Haki is a BAD Power System

Haki is one of the most iconic abilities in all of anime. It is the manifestation of willpower itself, responsible for some of One Piece's greatest moments. And yet, it's also one of the series most controversial aspects. And today, I'm going to answer a surprisingly difficult question, which is, is Haki actually good or is it not that? And this is sort of a response to a video titled Haki is a bad power system by SIQ or Sik. I I don't know how to say the name. I did watch the video though. Very interesting. and the link will be in the description. It's a very good video actually and we are not here to dunk on it because it raises very valid points. Some of which have explanations and some of which unfortunately do not. I myself have mixed feelings on Haki. I always have because I'm old, right? And I remember when Haki was adopted by Oda back in the day and I was very worried about a hockey based future and now that we live in that future, we can see if those worries were warranted or not. Being almost three decades long, One Piece has gone through some clearly definable errors of power systems. Of course, they have no official terms, so I'm going to make them up. But the original era is what I would refer to as the rare fruit era. These were the very early days where there were only a handful of devil fruit powers. We almost never encountered them and most of our fruit-based quotota was met by Luffy and he was largely fighting against normal opponents. We didn't even think about devil fruits too much because there there was nothing to think about. However, as time moved on, we transitioned into the common fruit era, where suddenly just about everyone had a fruit ability, and there is an argument to be made that devil fruits became less special and less interesting due to the oversaturation of them. They were kind of losing their oomph as a power system, and at your oda very much recognized this, which is why towards the end of the pre-time skip era and throughout most of post-time skip, we were well and truly into the haki dominance era. This was a very, very long period where devil fruits became a secondary feature of One Piece and it almost didn't matter if a character was a fruit user or not. Having one was more like having an optional cosmetic in a game. It was some fun flavor, but it didn't really affect gameplay. And the main criticism of this era, of course, was the overemphasis of Haki making One Piece fights boring because more often than not, the fights were decided by who had the stronger Haki. And I'm not sure if I would personally make that argument, but anecdotally, I have seen people accusing this era of One Piece of losing its creativity in fights and becoming a bit more streamlined like Dragon Ball because characters were mostly operating with a now universal power system instead of their own unique styles. However, we exited this era when Luffy awakened his devil fruit and gear fifth brought an avalanche of creativity back to One Piece fights. And whilst Haki is still extremely relevant, devil fruits have now made a full-on comeback. Although I would posit that it's really only one type of devil fruit, which is why I'd call the era that we're in right now the mythical devil fruit era. Because these days for a character to have an important power, it is almost always a mythical devil fruit or something that mimics a mythical devil fruit. It has to be because it's the only way we have to escalate at this stage. There's only so many more times that you can advance to the next level of haki before it starts to feel stale. And I now want to offer a solid defense of Haki, which I will be doing periodically in this video. Because conceptually, Haki is one of the greatest power systems that has ever grace shown a manga because of its direct correlation with an manifestation of willpower. A lot of times the shownen genre, it has some difficulties explaining how a character suddenly becomes stronger just because they were more driven and got the will to win. All of a sudden, you want it more. That's great. I love that for you. But that doesn't automatically mean that you can generate more units of whatever power you use in that series as a result. Not logically anyway, but usually that's how it happens. But One Piece gets around that problem quite easily with Haki because the more you want to win, the more willpower you have, the more units of Haki you will have access to. And I would also offer that Haki is a fantastic piece of inspiration for anyone reading or watching One Piece because it's not fictional power magic. It's a hyper stylized incarnation of something that each and every human on the planet can tap into. If you want something badly enough, and I mean real bad, that you have the will to attain it, then you will generally do better in whatever endeavor you choose versus those who do not have as much willpower as you. And this applies to all aspects of life. There is something to be said for the very simple concept of don't give up. And the people who don't give up the most tend to be more successful. And even the idea of facing something like conqueror's hockey, it's quite palpable in reality. If you've ever been in a professional situation where you've met someone whose very presence just