I’ve seen the degrading discourse on the latest chapter, and how people feel that Nika is being disrespected and brought down to not being something special. I think that’s the point. Here’s my thoughts and reading of it.
Thematically this chapter is perfect cause it shatters the “Luffy is a chosen one” narrative. In my reading, this is a visual representation of how all of us and everyone in the One Piece world has it in us to be Nikas. To be warriors of liberation. Just cause Luffy has the fruit doesn’t make him any more special than anyone else. He just happens to be freedom and the striving for freedom personified, and in philosophical terms this chapter signifies Bonney’s journey from childish romanticism to existentialist freedom. She goes from losing her innocence and being unable to transform as saturn brings her down from romantic innocence and transcendance to grim reality. In this chapter, shes spiralling towards nihilism, believing there’s no point and she cannot be free, she cannot be Nika. Luffy is a nietzsche-esque figure bringing the proclamation that “life is meaningless, Rejoice!” . In other words, he’s informing her that there is nothing essential about being free. It’s not a matter of whether you can or cannot do it. Everyone is and always has been free to make their own meaning and decide for themselves who and what they are. All core ideas of existentialism. She decides and is responsible for herself. If she wants to be Nika, the embodiment of freedom, then she can. Her life and meaning is what she wants to make of it.
*Theory by Its-ya-boi-waffle
