Today, I'll be breaking down the full sequence of Kaido vs Luffy between Chapter 1044 and Chapter 1047. I couldn't include context from previous chapters because of the 20-image limit.

PLEASE REFERENCE THIS IMAGE FOR IMAGE 17. I LINK THIS IMAGE AGAIN DOWN IN THE IMAGE FOR RELEVANCE.

Chapter 1044: Warrior of Liberation

After Kaido's victory against Luffy and defeat of Guernica, Luffy awakened his Devil Fruit and unlocked Gear 5th. The sequence starts after Kaido feels Luffy's Haki knocking out his men.

The very first thing to restart the fight is Luffy reaching down and grabbing Kaido's body with a massive hand while he's still floating in the air. Luffy then pulls Kaido's entire dragon body through the roof with that one hand before ramping up his muscles and spinning Kaido around at an intense speed above his head, as if swinging a rope. Luffy then slams Kaido back and forth, similar to the Hulk's "Puny God" scene in The Avengers, and the force of that smashing leaves Kaido completely stunned with a big bump on his head and stars floating around. Note the speed was so great that it left multiple afterimages.

In response, Kaido grins with happiness and shoots a Boro Breath, which almost catches Luffy because Luffy is so delirious from laughter that he's not even paying attention. Luffy notices that fire when it's practically on top of him, literally about a meter from his face, and in the short time before the fire can touch him, Luffy reaches down, rubberizes the ground, and raises up a stone wall several times his own height, slightly bigger than the diameter/circumference of the Boro Breath. Activating his muscular form again and flipping with all his might, Luffy uses the rubberized ground to reflect Kaido's fire back at him, creating an explosion that doesn't do much of anything to Kaido. Their immediate interaction shows that Luffy and Kaido considered that opening sequence essentially a warmup act.

Chapter 1045: Next Level

Luffy and Kaido discuss that they both thought Luffy was dead. At that point in the fight, Kaido had ran his gauntlet of the Scabbards, Supernova, and Yamato, and Luffy was putting in his full effort with Gear 4th and all of his advanced Haki, so even though Guernica was responsible for Kaido getting the killshot for free, Kaido was definitely feeling the effects of the night when he had landed his Bagua. If not for the awakening, the implication is very much that Luffy would not have survived. However, with the awakening, Luffy got one more shot.

While this discussion is ongoing, the environment is rubbery and Luffy is bouncing up and down carelessly. Universally, other Devil Fruit awakenings have to be activated, but when Luffy is in Gear 5th, the rubberization of his surroundings is a passive effect in addition to the Nika form. Thus, any time Luffy is fighting in Gear 5th, we must keep in mind he is automatically manipulating the environment, even when activate combat is not engaged, like a Paramecia awakening that he uses by accident.

While Luffy is relaxing and bouncing, Kaido is still serious, so he bullrushes Luffy and gets essentially a free bite. Immediately, Luffy starts to bloat himself and lift against Kaido's jaws, prying them partly open before Kaido gets his jaws completely closed. Then, Luffy starts to move around in Kaido's body, bouncing up and down, rubberizing Kaido's body in the process. before using Gum Gum Balloon and completely inflating himself to a couple of times the size of Kaido's circumference, his limbs and hands protruding even farther out. Kaido is visibly sick from the experience as Luffy only gets bigger and bigger, forcing Kaido's body to float upward against his will until Luffy eventually finds an out. He forces his hands and arms through Kaido's eyeballs to find something to grip and launch himself from, and as soon as he's outside of Kaido's mouth, Luffy lets the air inside him out at such speed that he flies like a rocket into the clouds above before Kaido can recuperate.

Not a moment later, Luffy falls from the sky as a giant, so massive that his foot is larger than Kaido's dragon head. Unperturbed, Kaido immediately dodges around Luffy and bites his ribs. In response, Luffy grabs Kaido by his head and tail to use him like a jump rope while they fall to Onigashima quickly. The smoke trail seems to indicate that the speed with which Kaido was being spun was hurting him, but Kaido's head was still aimed at Luffy, so he used an immensely massive Boro Breath to break Luffy's grip and send him several island's lengths away in an instant. The size of this Boro Breath is up for debate because of Oda's inconsistent size scaling, but no matter how you slice it, Luffy's giant form was completely encompassed with the flame, he was sent far away from the island, and the Boro Breath extended well beyond Luffy's end position. The heat burnt Luffy enough that he was completely blackened to a crisp, but he is angry more than anything else and runs so fast that he lights the air on fire behind him and runs with a flaming trail the entire distance back to Kaido instantly, who turned to his Hybrid form before Luffy could return. Onigashima's size is well recorded as having mountainous size or more, so the distances involved here are likely in the tens or even dozens of miles.

