Shonen Jump's New Manga Steals Luffy's First One Piece Devil Fruit Power

Shonen Jump's Aliens Area came out yesterday, and the first chapter has the protagonist use Monkey D. Luffy's signature attack from One Piece.

Warning: contains spoilers for the first chapter of Aliens Area

Yesterday, Shonen Jump released a new manga called Aliens Area, written and illustrated by Fusai Naba, and it already has some similarities to One Piece. The very first chapter covers many of the story beats typical of a shonen manga series, wasting no time in getting to the main story. Despite the rush, something stands out in the series' very first battle scene, in which the protagonist unleashes a power that is eerily similar to One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy's very first Devil Fruit power.

Aliens Area follows Tatsumi Tatsunami, a teenage orphan living and working multiple jobs in Tokyo to support his younger siblings, Taro and Sachi. Like many other series from Shonen Jump, the main character has a tragic backstory. Halfway through the chapter, readers learn that Tatsumi was trapped in a burning building and that he was saved by a light but doesn't remember anything after it. Soon after that flashback, Tatsumi is attacked by aliens, stating that they are after something implanted in his right arm, which begins to act up in the aliens' presence.

Following that, one of the aliens attempts to kill Tatsumi's siblings, eliciting a violent response from Tatsumi. He reaches out with his hand, and it stretches out and punches the alien through the door and sends it flying into another building. This attack is what stands out about the battle. Tatsumi's punch is nearly identical to Luffy's original Devil Fruit attack in One Piece, the Gum-Gum Pistol. One Piece fans certainly know the pirate manga protagonist's signature attack, where he throws his stretchy arm back as far as he can before bringing it around to unleash a devastating blow on his opponents.

Whether or not this was a deliberate choice is something that only Naba knows for sure, but even casual One Piece fans can't deny that Tatsumi's attack was the same as Luffy's Gum-Gum Pistol. One Piece is not the only manga series that one can be reminded of from this moment. The use of a stretchy right arm infected by extraterrestrial matter is basically the same premise of the protagonist in Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte, a scary alien body-horror series. Hopefully, Tatsumi's arm doesn't become sentient and threaten to kill everyone Tastsumi cares about, because then Aliens Area really is stealing ideas from other manga series.

Although the premier chapter seemed rushed, and the protagonist's attack was stolen from One Piece's Luffy, Shonen Jump's new manga series shows promise. Now that it's come out, fingers crossed that Aliens Area goes with original ideas from this point forward.

More: One Piece Proves Luffy Isn't the Story's True Hero

Keep up with Shonen Jump's exciting new series, Aliens Area now on Viz Media's Shonen Jump app!