Would that be better? Would it be worse? Same?
As in if we knew that luffy had the mythical zoan nika since the start of the story. Or if oda only revealed that it's zoan early on then later reveal that it's mythical then nika.
If you knew all along about Luffy's fruit
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Some people might treat it as a lame last minute retcon, but I'd really have to wonder when the idea of Luffy's fruit turning out to be Zoan was had, because of this line from Chapter 685:
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I think the anticipation of "when will he awaken its full power" would get old before chapter 1044. Every loss and every arc's darkest hour, people would be theorising nonstop that this is the one where Nika comes out. And if you think the complaints of the series having no stakes are bad now, imagine the discourse around Luffy's losses to Crocodile, or Lucci, or even the earlier Kaido defeats, if people knew for a fact Luffy had one last trump card he hadn't played yet.
It probably would have pushed Oda into doing some more traditional shonen-y type stuff like having the hero lose control completely to the monster lurking inside him a few times until he finally makes peace with it and gets it together, which is the kind of cliche that would leave One Piece not standing out as much as it does now.
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@uniaka:
Would that be better? Would it be worse? Same?
As in if we knew that luffy had the mythical zoan nika since the start of the story. Or if oda only revealed that it's zoan early on then later reveal that it's mythical then nika.
I would have been used to it. In the same way that Naruto having the 9 tail fox is just part of his identity to me since it was early information .
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The problem is that there was never any indication of ANY zoan whatsoever that only behaved like a zoan after it was awakend. Also, it's the sungod Nika fruit, but we know next to nothing about Nika and Nika was only recently introduced, so it now can function as a "do whatever free card" because knowledge of Nika is unknown. You could for instance ask what a sungod has to do with rubber. Some people seem to argue that the explanation can come afterwards but will that make it okay and will there be an actual explanation at all? This is not a given. I agree that the artistic freedom this gives Oda for future fights is immense and as seen in this chapter also very funny but I'm already anticipating the future asspulls that'll follow because "that is something Nika could do". "That is how dinosaurs used to fight" was funny but only because we "think" we know dinosaurs and it came completely out of the left field but as already mentioned, we know nothing of Nika so the same can not happen for this fruit.
(side note: It would've been cool to have seen some weird dinosaur moves in little garden. :P)Would it have been better if we knew it was a zoan? No because nothing indiciates it being a zoan and you'd have to say what zoan so Oda would've had to say which animal this fruit represented and which actual animal has rubber powers?
Would it have been better if we knew it was a mythical zoan from the start? It being a rare fruit from the start would have taken away from the underdog feeling Luffy always had with his rubber fruit because it was a silly simple fruit with little to no real battle use and it was upto Luffy's imagination to use the fruit in interesting ways like Gear 2 or Gear 3 so to me it would've been best if the rubber fruit was just that, the rubber fruit. Nothing special about it except for the boy that accidentally ate it and pushes it to its limit.
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I don't think it matters much tbh. Zoan, Paramecia, Logia - it's just a word and doesn't change anything about Luffy's fruit and himself.
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If i knew from chapter one that Luffy had a save the world devil fruit it probably would've colored my view of his journey.
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@uniaka:
Would that be better? Would it be worse? Same?
As in if we knew that luffy had the mythical zoan nika since the start of the story. Or if oda only revealed that it's zoan early on then later reveal that it's mythical then nika.
Had it been hinted some 200-300 chapters ago at least and then slowly built up upon it, I would have called it fair. Moreover the way it was exposed via those geezers, commenting while sitting on the couch, also ticked me up.
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This is new 1044 Spoiler section page? Feels like it ..
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I think it would've worked better for me.
If Luffy started off with this supposed "Legendary" fruit, that everybody thought was a bit of a joke because all it did was make you a bit rubbery compared to what other Mythical Zoans can pull off, and over the course of the series manages to do more and more incredible things with it, until he finally fully unlocks it, it would've felt more like he'd earned it.I mean, that's basically the same story anyways, it just lands better and feels less like a last minute addition (IMO).
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I wouldn't have enjoyed the story as much if we knew all along. It's already obvious that Luffy is the "chosen one" - he's the protagonist of a shonen manga. It's a huge responsibility which needed to be obscured in order to enjoy their light-hearted adventures without pressure. I know I'd be tapping my foot while the Straw Hats party it up.
Besides that, we needed to build the dramatic tension, otherwise it'd change the direction of the story from the beginning. On Day 1, if we were told Luffy ate the Nika fruit, why should we care? Who's Nika and why is he important? The Nika fruit's very existence is an advanced concept which only makes sense in context with later plot elements. It reveals too much about the nature of Devil Fruits too soon.
Imagine in the first chapter, trying to establish Devil Fruit powers for the first time, and then dropping this bomb. It's just too much weight on the story.
