Killer’s comment to Hawkins this chapter really confirms my thoughts on One Piece’s themes. It’s an idea that has always existed in One Piece but Oda seems to really be exploring that theme here in Wano.
This is something peppered throughout the story at rare moments and it’s something people often confuse for fate or destiny. Especially when looked at in isolation but when you put them all together it paints a very clear picture. The truth is that there is no such thing as “fate” in One Piece. That’s just something a lot of characters believe because it’s an easy “go to” explanation. What’s actually happening is something far simpler.
One of the reasons the Katakuri fight was so great was because in encapsulated damn near every theme in the story in one single encounter while developing both characters.
But the important part here is what it has to say about “fighting the odds”. Oda describes Luffy as a man of action. So in this encounter we have a clash between Katakuri the man who can see the future vs Luffy the man of action. The question asked for us at the start of the fight is “who decides the future?” and in the end the man of action succeeds over the man who could merely “see” the future. What the story is trying to say it made clear through Bege much earlier: “You can only see the future, everyone else has the power to change it.”
The ability to take action is what decides the future. Which is why Luffy succeeds where Katakuri fails.
The point the story is trying to make is that the most effective way to predict the future is to create it. Your actions effect the outcome. The Odds are NOT static. They are always changing and your actions have the potential to change them. Which is why guys like Killer and the Rooftop Supernovas are on the same wavelength. They believe in their own ability.
In Luffy vs Katakuri, the future seeing man thinks that Luffy’s future is decided. Because he’s already seen it. But Luffy persists and takes action against every prediction. To the point where the outcome has completely changed. And by the end of the fight Katakuri can no longer see a future where he defeats Luffy. Because Luffy changed his odds. Through taking action.
We have this theme coming up again earlier in the arc with Tama. The Beast Pirates are at a massive advantage over The Alliance during the Raid. But because Tama chose to take action, those Odds have changed. Having literally said: “I’ve come here to change those odds.”
Oda has been telling us this long before Wano.
You can go back through the series and see this everywhere. This is why Shanks says to Coby at Marineford that: “those few seconds of courage you took to take action just changed the future”
Again the story is hitting at the idea of people’s actions being what decides the future. Not fate.