makes you feel smaller, that is you being subject to someone else's conqueror's hockey. And learning how to not only withstand that, but also to selectively project your own is going to be an important skill to develop if you wish to travel down most career paths. To be clear, that doesn't mean be a dick. It just means that you will need to assert yourself to varying degrees depending on what this chosen path is. And the harder the path, the more you got to manifest. And the higher up you go in whichever path, the more people you will meet with willpower equal to or greater than yours. All engaged in the race to claim whatever your industry equivalent of the One Piece is. But also, like most people in the One Piece world, you don't need to use Haki. You can go ahead. You can live a nice quiet life if you'd like. No one's going to judge you for it. But the option is available for those driven enough to take it. And that's what I love most about Haki and what I personally find most inspiring about it, especially seeing it being utilized by someone like Luffy, who has been inspiring me for over half my life now. But before I get into the criticisms offered by the video, here is my main issue with Haki. What Haki did on paper is a bit unfortunate because it transformed a series with a power system of infinite possibilities. Any devil fruit could do anything. It took that and it focused the series onto a power system that only has three possibilities. Observation, armament, and conquerors. Devil fruits have and still have unlimited potential. But with Haki, you can only do three things. You can punch things harder. You can see things further. Or you can, you know, that one. And it might be different if every character in the series could only access one type of Haki. And we had a rock paper scissors sort of system happening. You're either born as a natural observer, armament user, or conqueror, and each type is the counter to another. But more often than not, what haki boils down to is that you need all three types to be taken seriously as a fictional character. And if you're not a conqueror, then it's a default assumption that you at least at least have access to both observation and arament. So it's a power system of only two options for the most part. You either use both observation and armament or you use all three. And if you don't do either of those, you're just not relevant. And because of that, during the era of hockey dominance, a lot of fights did start to feel a bit the same. And I do think it's a shame that One Piece lost some of that sense of adventure by severely restricting the options of its power system, which ironically is meant to allow its characters to expand their options by exerting their willpower. Yes, there are advancements. Yes, those advancements are very cool and interesting. But even with the advancements, Haki is a very short skill tree. If you were presented with the Haki skill tree in a game, you would probably say that it's a little bit rubbish. However, with that said, the main argument of SIQ's video is about the vagueness of the Haki power system. Not that it's a bad system, just a very poorly defined and sometimes difficult to follow system. And I do agree with both of those points, one of which I have a rebuttal to. However, let's talk some specific examples first. One example offered by the video that I talk about a fair bit elsewhere is the interaction between Trafalga, Big Mom, and Kaido during the rooftop fight on Unigosima. Because there's a point in that where you skid is all like Travalga. Can you use your powers on them? And L replies, I would have done that already if I could. Their Haki is so strong it's impossible to move them. Which to some degree makes sense. Haki was developed intentionally as a counter to devil fruit abilities, primarily low gear abilities, but also all of them. However, this is never expanded on. We don't know exactly why L can't use his powers. Is it because Big Mom and Kaido are manually activating their Haki to block him? Or is it their innate haky that's stopping his abilities from functioning? A sort of passive ability. The second one is a bit harder to believe because L had to manually use his Haki to get rid of Docu's disease and Luffy couldn't use innate Haki to be immune to Sugar's toy powers. That or neither Luffy nor L were powerful enough to do such a thing at the time. But if Luffy and L were that far below Big Mom and Kaido in terms of willpower, then how did they ever beat them to begin with? How did L use our room or any of his awakened powers on Big Mom? Shouldn't she have been able to block that with her hockey manually or passively? How come Kaido couldn't counter any devil fruit abilities except for law when he was still subject to Luffy's fruit powers, kids fruit powers, and even when Kaido got covered in scrolls by Riso's fruit powers. So, Kaido's haki, it is strong enough to negate Trafalga law, but it cannot stop Ryzo. Huge Ryzo upscale. And if we go outside of Wano, Siq brings up the fantastic example of Blackbeard versus Boa Hancock. Blackbeard knew that if he let go of her, Hancock would turn him into stone. But surely a man of Blackbeard's caliber could have just actively countered her devil fruit with his haki. It's a tricky one, but this is