Another example is Jinbe and Whitebeard during Marineford. They saw Luffy, they believed in him and decided to impose their will to help Luffy achieve the Dawn that the World is waiting for.
And let’s not forget the Straw Hat Crew that basically keeps him alive. After all, Luffy himself has declared that he could not achieve his purpose without his crew. In essence, Luffy is not someone special that will free the world by himself because he is extremely strong or destined to. Instead, the arrival of the Dawn will be the accumulative effort and determination of countless people across multiple centuries. It just happens that Luffy had the will and determination to be at the forefront of this effort.
Finally, as a side note, I want to talk a bit about the Gomu Gomu No Mi. Specifically, people believe that since the fruit is somehow special or important, it negates Luffy’s achievements and progress. The problem with this argument is that we don’t have the slightest idea of why the World Government considers the fruit important.
As you know, the objectives of the World Government are to control people by manipulating and controlling history (Ohara incident, Gol D. Roger’s name) or by physically oppressing them (Buster Calls, SSG). Based on these objectives, the World Government might have wanted to secure the fruit for various reasons. For example, someone with this fruit might have been an important figure in the past that the World Government thinks could inspire others in the present to take action against them. Therefore, they want to erase any trace of that person’s existence, just to be safe.
Another reason as to why they might want this fruit, would to be use it for a very specific reason or project. As many people have already noted, Vegapunk might have had ideas to use this fruit’s rubber nature for a very specific application.
My point is, that there a lot of possibilities as to why the fruit is extremely important and it does not mean that the fruit has a special ability that makes it overpowered. This means that the fruit could be a mediocre one in terms of strength but Luffy had to use his combat ingenuity to make it as powerful as it currently is.
Sorry for the kind of long read, but if you reached this far I really appreciate it. I understand why people are a bit skeptical about the recent development but I just want to remind everyone to relax, take a breath and let the story play out before jumping so strongly to conclusions. And if I didn’t manage to convince you, then I think we all agree that at least we can trust Oda, who has consistenly kept this series amazing for so long, to not ruin it like that at the end.
*by Roronoa_D_Rayleigh
