Everything I would like to say has been said already. I personally like the fact we finally got to the awakening fruit, I don't mind at all he managed to get there after he nearly died, I'm not a super mega fan of the design, but it's ok and I'll learn to like it. I just don't understand why all of this couldn't be achieved with the Gomu Gomu fruit? It would have been perfect, we could have gotten to the exact same place without creating issues and doubts in terms of story-telling and what has been foreshadow and what not, etc.
And I read the full explanation from Greg and others but still to me it's not a reasonable explanation for a lot of things that happened and didn't happen in the last 20 years. And it doesn't sit well with how the Gomu Gomu has always been described as a "normal" devil fruit by Oda, because it was fun to tell the story of a "normal" person achieving extraordinary things.
On a separate note, I wonder what happened with Zoro as I we see his sword abandoned in the first panel of the chapter.