We have no reason to believe Luffy slowed down his return, so when he reaches Kaido, he should still be running at that island-distance-traversing speed, but Kaido moves even faster. As Luffy begins to charge up a Gum-Gum punch at Kaido below him, with Kaido huffing from exhaustion and only just spotting Luffy the moment he's approaching, Kaido leaps far above Luffy and completes his own ACoC-infused Ragnarok attack, the exact same one that knocked Luffy out in 1009. He hits Giant Luffy hard enough on the head that Luffy's face goes flying down to the next floor with a goose egg on his head. It takes Luffy a moment to return his head to his body, and when Luffy finally snaps his head back hard enough to apparently sting himself in pain, he falls backward and returns to his normal size.

Luffy is sitting down with his head steaming, while Kaido is still standing and lecturing Luffy. When Luffy finally depowers from exhaustion and damage, he is kneeling, implying that Luffy had tried to stand back up to continue fighting but was taken off guard by the sudden depowering and tiredness. Kaido gets aggravated with the randomness of Luffy's fighting, but the full toll of the evening starts to weigh on him, and he falls to one knee as well while Luffy complains about how taxing it is to hold up this form with his previous state's damage. Luffy's comment on his health makes it hard to argue that Gear 5th is a complete negation of the damage he'd incurred. With all the endurance they both can muster, Luffy and Kaido rise back to their feet, and Luffy reactivates Gear 5th. Worth note, we have never seen Luffy force Gear 5th again, and Kaido notes that the strain Luffy puts on himself with that forcing of Gear 5th could kill him all on its own if he's not careful. Simply put, Luffy is putting in 100% effort here to continue fighting and win.

In the time it takes Luffy to finally fully reactivate Gear 5th, Kaido takes advantage of Luffy's distracted state and blitzes behind him to land a free hit. With minimal notice from Yamato, Luffy is able to adapt so quickly that he reforms his head to match with Kaido's attack. Basic Armament Haki is supposed to completely negate Luffy's rubber defenses against blunt force, so Luffy's Gear 5th form being able to retain some of it force negation against Kaido's ACoC-infused, spiky Hassaikai hit is extremely notable as a form of hax, with even his tongue changing shape. Luffy outruns Kaido's next hit with his Sonic-looking running style, but Kaido immediately makes up the distance with an ACoC hit, seemingly drawing blood. Whether consciously or not, though, Luffy's rubberization causes the earth to deform beneath him, cushioning the force of the hit even further, and then the rubber shoots Luffy into the air and away from Kaido, showing how well the environmental manipulation of Gear 5th plays into Luffy's new fighting style. Luffy lands on a rock, shaped like a spring because of Kaido's hit, and he controls the decompression of his body to let him get full momentum in, charging his ACoC from the moment he lands on the rock. He starts to spin halfway to Kaido to maximize his speed, and a confused Kaido tries to swing toward Luffy, seemingly to clash with Luffy's fist. Whether for missing or being too slow, Kaido doesn't land a hit, and Luffy's fist punches straight through Kaido's head, rubberizing his skull and brain and throwing Kaido completely to the ground, drawing blood.

Chapter 1046: Raizo

While Kaido is still laid out on the ground spread eagle, Luffy decides to go straight back to bouncing on the rubbery ground, pondering about his attack name, rather than attacking Kaido and continuing the pressure. Clearly, Gear 5th affects Luffy's mental state to some degree, and this attack was obviously a precursor to the White Star Gun he used on Kizaru. In the time it takes them to have a basic conversation, Kaido is back on his feet. They continue to have a conversation until Kaido reengages the fight, and he and Luffy take turns blasting each other with gatling-style ACoC attacks. The way Oda draws the impacts is odd, but it seems Kaido lands four hits on Luffy's head, arm, ribs, and knee—depending on how you intepret the panel, Kaido may have thrown up to nine strikes—while Luffy lands five hits on Kaido's arm, leg, and torso, with a sixth hit landing elsewhere that we can't see. After the gatlings are traded, they both seem to be skidding backward, and when Luffy tries to close the distance with his running, Kaido stops him by using a slicing wind attack, forcing Luffy to stop on a dime and dodge.

The fight cuts away for a short period (I put the pages together in the post for the image limit), but when we return, Luffy is floating above Kaido, holding a lightning bolt in his hand. Both fighters have grins on their face, and clearly, they're enjoying the battle.

