luffy.
In knowing this, there are quite a few uses for Observation Haki which is pretty much the precognition version of Haki. CoO would allow someone like Kaido to sense his enemies around him even if they were try to remain hidden or lurk in the shadows. Now, it takes a serious mastery over the skill to see seconds into the future and maintain that with Katakuri, but even a novice user can replicate the ability to a much lesser degree. For example during Marineford, Luffy subconsciously did so to dodge Mihawk's slash and mind you, this was before he started training with Rayleigh. Going as far back as Skypeia, there was a dozen feats for CoO that can be used and I'll go over a few of them starting with the fact that Luffy wasn't finding any success landing an attack on Satori, one of Enel's priests despite being far stronger than him. So much so that he was even able to seemingly predict Sanji's movement before he even did them.
This goes to show that CoO can compensate for a major speed and power gap (which will be crucial in this fight given the speed gap) considering Sanji one-shot Satori the minute he was able to land a clean hit. Staying on the topic of Skypeia, Enel himself was such a massive threat because of his mastery of CoO, devil fruit aside. He was pretty much able to blitz anyone who came across his path including his own priests. However, when CoO wasn't an option and Luffy's punches became random and not following any pattern, he wasn't able to keep up.
Clearly, CoO gives the user a massive "speed" advantage in the sense that it amplifies the users reaction speed, dodging abilities, and much more.
We've seen CoO on display numerous times, I'll go over a few to give you the overview of it:
- Usopp was able to see the spirits of his enemies who were hundreds of meters away which allowed him to attack precisely.
- Sanji is able to dodge Katakuri's jelly bean without actually seeing the attack due to CoO.
- Fujitora can use CoO to not only sense the citizens of Dressrosa chasing after Luffy, but also their emotions.
Think of Armament haki are as an invisible coat of armor that can be used to amplify both offense and defense. Pretty simple concept, Zoro has used CoA as a defensive shield to tank attacks from King that would have otherwise one-shotted him. Take this, and combine it with Akainu's AP (which is already far greater than Noelle and Mereo) and strength becomes an even greater wall to try and overcome.
Logia Body
Here comes a section that might give some issues to my opponents; essentially even damaging Akainu is going to be an extremely difficult endeavor due to his intangibility from his fruit. A passive ability that allows the user to remain unharmed from attacks that otherwise would be deadly and even fatal. For example. WB's quakes as powerful as they were, weren't enough to completely put down Aokiji who came back from being shattered into multiple pieces. Aokiji has also regenerated from Jozu attacking him with his diamond body and come out unscathed from WB's Naginata. He's also shown his capability of coming back from being shattered by Luffy and Robin as well. In terms of Akainu's intangibility, he can regenerate after being attacked by proficient haki users such as Vista and Marco simultaneously, after having half his body cut off by Crocodile, and even regenerate from having his body blown to smithereens.
Establishing Akainu's Win Condition
To a lot of people, this might seem like a major mismatch against me and I can understand why. On one hand, you have a character like Noelle that uses an element that is a direct counter to a devil fruit user like Akainu, and on the other hand, you have someone like Mereleona who also uses fire and is highly resistant to fire based attacks. Both of these characters as I said before, are faster than Akainu but to be completely honest, that's as far as their advantages go. Just because they're faster, does not mean they can beat Akainu as speed doesn't circumvent the massive strength, durability, and endurance gap between him and the two mages. Neither Noelle nor Mereleona operate on the same level of power as Akainu, nor do they have the durability or endurance that he does. Noelle might be a user of water magic but that doesn't mean Akainu wouldn't be able to vape all her attacks considering he can do so to a potent ice user with better feats than Noelle. Akainu has dealt with people that have far greater AoE and range than the likes of both Mereleona and Noelle so having water isn't simply enough if it just gets evaporated instantly. Her strongest form to date is her Spirit Dive which only lasts a minute, is not nearly as strong to put Akainu down before she wares herself out. Or the Mana Method + Mana Zone spell that summons a sanctuary of water which I'm sure you're going to use, not only is considered by Undine to be a pre-battle tactic (indicating that it most likely needs some sort of prep time), it's also a spell that is only available to the princess as she get's the knowledge of all those that come before her. Regarding Noelle's Spirit Dive, while it's a very potent attack in at certain times, it can act as a double-edged sword seeing as how once it becomes undone, Noelle loses the ability to conjure up any more spells as she exhausts all her energy. This was made especially clear when she tried to go up against Megicula. All this and I haven't even brought up Noelle's pretty lackluster heat resistance. She could barely keep upright when Mereleona brought her to a volcano to undergo training for the Royal Knight examination.