one that I can try and offer an explanation for. My idea here would be that Blackbeard knew he wouldn't be able to resist thinking about Hancock in a shall we say sultry manner and so his willpower would be overridden by his willpower and Blackbeard knew that he wouldn't have the inner strength to not lust for her and so his haki may not have worked as a result. It can be explained, but the criticism is that it is not clear and requires this sort of extended discussion. Whereas it should just be clearly defined from the get-go. Or should it? Because swapping back to the defense of Haki. Now, my counter to the critique of vagueness is that the vagueness of Haki is also the system's greatest strength. Historically, whenever Oda has gone out of his way to apply a strict definition in One Piece, it has ended up being a big mistake. like Pel's line about the five flying types of devil fruits which Oda recently admitted was a mistake in the SPS of volume 115. One of the greatest weapons that Oda has as an author is his vagueness because it keeps him endlessly versatile instead of creating a strict set of rules that he has to obey. It allows him maximum freedom to draw One Piece the way he wants in any given moment. To illustrate, another critique in the video is the idea that Conqueror's Haki is now the counter to the Holy Knights and how that seemingly has no explanation yet and doesn't necessarily make sense with everything else we know about Conqueror's Haki. This is the benefit of being vague because we don't have a strict definition of it. Oda can employ it as a counter here, which he may not have been able to do if 15 years ago he went and wrote all of these detailed rules and gave them to us long before he even knew that he was going to create these characters that needed a counter. And because of how vague it is, you can always make it make sense. In this case, I quite like Conqueror's Haki being the counter to Holy Knights because becoming a Holy Knight involves forming a pact with emu. These packs are a sign of complete submission to emu and an abdication of your own will. And so, the counter to complete submission being the unambiguous refusal to submit works quite well for me on a conceptual level. But the video also references a line from Silver's Railene in chapter 597 where he explains that though you can control the color of the Supreme King, you can't train it to become stronger directly. It's the embodiment of the spirit of the user. The only way to make it stronger is for the user to grow stronger. With the commentary here being that words are too vague. What is stronger? What constitutes strength? It's probably not physical power. Maybe it's probably more along the lines of willpower though, but who knows? Because Luffy started this series with arguably just as much willpower as he has right now. And his conqueror's hockey, it was non-existent back then. So, if it's not, you know, punch power, and if it's not for willpower, then what does it mean to get stronger? It's not a very helpful line to us as readers and watchers. However, it is a very useful line for the author who can now internally define strength as whatever he wants andor needs it to be. And again, I would praise this by saying that every character in the series has their own definition of stronger. And we even saw this just before the time skip. Every Straw Hat had a different method of becoming stronger for Luffy. Zoro had the more straightforward approach of becoming more physically powerful, whereas Sanji's main goal was to get stronger as a cook to build the bodies of the crew. Nami's focus was on weather, Frankie on engineering, Brooke on music, etc. They all have their things. So, I would say that wasn't specific because everyone has their own unique path to power and it was up to Luffy to figure out how to become stronger. However, the next criticism of the video is the visual display of Haki. And this one I completely agree with. The idea that it is often hard for readers to even know what's going on in Haki fights. This is an issue with observation because outside of future site, there's usually no clear visual indicator in the manga that a character is using observation haki. There's a couple of rare examples here and there like Fuji Tora. They are not most though. It's often just a closeup of a character's face with an exclamation mark. And with armament haki, this system started out being completely invisible in pre-time skip before moving to the black hardening effect post time skip. But also sometimes armament haki is still invisible like this panel of Luffy holding Kizaru because containing a loia user should not be possible without Haki and yet there is no Haki there. Is it a mistake? Is it invisible Haki? Is it a third thing? I don't know. But I do think that Haki has an issue when onethird of the system is invisible and another third of the system is sometimes invisible because invisibility generally doesn't help in achieving a sense of clarity in a visual-based medium. But the most common source of confusion is trying to detect when advanced conquerors hockey is being used. Because unless a character outright says, "Oh, that's some advanced cock," then it's almost never clear. Some people try to use the black lightning effect as a sign of