I think Oda planned Luffy’s Awakening very carefully. He showed us a Paramecia Awakening with Doflamingo’s Ito Ito no Mi awakened. Doflamingo was able to convert his surroundings to strings and use them as he wished:

Now, on the contrary to what people may think, that awakened Paramecia might all be the same, I believe Oda was showing us an awakened form different from Luffy’s. It would be a little unoriginal of Oda to use the same idea twice. The whole One Piece world is full of surprises, therefore I think Doflamingo’s Awakening can be interpreted as Oda telling us: “That’s not good enough, this one is NOT it”.

Oda and Dragon Ball

Oda is influenced greatly from Dragon Ball, and I think Luffy’s Awakening has a connection to Goku’s power boost. How come Goku is only getting stronger and stronger by the day? It’s because he is a Saiyan.

“Saiyan Power is a genetic trait that continually lets a Saiyan increase in performance against adversity, either by recovering from great injuries or enduring great struggle in battle.”

Goku and Luffy are very similar in many aspects, but Luffy can’t be a Saiyan, there are no Saiyans in One Piece. BUT, and that’s a big BUT, Luffy can still get that kind of power, through Awakening!

How is it going to work you ask? Well, I would say it will be a passive trait for Luffy. Since he already has Gears, which can be considered as the equivalent of Goku’s different transformations to Super-Saiyan, this can’t be an Awakening-transformation thing. Goku’s Saiyan Power is a passive trait.

Luffy’s Passive Awakening

Luffy is a rubber man and he is invulnerable to any kind of blunt attacks (excluding Nami’s). What if he could store the energy passed to his body by these attacks, to improve the power of his own attacks greatly? When compared to Goku, that way he can “increase in performance against adversity, [by]… enduring great struggle in battle”.

Awakening combined with Haki

Luffy’s body is made of rubber. Rubber generates tension when force is applied to it. If Luffy master his Devil Fruit powers, he might be able to store that tension over time and use it against his enemies. Every hit he takes, his attacks get stronger. He get’s hit by an unusually strong character? If he survives the attack he might launch a massive counter attack. He is already on his way to accomplishing this task, as we see in his fight against Doflamingo. He took a Haki covered kick, and bounced it back

With Advanced Armament Haki that Grandpa Hyou is going to teach him, combined with this kind of Awakening he might even stand a chance against Kaido. Imagine receiving a hit from Kaido’s club, surviving hit, and releasing all the tension towards his attacker? That will skyrocket his strength in battle. Luffy and Goku both have long battles against their strongest enemies every time, they both win by a very little difference of strength, and they are both being beaten good before overcoming their enemies. Goku endures and gets stronger – Luffy can do the same.

Weakness

Now, let’s talk about the weaknesses of this type of Awakening. Luffy can’t become invincible since it will make the whole story boring. He has to fight to the death if he wants to achieve his goal. To understand the possible outcome of this technique, we can compare it to Gear 2nd. The enhanced blood-flow that allows Luffy to become much faster is shortening his life-span. His body is under A LOT of stress in fights. Storing the tension in his body will have the same effect, therefore he wouldn’t use it unless it’s the only way to win a fight. The stronger his opponent – the stronger his counter-attack will become, but also more stress to Luffy’s body.

Zoro almost died after taking Luffy’s ‘stress’, imagine the stress going on in there after a fight with a Yonko. He won’t use it as much as we would like seeing Luffy use his awakened Devil-Fruit, but it can definitely turn the battle to his favor.

I hope you guys enjoyed the read!