How do you feel about Luffy gear 5, narratively?

[Warmmedown]

Feels like baloney, but even worse - overcooked rubbery baloney.

Look at Garp. He's just strong with no externally-sourced devil fruit powers. Ok, luffy can't swim and he had to train and come up with 2nd, 3rd, 4th gear. But 5th gear is just his fruit making him top tier. Oh wow I'm so proud of my grandson for his hax fruit. Koby>Luffy. Monkey D Koby. We never saw Koby's parents.

 

[SSJ2]

I don't care much about the power up, as Luffy's base form doesn't seem all that far away from it now. But I don't like the change to his personality that it's had. It's like he's physically incapable of taking anything seriously now. Vegapunk got slaughtered and he can't stop laughing like some psychopath. It feels like all of the "cool" moments Luffy has had standing up for his friends are over. Now he's just some massive white clown.

 

[sei'taer]

Luffy's base form during the fight with Kaido was considerably amped up. He fought large portions of that fight with just haki.

His fruit powers are super strong now, but he was already on the cusp without gear 5.