Luffy also met a little girl named Tama who has been a friend to his dead brother, that promised her that he will make the Wano Country a better place for her. Luffy taking over to finish the promise his brother made to the little girl goes on and makes it his entire mission to liberate Wano from Kaido’s brutality.
Every arc in the New World has been progressing to Wano and has been slowly building up to this huge point of the story. Numerous people came together to Wano, and Luffy has been the main figure leading this huge war against the Emperors. Luffy with all the promises he’s made to his friends can not just up and throw away and lose or be overshadowed by his subordinates/other pirates to do the task for him.
Luffy already fought Kaido once and has gotten humiliated despite throwing everything he got. This was a huge wake up call for Luffy and a time to grow and surpass his limits. For the first time in One Piece history, Luffy has trained in arc for the sole purpose of surpassing the antagonist he is after.
Mind you that Luffy has gotten defeated multiple times by the main antagonist of an arc, but in all those instances he never took time to train for that main antagonist, but in this case Luffy did 2 weeks of training to make that final push to these new heights of strength. Luffy knowing fully what Kaido is capable of, and already being defeated by the Yonkos twice is now fully perpared and confident in overcoming Kaido. This is a very special moment for Luffy in his story, it is to emphaszie that these Yonkos are different than the other foes he’s fought and overcome, he needs to train personally for Kaido and has found a way to overcome him.
To think Luffy will fail while he already has multiple times against the Yonkos, and fail at this very crucial moment in his story is outright delusional.
Clearly we can see here that the Emperors are foes that are directly in front of Luffy and his goal to became the Pirate King. They are his rivals that are here to gain what Luffy wants as well. These are enemies since the majority of Luffy’s story, made to be a huge obstacle for Luffy to overcome. If he does not overcome them, especially now then a lot of the promises made by Luffy and others in the story become very stupid in the long run. This brings us to the next point and why this is a big moment for the entire One Piece story as a whole Luffy needs to overcome Kaido and the Yonkos now, as this is the part of the story where the dawn begins.