it. But that effect also gets used for armament haki. And when a conqueror and a non-conqueror clash like Luffy versus Luchi, is this lightning purely Luffy's haki or is Luchi also a conqueror? Or are they both just slamming armament together? Even though Luffy is a conqueror's user, but he just might not be using it. And all of this has led to people measuring the thickness of the black bolts of lightning and trying to determine what is what through sheer girth alone. And I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of comments on this video with everyone's individual ways of telling Haki apart. But it's the fact that we even need to have this discussion at all that is the problem. And while the manga has a hard enough time with this with its black and white, rather counterintuitively, the anime with its color makes it even more difficult to understand. Because Haki is so wildly stylized in the anime to crazy colored aura and all sorts of energy beams that there is no logic to what's happening on screen. There's great examples of this everywhere, but I am going to choose episode 1,093. The one where Blackbeard attacks Tfalgalore with this absolute colossal explosion of red hockey substance, which does happen in the manga, but not to this degree. What happened in the manga is like a grenade compared to the nuke that happened in the anime. None of these wildly stylized haki explosions ever happen in the manga. This is strictly anime only spectacle. And look, they look fantastic. They're absolutely brilliant. and the animators who construct them. Flawless work. However, when the key animator for this episode was asked whether Blackbeard was using Conqueror's Haki or not, he replied, "Home, I am neither the director nor a spokesperson, but as a One Piece fan and an animator, to me, there was no hockey used. To me, Blackbeard probably has it, but he didn't use it here. I rechecked the original story board and there was no mention of color of conquerors. Usually, as far as I'm concerned, we use black for conquerors hockey. So, Blackbeard probably has it but wasn't using it. And they use black for it, which they don't because conqueror's haki has traditionally been portrayed as red. But throughout the raid, Luffy was also using gold conqueror haki to fight against Kaido, who was maybe trying to fight back against it with his own purple conqueror's haki, but we don't know. We don't know because all of that aura stuff, it's not in the manga. It's difficult to make sense of it in the anime beyond it being visual spectacle. To be fair, though, he did say that black was used in the story boards, but not necessarily for the end product. So, there may be some internal logic as to what's happening where, but there's a lot of may. And even if there is, without clearly distinguish it in the final product, it is still just a mess to the viewers. A beautiful mess, but a mess nonetheless. So, I understand how frustrating the lack of clarity can be. It's tricky enough in the manga. But the anime makes it impossible. If you're an anime only watcher and you say you understand what's going on in these fights, you are a liar because not even the animators truly understand what's going on. They have to theorize just like the rest of us. And it's such an interesting dynamic because the manga it is too subtle with the haki effects for us to know what's going on and the anime is too over the top with haki effects for us to know what's going on. That is the double-edged blade that is Haki. And with all of this said, I do think that without introducing Haki or another secondary power system, One Piece would not have lasted anywhere near as long as it has. There came a point where there needed to be an escalation from Devil Fruits. Something fresh, something interesting and layered. However, we are now sitting at almost 17 years since Haki was implemented on a widespread level, not just hinted at. And Haki is now at or even well beyond the point where devil fruits were. It is certainly not fresh. It's becoming more and more difficult to make it interesting. And that's why Oda has now gone back to a much more heavy devil fruit focus. But are we now at the point where a third power system needs to be introduced and layered like the voice of all things? Do we make that a thing? Or is that why Oda has introduced Narona emu and the holy knights who as far as we know function completely via the different system of the abyss? Whatever the case for the future may be, haki, in my opinion has been a mixed bag. Its vagueness is both its greatest strength and its most frustrating flaw. However, I do view it as quite inspiring nonetheless, because it is hard not to cheer seeing our characters weaponize their own willpower and perhaps giving all of us the inspiration to pursue our goals in life with that much more drive. And with a modicum of that drive, I want you to let me know what you think about all of this in the comments below. By the way, if this video isn't wasting enough of your day, then mate, I can fix that because I've built an entire second channel called The Calm Belt. Home to massive compilations of Grand Line Review videos, 2 hours of insane theories, bizarre One Piece facts, complete story lines, and more. 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