Gomu Gomu no Mi

The Gomu Gomu no Mi is a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit that turns the user's body into rubber, making the user a Rubber Human (ゴム人間). "Gomu" means rubber in Japanese,. In the Viz Manga and 4Kids and FUNimation dubs, it is called the Gum-Gum Fruit. It was originally a treasure that Shanks and his crew took from an unspecified enemy, but was accidentally eaten by series protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. In the second version of Romance Dawn, it originally belonged to Luffy's grandpa who took it from an unspecified enemy.

Appearance
The Gomu Gomu no Mi is a violet, spherical fruit with a stem sprouting out of the top, with swirls that go in a curly "S" pattern. It overall resembles a Yubari Melon. While its final design has the characteristic Devil Fruit swirls all over it, the fruit was initially drawn without them in the first version of Romance Dawn.

Strengths and Weaknesses
The fruit's major strength, as demonstrated by Luffy, is that the person's body can stretch like rubber even when the fruits power is nullified (for instance, when Nojiko pulls Luffy's head out of the water in Arlong Park) and makes them almost entirely immune to blunt attacks, including hand-to-hand combat, bullets or even cannonballs and can be further reinforced with the application of Busoshoku Haki. The user's rubber body also allows the user to survive falls from heights that would kill a normal person. The user's ability to stretch and twist like rubber to extreme lengths not only makes them immune to injuries that originate from such, but it also allows them moves that can give them a great advantage in battle or otherwise. Stretching also allows the user to drastically increase the range of what would otherwise be considered a powerful close-range attack, turning it into a devastating mid-range or long-range attack. A stretched limb can also be used to store potential energy like a stretched spring, increasing the power of an attack. Combined with Haki, his power is increased even more. Owing to rubber's natural insulating properties, the user is also immune to electrical attacks and is also able to hit electric Logia users without Haki.

Luffy's body is similar to a rubber band, requiring him to use excessive motion to 'throw' an attack. After the time-skip though, the extra movement is unneccesary, and Luffy is able to stretch easily.

In an SBS, Oda stated that Luffy's maximum stretching distance is 72 Gomu Gomus.

By training his abilities, Luffy has found unexpected ways to increase his fighting ability, such as the ability to stretch his blood vessels wider to increase the speed of his blood flow in order to become faster and stronger, at a cost of depleting his body's energy at a faster rate. Luffy can even inflate his bones to increase the volume of his body and significantly increase his attacks, at the cost of his body becoming smaller for a short period of time (although after the timeskip Luffy has seemingly been able overcome this weakness as after he used Elephant Gun on the Kraken and he did not revert to his smaller size afterwards).

The fruit turns all parts of the consumer's body into rubber, including organs. As such, Luffy has a bigger appetite than the average human, eating more than anyone else in his crew and always digesting it before anyone else is hungry again.

Despite all the great advantages Luffy gets by using his fruit, he can however still be hurt by cutting or stabbing attacks, as well as non-physical attacks such as fire or ice. One major risk of Luffy's powers is that he is vulnerable to attacks in the moments when his limbs are stretched to their limit, as Buggy and Kuro both demonstrated early on in the series. Luffy, however, has adapted his fighting style to minimize this risk such as when Buggy attempted to exploit this weakness of Luffy.

Luffy has also shown a limited ability of moving in mid-air, by grabbing onto something with an extended limb and propelling away from what could have been a fatal attack. This gives Luffy the option of several jumping and mid-air attacks that would have been disadvantageous to most other people as it would have left them vulnerable.

In his youth, Luffy had a problem controlling his own abilities. Though he had an idea of how they would work, Luffy had trouble with aiming and the timing of his attacks, and he was continuously sent spinning by the recoil. However, he managed to counter these weaknesses with his continuous training in the jungle by the time he left to be a pirate.

In the anime, Luffy has used his stretching abilities to inhale great amounts of air to thus exhale a big gust of wind; this application of his powers was used to blow away Marigold's poisonous smoke from her venom spit and Magellan's poison breath.

Given Luffy's elastic properties he is shown to be able to withstand great pressure, as shown near Fishman Island when fighting Hody. Though he was still weakened by the sea water around him, he was seemingly unaffected by the intense underwater pressure.

Luffy, of course, also suffers the same weaknesses to water and Kairoseki as other Devil Fruit users. However, he appears to forget about his weakness to water, as he always wants to try some type of sport in the sea and will dive into the ocean when he sees someone drowning (only to end up drowning himself). While contact with water and Kairoseki does drain Luffy of his energy and nullify the rubber's ability to absorb blunt attacks (as with Smoker's jutte), his actual body still maintains its rubber make, allowing a third party to stretch his body for him.

