One Piece: Are The Admirals As Strong As Emperors?

The entire state and balance of the One Piece world is maintained by a system called the ‘Three Great Powers’. These powers are essentially 3 of the strongest groups that are incredibly influential, however, each of their reach and power are also kept in check by the other 2 groups, ensuring that one doesn’t rise above the others. As seen in the series, a dissolution of one of these powers creates a power vacuum that another can claim.

These powers are the World Government, the Seven Warlords, and the Four Emperors of the Sea. The Emperors are the most powerful pirates in the world, both in terms of control and strength, and although the Warlords are allied with the World Government, the organization has its main force to combat its strongest enemies in the form of the Admirals. In this article, let’s see if the Admirals can match up to the strongest pirates in One Piece.

Who Are The Admirals?

The World Government’s greatest asset

In the ranks of the Marines, the position of Admiral is almost the highest in the entire Navy, second only to the Fleet Admiral. Those in this position are by far the strongest Marines as well, mainly due to their mastery of their overpowered Devil Fruits, in conjunction with their proficient usage of the various kinds of Haki. Moreover, such a high rank also gives them an incredible level of power within the Navy as they can control and issue orders to all who are ranked below them.

When they were first introduced within the story, the Admirals were nigh-untouchable due to them having some of the most broken Logia Devil Fruit Powers. After the timeskip, 2 vacant Admiral positions were eventually filled by Fujitora and Ryokugyu after Akainu was promoted to Fleet Admiral and Aokiji left the ranks of the Marines following his defeat at the hands of the former.

The strength of the Admirals:

As stated previously, the Admirals are the strongest Marines in the entire organization due to their incredible Devil Fruits as well as their Haki. Akainu has the most offensively-powerful Logia fruit of them all, which was what allowed him to mortally wound Whitebeard and kill Ace. Kizaru, on the other hand, has the Light-Light fruit, that makes him perhaps the fastest character in the series due to his ability to control and become light, which went to show how powerful he was when he almost singlehandedly defeated the Worst Generation on Sabaody.

After them, there is Fujitora, the only Admiral who doesn’t use a Logia type fruit. However, his Paramecia fruit allows him to control gravity on any scale he desires, making him one of the strongest characters in the series and, while he may not be as strong as the others, Ryokugyu is still incredibly powerful, as he was able to take out multiple Yonko-Commanders at once. Although Aokiji isn’t part of the Marines anymore, his power is second only to Akainu’s, as he proved with his incredible feats and battles throughout the story.

Admirals vs. Emperors Of The Sea

How do they match up to the Yonko?

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When it comes to a thematic answer to this question, the Admirals have clearly always been built up as the World Government’s answer to the Emperors of the Sea. This is shown not only through the insane abilities and strength they have but also through the power they command, since Admirals control legions of Marines of lower ranks than themselves, similar to how the Emperors control an entire fleet of pirates.

However, this question is not an easy one to answer. Due to the varying strength among Yonko, there are some that are far easier for the Admirals to take down than others. The best example of this is Buggy, who is one of the current Emperors, since he wouldn’t even be a challenge to even the weakest Admiral. However, on the other hand, there is Luffy. The events of the Egghead arc showed the true power of Gear 5, where Luffy was so powerful that he was merely toying with Kizaru, who is an Admiral feared by almost every pirate!

The Marineford War was a great showing of the strength of the Admirals, where it was made even clearer that they were supposed to represent the opposite side of the coin from the Emperors. Although Whitebeard is generally considered to be the strongest man in history and had the ability to destroy the world, Aokiji and Akainu still fought him head-on, with Akainu landing fatal blows on him and even blowing half of his face off!

Although Akainu sustained a ton of damage in this interaction, the lack of fear he showed in taking Whitebeard on without any backup shows how strong the Admirals truly are. Each showing they’ve had, except maybe for Marineford and Egghead, shows them using only a fraction of their full strength, so the fact that they can do so much damage is truly a testament to how much power they possess.

However, this rule of varying strength goes both ways. This is because, at the close of the Wano arc, Shanks showed one of the greatest feats of Conquerer’s Haki in the entire series, where he immobilized Ryokugyu from miles away, despite the Admiral taking out some of Wano’s strongest characters with ease. Though he didn’t pass out due to this Haki feat and was merely frozen, it shows how much stronger Shanks is than him.

All in all, Admirals have always been built up as the greatest enemies of the Emperors of the Sea and, more often than not, are shown to be at a comparable level. Although Shanks’ Conqueror’s Haki was able to subdue Ryokugyu, Kizaru didn’t get knocked out or scarred in any way by Joyboy’s Conquerer’s Haki, which was potent enough to send even the Gorosei back to their castle, showing that even among the Admirals, there exist those who are stronger than others!

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