Chapter 1047: The Sky Over the Capital

This chapter, Kaido takes center stage, monologuing and even analyzing what's happening. Before I perform my own analysis, I would like to write Kaido's dialogue in prose form:

"So you grabbed the lightning, eh? WORORORO! Preposterous! Play all the games you want, but abilities alone cannot conquer the world! The world is convenient that way! Roger didn't have any Fruit powers! Because only Haki can transcend all!"

This section of the fight should be understood in the context of Kaido finally getting around the new ludicrousness of Luffy's powers and beating him through straight superiority as a fighter.

After grabbing the lightning, Luffy throws it at Kaido, with a ring of lightning depicted to show the strength of that attack. Kaido dodges around it and leaps up to Luffy, swatting the upside-down Luffy away with ACoC. Luffy grabs a lightning bolt, spins upon it, rubberizes it, and rebounds from it for extra speed, preparing for a Gum-Gum strike that enlarged his leg, but Kaido moves so fast mid-air that before Luffy can land the attack, Kaido blitzes over Luffy's leg and hits Luffy right in the face with ACoC, causing Luffy's face to spike and ripple and fall in on itself. The attack throws Luffy into the ground, which rubberizes to rebound Luffy, but Kaido uses Luffy's awakening against him. The velocity of Luffy rebounding upward while he was still stunned on top of Kaido's downward momentum allowed Kaido to attack Luffy with his strongest Hassaikai attack: Destroyer of Death. This attack was so strong that Luffy finally tried to take Kaido's advice by putting up a large double-armed Armament block, but Kaido's attack completely broke Luffy's guard, drew blood, knocked out Luffy's teeth, and dazed him with a goose egg, stars and birds around his head, and circled eyes. He actually hit Luffy's arm so hard that Luffy's was still stretched out all the way to Kaido's position, meaning Kaido literally knocked Luffy's arm loose from the force. Since Luffy was still flying all the way up to the clouds after Kaido landed that hit, it's fair to say that Kaido's Death Destroyer here was essentially clotheslining Luffy and would not have the same level of force if Kaido used it on a stationary target, but at the same time, Kaido put Luffy in that position to begin with, so as a holistic feat, Kaido loses nothing, and it's still by far the most damage Gear 5th has ever taken. I want to note one thing: EVERYTHING IN THIS PARAGRAPH TOOK PLACE MIDAIR, WITHOUT ANY OF THE FOOTING OR LEVERAGE OF SECURITY OF FIGHTING ON THE GROUND.

As Luffy flies into the clouds, he still isn't knocked out, and he uses his free hand, soaked in sweat and shaking with a pulsing vain from stress, to grab Kaido's chest, rubberizing it. Kaido tries to remove Luffy's hand, but can't easily do so despite pulling and hitting his arm, and instead uses it as a way to find where Luffy is positioned, immediately switching to Dragon form and throwing slices up to further show Luffy that his abilities are limited. Those air slices do a good job of cutting Luffy up and drawing further blood from his mouth, showing they had immense force in addition to their cuts. We know from Zoro's final attack on Kaido that if a slicing attack doesn't have enough force, all it will do is cut; Zoro's attack in particular drew a slight bit of blood from Kaido's mouth, but did not have enough force to knock Kaido down. For Kaido's attacks to do more than cut, they need sufficient force. He also blasts Luffy with his Boro Breath, but Luffy still won't let go.

Everything that happens after is Bajrang Gun and FDD, which I didn't want to focus on for this post.

Conclusion

Luffy and Kaido's fight started out as an exhibition of Luffy's new abilities, and toward the end of the fight, Kaido started to figure out Luffy's number and punish him for trying to rely on his Devil Fruit. Still, Luffy's new form showed to have the most liberating combat style of any character in the verse, so relaxed and all-encompassing that even Kaido could find ways to use Gear 5th to his own advantage. For the first time, both fighters were truly fighting on equal ground, with Luffy holding the early advantage and Kaido gaining the upper hand once he adapted to Luffy's style. Nobody has managed to fight with Gear 5th the way Kaido did here, and especially not dominate Gear 5th the same way.

Both of them are Emperors, absolute powerhouses on every front. They both had their moments in this section of the battle, and I hope this analysis helps to point out anything that be sometimes unnoticed or underappreciated.

Thank you for reading.

Can be someone other than the ones listed

Without considering Imu amps, my general ranking of the main old gen guys is

1. Roger
2. Whitebeard
3. Garp
4. Xebec
5. Harald
6. Rayleigh
7. Sengoku
8. Shiki
9. Gaban
10. Garling

Some of these characters have very weird versions to rank power-wise, but I tried.