Recently, Wano’s official OSTs were published and with it, we found partially, the answer to our question: What’s happening to Luffy? – I’ll also support this “theory” of mine with little ´proofs.
What exactly is happening to Luffy? Not Gear 5, not even Joy Boy reincarnation. Luffy is actually Awakening his devil fruit. Here’s why:
The New World preparation to Wano arc
Since the Straw Hats arrived at the 2nd half of the Grand Line, the New World, we were already being prepared for the Wano arc, but not only Wano, and also two recurrent themes: Kaido and Awakening. In Punk Hazard we meet Caesar Clown, who works for the Joker that has businesses with the Yonkos, and we meet Law, who ends up proposing Luffy an alliance to take down Kaido who resides in Wano.
Besides the preparation for the next arcs, we also get a little hint of the Awakening which is in Punk Hazard itself: the results of Akainu vs Aokiji fight divided the island in half and changed its environment, based on their devil fruit powers.
This wasn’t explained at all, so it leads us to think that they just straight-up kept shooting magma and ice for days which led to this. However, when we arrive in the Dressrosa arc we get development on the preparation to Wano with those same recurrent themes: Wano, Kaido and Awakening. The Joker is Doflamingo – a Shichibukai – itself, who works in the Underworld selling the SMILES to Kaido, and military power to all the world. But our focus today is on Doffy’s words in his fight with Luffy:
If the Awakened devil fruits also affect the surroundings, this means that when Akainu and Aokiji fought in Punk Hazard, they both were so powerful that would change the environment passively and actively. Doflamingo shows us this, he converts his surroundings into strings while both attacking and doing nothing (passively).
Now let’s move to the Zou arc. In Zou, we don’t have the Devil Fruit Awakening, but we have one of the highest preparations to Wano of all the New World: the presentation of the Kozuki Clan, its past and etc, I won’t overextend now or else we’re gonna have an 8 thousand essay about One Piece. Anyway in Zou we get to know the basics of the Wano arc AND a different Awakening, The Voice of All Things in Momonosuke and a development in Luffy’s.
After Zou, we go to the Whole Cake Island, an arc focusing on a Yonko itself: Big Mom. This is the final arc before Wano (not considering the Reverie mini-arc) and even here we still get those recurrent themes: Wano, Kaido and Awakening.
In Whole Cake Island we get another awakened devil fruit, and again, it’s changing the environment but in Katakuri’s control, only actively. He shows it lots of time, changing everything to Mochi.
And now, we FINALLY get to Wano.
Awakening In Wano
We arrived at Wano and during the final battles of the Onigashima Raid, we see that both Law and Kid have Awakened their Devil Fruits. The same recurrent theme, the same pattern all again.
However, with a few pages, it wasn’t so noticeable how much their awakening changes their powers:
Having achieved awakening of his ability, Law is capable of coating objects with the space-distorting essence of his Devil Fruit, allowing him to increase their size and/or make them phase through targets, so he can operate on said targets from the inside.”
Kid has mastered the fruit’s ability to the point of awakening it, allowing him to manifest magnetic properties on targets through direct touch. Should a target be affected by this with a significant amount of metal surrounding them, they will be quickly crushed by the metal, with the forces of attraction being strong enough to even rip large, established structures toward them. Kid can also cleverly stick a person to a piece of the environment by assigning both of those with inverse polarities, rendering the former immobilized and thus vulnerable for subsequent attacks.
This means that they can, just like the other awakened devil fruit users previously shown, change the environment based on their powers on some level. Now, what were the recurrent themes? Wano, Kaido and Awakening. We’ve already gotten the first two covered but the Awakening one is still unclear and subtle.
The OST
As told in the beginning, Wano’s OSTs were officially published and there’s this new OST is called Luffy’s Awakening.
Not only this but there are Drums in the background of the soundtrack. What else was mentioned about Drums?
Also, check Luffy’s surroundings: They are apparently melting.
Conclusion
I think my point was pretty clear and I stated everything already, there are too many coincidences of things being built up for the Wano arc and Devil Fruit Awakening staying unclear. New Wano’s OST CD has a Luffy’s Awakening song. This is neither Gear 5, nor Joy Boy reincarnation, This is Luffy’s Awakening.
*Theory by Clubjogos1