She's panting heavily, and can barely even move just by being in the vicinity of a volcano and this was continued when we saw her, Leo, and the other mages struggling to even damage the lava monster that spawned from the volcano. When her, and the rest of the Black Bulls went up against Fana and the Fire Spirit, Noelle was still overpowered by overwhelming heat. Her Sea Dragon's Cradle was evaporated almost instantly, once again showing Noelle's inefficiency of dealing with overwhelming fire and heat based attacks. Even when she did damage against the Fire Spirit, it was right after that it came back and required Asta to actually do the finishing move. Then later on during the Elf Invasion saga, we saw Noelle struggle with Fana again. Pretty much, she goes up against Fana with her fire magic and yet still failed to do any lasting damage with Fana just regenerating from all her attacks, which made Noelle even question how she would even defeat her. This is all important because Akainu's logia intangibility is far greater than that of Fana.
So as we can see, even a water mage such as Noelle struggles to deal with overwhelming heat so what's going to happen when she's facing an onslaught from someone who's on a separate tier of power than her, someone on a separate tier of her in durability and endurance, and someone who can summon multiple volcanos as a side-effect of his power? The answer? She gets vaped. Sure, she might try to do something early on or try to combat Akainu's magma at the beginning, but she isn't going to hold up because she doesn't have the endurance to do so, but Akainu does.
The real challenge is dealing with Mereoleona given her abilities revolve around fire but again, there is a way around this. Like Noelle, Mereo doesn't have the endurance to keep up with Akainu and will eventually get too tired that will result in her getting tagged, and she isn't surviving multiple hits from him either. Why do I say this? Well, if we look back at the Elf Invasion Saga, we saw Mereo try her best to keep up with multiple elves at once yet still not have the power to take them all on. At the beginning of the 5v1 this was her expression, we can clearly see she's going into this fight with little to no injuries, and a nearly full gas tank. Yet, in the very next chapter we see her already start to slow down when faced with an extreme onslaught of attacks. And sure, you might try to pass this off as Mereo having to deal with 5 opponents at once, but like I've already shown before, Akainu went up against all of Whitebeards commanders + all of the foot soldiers + Crocodile and still was winning the entire time.
And unlike Mereo who started that 5v1 as a fresh fighter, Akainu was already well into the war and fought everyone after he was attacked by Whitebeard. Two chapters after beginning the fight, Mereo was already exhausted and was forced to release all the power she had left in a last-ditch effort to win. An attack that wouldn't even faze Akainu because a) fire doesn't affect him and b) his durability is laughably better than any of the elves she faced which included Rill, Raia, and a couple others. And as for her strongest method of attack, her Hellfire Incarnate, I think it's a tremendous power but not enough to give her team the win. Again, I'd like to reiterate no matter how much fire you throw at Akainu, it won't even faze him, he is levels above even potent fire users. And like Noelle's forms, there are side-effects that can be used against her. Too much usage of that form results in her body breaking down which is even further proof that even she has her limits.
The difference in raw endurance is far too great that the speed advantage will not make up for. Slowly, but surely, both Mereleona and Noelle will get slower as the fight progresses. Noelle will struggle to get any offense going the minute Akainu releases his magma, which will result in powerful volcanoes being created as a side effect, due to her lackluster heat resistance and Mereo will not actually be able to damage Akainu with her fire. As far as speed is concerned, Akainu is FTL then that's amplified quite a bit by CoO coupled with his endurance which makes him a nightmare matchup for the duo. He's stronger, more durable, has more endurance, and the minute their speed starts slowing down, it's an instant GG due to them not having durability feats on the level of Akainu.
Your turn.