The Gomu Gomu no Mi is also susceptible to Busoshoku Haki. Similar to water's effects, the usage of Haki only nullifies Luffy's ability to absorb blunt attacks. It does not however, revert Luffy's body to flesh. Through the use of Busoshoku Haki, Luffy's Grandfather was able to hurt him using only his fist (though Garp attributed this to "love").

Usage
The powers of the fruit have been used by Luffy in a variety of ways. These range from simply moving from one place to another in a rather reckless manner, to attacking an enemy with a barrage of fast and strong punches. He has also developed several peculiar methods of combat as time passed, adapting new forms by manipulating his elastic body, most prominent his "Gear Second" and "Gear Third" forms, allowing him to momentarily increase his strength in combat. After the timeskip, he has learned to use Haki in conjunction with the fruit's powers, as well as having more control over his forms.

However Luffy, being who he is, doesn't only use his ability for battle. When with his crew, or even when partying with others, Luffy tends to use his elastic properties for the humor and joy of others, such as making funny faces, or using his rubber body parts to play around. Often throughout the series he would stretch out and steal other peoples food, much to their annoyance. He also uses it for utility functions, like transport, for example using his Gomu Gomu Rocket to travel great distances quickly. Luffy has no problem letting other people play with his rubber body, which people tend to take advantage of.

Early One Piece
Luffy's stretching powers were a result of Oda's desire for the fighting style to be silly, so that no matter how tense a situation got, the reader could relax without becoming stressed out. Oda originally just called the fruit the 'Gomu Fruit'. But his editor pointed out there really existed a Rubber fruit so Oda changed the name.

Oda rewrote several details about the Gomu Gomu no Mi in his early version of One Piece Romance Dawn V.1 and Romance Dawn V.2. In V.1, the Devil Fruit the fruit was the same except the Gomu Gomu no Mi was the fruit of the Gomu Gomu tree which grew once every 50 year and there were no named attacks in V.1. In V.2 the first named attack is given, however rather say "Gomu Gomu..." at the start of all his moves, Luffy simply said "Right hand stopper!". Little detail was given on the Devil Fruit itself in V.2.

Translation and Dub Issues
Viz, 4Kids and FUNimation all translate this fruit's name as the "Gum-Gum Fruit". This translation comes from the etymology of the Japanese word "Gomu". "Gomu" is a loan word from English, it comes from "Gum" which is used in English to refer to rubber to identify it as "Natural Rubber" instead of "Synthetic Rubber". This is not only true of Japanese, but most worldly language derive their word for "Rubber" from "Gum". For example, in Spanish and Catalan: Goma, French: Gomme, German: Gummi, Albanian: Gomë, Croatian: Guma, Hebrew: Gummi, Italian: Gomma, Finnish: Kumi, Norwegian: Gummi, and so forth.

Viz most likely selected "Gum-Gum" as a translation over "Rubber Rubber" due to "Gum" being phonically similar to "Gomu". The only English version of the series to ever translate it out as the "Rubber Rubber Fruit" is the Odex version. This is because it has no connections to the North American versions at all. Despite translating Gomu as "Gum", all English versions refer to Luffy as a "Rubberman".

Trivia

 * In the 3rd Movie, it is shown that Luffy will not sink in water in his Gomu Gomu no Fuusen technique. However, this is not seen in the anime nor in the manga.
 * Luffy's first demonstration of his ability and his reason for eating the Devil Fruit differ between the manga and the anime. In the manga, Shanks grabbed Luffy's hand while Luffy was walking away causing his arm to stretch, with Luffy later claiming to have eaten the Fruit thinking it was dessert. In the anime, Shanks witnessed Luffy eating the Devil Fruit out of anger and tried to make him spit it out by grabbing the boy by the ankles and shaking him up and down, which caused Luffy's legs to stretch to the point where his face hit the floor.
 * Luffy has far more named Devil Fruit attacks than any other Devil Fruit user.
 * After the timeskip, Luffy can activate his Gear Second without doing his "blood-pumping" pose. He can now pump his blood while standing, and even select a particular part of his body to bestow the effect upon; this ability to centralize the effects of Gear Second to any part of his body is not unlike that of those exhibited by skilled Zoan users, who are able to transform only a designated body part into animal form.
 * After the timeskip, Luffy no longer reverts to Chibi form after using Gear Third, as shown after he used a Gomu Gomu no Elephant Gatling on Noah and did not decrease in size afterwards.
 * When Luffy uses Busoshoku Haki, his body darkens in color. This is a reference to the process of vulcanization, where rubber becomes a denser material. In One Piece: Gigant Battle! 2 New World, the Busoushoku Haki give his body a dark blue color skin.

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