I like Gear 5. Design wise. I like what it means in terms of absolute freedom for Luffy. That’s always what he was about. As you say, the foreshadowing for it is pretty abundant throughout the manga. I like how he uses his powers and I even like the toon aspect. What more freedom is there to have than toon-style really ?
I have a problem with the chosen one trope. Because I feel it’s just unnecessary. I think Luffy could have achieved pretty much the same results by simply keeping his regular boring rubber fruit. Oda basically already does anything he wants with awakenings anyway (cf Ope Ope No Mi, like law can create rooms, cure diseases, send shockwaves AND give eternal life ? How are any of those things actually related ? Answer is « shut up it’s magic » but none of us care because law and his fruit are cool) and there are other examples. An awakened user gets a free pass to do many things in Oda’s book, therefore, to me, the notion of the awakened rubber fruit giving Luffy the power to not just transform himself into rubber but actually transform his environment and his opponents too is just plain logical to me. I think that’s a great way to display an awakened rubber fruit. We honestly have seen more shocking things in OP. And so, I just don’t think it was necessary to give him some kind of godlike forgotten fruit. Plus it weakens the story in my opinion. Here’s why :
-
Luffy’s fruit being rubbish but him finding creative and powerful ways to use it was always a cool trope, now with it being mythical all this time, it feels not earned. All this sheer hard work and determination he went through still matters, but kinda less so.
-
Joyboy could have had the rubber fruit as well but he could have been a threat to the government not because of his fruit but simply because of his power/haki. Think shank’s style. This would have actually explained better why the government didn’t care to find the rubber fruit before Luffy ate it, or after that. Because they would be aware joyboy wasn’t a threat due to his fruit per say but because of who he was. This way also you could still have all the Joyboy/Luffy foreshadowing that Oda put in the story. You could keep that whole storyline. Just don’t make the fruit overpowered. Make the users overpowered.
-
Luffy could just accomplish basically all of the same gear five stuff with an awakened rubber fruit. Again. We’ve seen crazier things in one piece.
-
narratively speaking, and this point is subjective, I think a story where a powerful dude with a seemingly useless fruit overcomes all odds is way more interesting than this same character having been overpowered from the beginning with a mythical broken fruit we just didn’t know about.
That being said. I’ve been reading one piece for 15 years. I do like where Oda is taking Luffy in terms of absolute freedom to do what he wants. This power is the luffiest thing ever. But why can’t he just achieve that too with his rubber fruit ? It’s one piece. We have god tier characters who don’t even have devil fruit powers. It would have worked. It’s a missed opportunity but it doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of the story too much.