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I think the anticipation of "when will he awaken its full power" would get old before chapter 1044. Every loss and every arc's darkest hour, people would be theorising nonstop that this is the one where Nika comes out. And if you think the complaints of the series having no stakes are bad now, imagine the discourse around Luffy's losses to Crocodile, or Lucci, or even the earlier Kaido defeats, if people knew for a fact Luffy had one last trump card he hadn't played yet.
It probably would have pushed Oda into doing some more traditional shonen-y type stuff like having the hero lose control completely to the monster lurking inside him a few times until he finally makes peace with it and gets it together, which is the kind of cliche that would leave One Piece not standing out as much as it does now.
pretty succinct write-up!
But yeah for me it would reduce to a game of "okay is THIS the arc/fight Luffy goes sun god mode??" and as quoted above, rob a lot of tension from the series that infamously has deflated some key tension in its major moments.
I feel kinda bad as I've mocked/lamented Naruto and Bleach falling into the exact kind of trap, turning my nose up at One Piece being a bit more clever ("see, ACE is Roger's son, not Luffy!")…..but such is the nature of shonen. Big powerful form + mc is the equation needed to combat the large power scaling it often falls victim too. One Piece was better at side-stepping it - Douriki was for one arc and the series pre-haki had a bit more of a fruit vs fruit clashing dynamic - but in the end, it too fell into the same trappings.
Does it retroactively ruin some of the best moments of the series for me? Well not totally...most of those haven't been "me punch hard"....but it sets the stage for how things will conclude for One Piece. It can still end a high note DESPITE this revelation, but now I'm just cautious.
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I wouldn't have enjoyed the story as much if we knew all along. It's already obvious that Luffy is the "chosen one" - he's the protagonist of a shonen manga. It's a huge responsibility which needed to be obscured in order to enjoy their light-hearted adventures without pressure. I know I'd be tapping my foot while the Straw Hats party it up.
Besides that, we needed to build the dramatic tension, otherwise it'd change the direction of the story from the beginning. On Day 1, if we were told Luffy ate the Nika fruit, why should we care? Who's Nika and why is he important? The Nika fruit's very existence is an advanced concept which only makes sense in context with later plot elements. It reveals too much about the nature of Devil Fruits too soon.
Imagine in the first chapter, trying to establish Devil Fruit powers for the first time, and then dropping this bomb. It's just too much weight on the story.
I think what people have less of a problem with is the chosen one trope and ultimately how much credit can be given for luffy’s own efforts, which I think quite a bit can be given since he’s not being possessed by Joy Boy or anything like that.
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I'd love it if every time we saw cartoon expressions from crew members it was actually due to Luffys fruit partially awakening, but nobody ever addressed it.
Crew: now that you mention it, this would explain why we survived after jumping 5km's from a giant elephant.
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Better, but still I would be turned off by the destiny implication the story is better off without.
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What pisses me off isn't so much the reveal that the fruit was something else, but the nature of it.
I don't like that "Joyboy" has been reduced to a Devil Fruit power to begin with. No matter the nature of the power, it really just made the mystery behind Joyboy smaller.
I don't like that this mystery revolved around an in-universe god, rather than a real-world one that could be deduced or predicted. Every prediction about the Gomu Gomu's true nature was doomed to fail because Nika wasn't well-established beforehand. Luffy's power couldn't be anything other than rubber because there's no rubber mythological figure. So, Oda just created one. We entered a messy storytelling territory in which the author can pull anything out of his sleeve.
And I don't like slapstick powers. They are fine in self-contained comedic stories like the Mask, but every instance of them in larger stories is messy and can really ruin the mood or the setting. They are a gimmick that runs out of steam fast.
Oda really messed up with the build up to this reveal. The fruit being something else should have been hinted way earlier than Wano. The nature of Nika should have been explored more before Luffy turned into it.
But now that the damage is done, what it really needs is to define its limits. What exactly can it do? I don't wanna see Luffy at some point transform his feet into rocket launchers and then Oda justifies it as "lol, Nika have rocket launchers in his feet".
I'm kinda worried that now Luffy will just goof around every major villain he fights, with maybe Blackbeard being the exception because he can negate DF powers completely.
Personally, the fruit being just plain old Gomu Gomu was enough. Its awakening would broaden its ability, I can see the OG paramecia still being able to morph Luffy's body at will and turn the surroundings into rubber. All that we'd lose is the dumb smile and some of the more grotesque slapstick. Plus, it would have no "chosen one", "destined to suceed", "prophecy" undertones linked to it.
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That wouldn't change a thing for me. Having the rubber DF or the "someone who had rubber power" DF doesn't change anything for me regarding Luffy's use of that DF.
It's still a MC doing rubber stuff and it's funny and surprisingly cool.
