Luffy's Fist Raised Against the Storm — Print & Oil Painting

The sheet has been photographed with its own edges showing, a white margin along the top and down both sides, and that is worth knowing because it changes how the image works. This is paint on paper, brushed wet, the blues bleeding into one another and the bare sheet left uncovered to make the lightning.

Those bolts fork across the upper two thirds, three or four main strikes with branches, and they are the brightest thing in the picture by a long way. Below them a tall ship heels over with its dark blue sails still set, rigging tangled, hull sunk in green-white surf scraped on in short violent strokes.

The figure is small, central and turned away from us: a red vest, blue shorts, bare legs, a straw hat, and one arm raised straight overhead with the hand closed. He stands on a black shelf of rock at the bottom of the frame with the sea coming in on either side of him.

The hat carries the whole character. It reached Luffy from Shanks, who had it from Gol D. Roger, and the promise attached to handing it over is the reason he is standing in front of a storm at all rather than somewhere sensible.

It belongs to our One Piece collection, next to the duel between the hat's first owner and his only rival.