One Piece Chapter 1198 spoilers: Luffy's feral new form debuts, as Imu crushes Loki

One Piece Chapter 1198, The Island of Monsters, turns the Elbaf finale into a chapter of transformations: Imu shows a third form, Loki finally fights in his hybrid Zoan form and falls in one blow, and Luffy returns in a never-before-seen ape-like state.

What happens in Chapter 1198

Sanji breaks Killingham

Picking up from Chapter 1197, where Sanji's Conqueror's Haki awakened and his kick left Saint Killingham spitting blood, Sanji now shatters Killingham's armor and sends him flying. The Holy Knight ends up fleeing from Sanji in fear, mirroring how Sommers ran from Zoro in the previous fights.

In the middle of this, Killingham senses Imu's Haki, a beat that sets up the main event.

The Rain deity Zaza MMA gives up the children

Zaza, the Rain deity that Killingham conjured with his Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Kirin back in Chapter 1182, stretches her body toward the ship. She cuts off one of her own arms and throws the kidnapped children aboard.

Imu's third form

Imu transforms again, this time into an enormous creature with an elongated torso, a long neck and massive horns. Redon describes it as extremely bizarre and dense with detail, and says it is the closest any of Imu's forms has come to the devil drawn on The Harley mural, though only in simplified terms.

Loki's hybrid form, and a one-hit defeat

After chapters of build-up since Chapter 1193, Loki finally fights in his full hybrid Zoan form. During the fight, Imu presses him about the ancient technology Elbaf possesses; Loki says he knows nothing about it.

Imu acknowledges Loki's strength, then defeats him with a single blow. Loki also remarks that he never expected Luffy to run away mid-battle.

Imu then turns his attention to Luffy, while noting he must return to Mary Geoise as soon as possible or his own life will be in danger.

Luffy's new form

In the giant village, Gaban and Usopp wonder why Luffy suddenly left. Gaban remarks that "the kid" is a Zoan-type.

Luffy then appears on a rooftop, watching Zaza. He has changed: black hair, a large ape-like nose, a tail and fangs. He leaps onto Zaza, grabs her water body and bites into it, causing it to explode. The giants are left asking who on earth he is.

The chapter ends there, with a break the following week.

What the leakers add

Redon's read is that Luffy's new state is an "incomplete" awakening of his Devil Fruit, the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika, which is a Mythical Zoan. That is his interpretation, not something the chapter states.

He ties it to established lore. On Egghead, Vegapunk's satellite Shaka explained that Zoan awakenings tend to make users take on the personality of their animal, which is what happened to the Jailer Beasts of Impel Down. Fitting that pattern, Luffy does not speak in this chapter; he only makes animal-like noises.

Other details from Redon:

• No big introduction for Luffy. Unlike Gear 5's debut, Luffy's form gets no dramatic reveal panel. That treatment goes to Loki's hybrid form instead.

• A partial look only. Readers see enough to get a rough idea of the design, but no full frontal view. Redon expects that next chapter.

• Imu is hard to describe. Redon declined to detail the third form beyond its silhouette, saying readers are better off waiting for the images.

How fans are reacting

On Reddit, the top comment, with about 1,400 upvotes, simply declared "Gear Death" real. The name is a long-running fan nickname for a theorized dark or feral counterpart to Gear 5; it is a meme, not an official name, and the leaks give the form no name at all.

The black hair, tail and fangs triggered a wave of Dragon Ball jokes. One of the most-upvoted comments said Luffy had turned into Goku, others compared it to the Great Ape (Ōzaru) transformation, and one user noted that Luffy is finally living up to his family name.

Did Luffy really run away?

Few readers believe Luffy fled out of fear. The popular theory is that he lost control of his fruit while near death, and the fruit went after Zaza on its own, with some fans framing it as old enmity between the Sun God and the Rain God. Others argued that taming this state will be Luffy's version of the self-discovery Zoro and Sanji just went through in their own fights.

Loki's one-shot and Imu's escalation

Many readers were stunned that Loki, whose hybrid form was teased for weeks, went down in a single hit. Several commenters said Oda seems to be showing a lot of his cards with Imu this early, and wondered how much further the villain can go before the final war.

Fans also flagged the ancient-technology line: Imu appears to know about something on Elbaf that even the giants do not, which some hope connects to Lilith and Franky exploring the 3,000-year-old laboratory.

The lighter side

One widely shared comment called this the most "fan fiction" chapter Oda has ever written, listing three new forms, Loki being one-tapped and Sanji scaring an enemy into retreat. Another joked that Sommers and Killingham may survive the arc purely through cowardice, and some readers poked fun at how only leakers keep writing out "Zaza MMA" in full.

Open questions heading into Chapter 1199

• What exactly is Luffy's new form? An awakening, a loss of control, or something tied to Nika's history with Zaza? The full chapter on November 8 should show more of the design.

• Why must Imu hurry back to Mary Geoise? Imu says his life is at risk if he stays away, and Killingham sensing his Haki may connect to that. The leaks do not explain it.

• What ancient technology is on Elbaf? Imu's question to Loki suggests something the giants themselves do not know about.

• Is Loki out of the fight? The leaks describe his defeat, not his condition afterward.