Luffy and the Chosen One Narrative
Lately, I've been thinking about how interesting and unique One Piece is in its handling of the Chosen One narrative. Ever since Luffy's first bounty poster went around the world in vol. 12, the mayor of Windmill Village suggests that Luffy is following fate rather than his own dreams.
(Random screenshot I've been staring at today. Luffy hanging out in the ceiling watching Zoro fight Lucci, psychopath recently demoted to aggressive kitty they play with for fun, is a visual I adore.)
One crucial relationship in any Chosen One narrative is that between the Chosen One and their chosenness.
One Piece is not unique for having kept Luffy isolated from his chosenness for so long—despite hinting at it in the narrative, even readers/viewers were kept in the dark about Luffy's chosenness until Act 3 of Wano.
Now, this analysis is a bit premature, because to this day, Luffy does not know his chosenness, and thus has no relationship with it. Any thoughts I have at this point could be rendered completely meaningless depending on Luffy's future relationship with his chosenness.
That said, I do think it is remarkable that even at this juncture, when most of his crew and several other characters around the world and around Luffy have directly interacted with his chosenness, Luffy himself has only reacted with a ?
There is a chance that Robin has had an inkling of this for a longer time than even we the audience have; but Kuma, Rayleigh, Vegapunk, Bonney, Kaido, Emmett, Zunisha, Momonosuke, Yamato, Shanks, Gaban, Dorry, Broggy and the other giants of Elbaph have all shown that they know what Luffy is, and many of them have addressed it to him directly....
And Luffy, we are given to understand, has no idea what they're talking about, and so he occasionally repeats a word (like Nika), but does not know what it seems to mean and does not seem to retain that people had reacted a certain way.
Case in point, when he sees that Bonney has a gear 5th form, he helps her do it better, but does not question what that means.
Kaido, Emmett, Bonney, Dorry and Broggy have all directly tried to talk to Luffy about this but Luffy has retained none of it.
The thing is, Chosen One narratives usually have the protagonist have some kind of relationship with the chosenness because it introduces some kind of narrative tension, whether that is how the character defies a fate they didn't want, comes to accept a fate they originally didn't want, follows a fate they wanted only to realize it asks more of them than they wanted....
But One Piece, so far, has not used the Chosen One narrative to build tension around Luffy, because at this point, we understand Luffy as a person and know that he does not give one fuck what fate says. If he wants to do something, he'll do it. If he doesn't want to do something, he won't do it. There is perhaps no character in media who is as self-aware and honest about his needs and wants as Luffy, and so one reason why Luffy hasn't been confronted with his chosenness so far, perhaps, is because even if he were, nothing would change.
And yet I still find it significant that he hasn't yet truly had that confrontation, which has me beginning to wonder if he will simply never understand the so-called fate he's been supposedly saddled with, or if a confrontation is coming.
I far prefer the former, but ultimately this is because I increasingly think that Luffy's chosenness is different from a lot of Chosen One narratives in that it's not really about Luffy being a singular, remarkable individual who was fated to change the world, but rather that he is a singular, remarkable individual with the right objectives in the right place at the right time.
What separates Luffy from Ace, when they both seem like they could have inspired the people around them in the same way? Luffy's goals have been more set in stone than Ace's, perhaps—but also, Luffy was luckier. Blackbeard tried to come after him just as he was awaiting the knock-up stream, and so (as I believe was coined by the youtuber Mr. Morj), in a cointoss of fate, Blackbeard fought Ace first, and so it was Ace who died, Luffy who survived. But it's also a little more than that, because while Ace and Luffy have both demonstrated a willingness to die for each other, I wonder if Luffy would have made the same choice in Ace's place, or if he would have tried to defend his brother in a way that did not necessarily involve a simple trading of lives?
What separates Luffy from Roger, who was just as charismatic, powerful, and connected to the world? Time, pure and simple. Roger was the right man with the right goal at the wrong time. (And how many people like this have there been throughout history in our real world? How many revolutionaries, freedom fighters, and visionaries have failed because they simply tried to change the world at the wrong time? How many of them went on to lay the groundwork for later change as Roger did, only for history to dismiss and forget them?)
What separates Luffy from Blackbeard? The way they go about life, and the respect they afford strangers. They're both selfish and greedy and inspirational to those around them, and Blackbeard is by far the cleverer between them, but perhaps because Blackbeard has an eye on fate and Luffy only on his dream, or perhaps simply because Luffy values human life and emotion where Blackbeard does not, Luffy is on the path to success and Blackbeard to failure.
We saw Luffy interact with fate directly for the first time in Fishman Island, when Madame Sharley prophesized that Luffy would destroy the island and must be driven out. Luffy dismissed this, though we understand that this likely truly will come to pass, but will not be an act taken out of malice.
"Is it his dream, or his fate?" asked the mayor of Windmill Village in a volume that came out while my age was still in the single-digits, and it seems to me that One Piece is a story about how even though you may follow in the course of a fate laid out for you, why you are following that path matters, and it cannot simply because you think that is your fate. That is how we got Blackbeard, and his fate-obsessed crew terrorizing the seas. For all that they are cleverer and more strategic than Luffy will ever be, they cannot free the world—though, in all likelihood, they will be one of the critical chess pieces that leads the world in a better direction.
Luffy does what he does simply because he wants to, and to date, he has always found himself on the morally righteous side of any given conflict. Even in cases where at a glance he seems to be entirely in the wrong—such as when his crew took over Ryugu Castle, which allowed Hordy and the New Fishman Pirates to take King Neptune and his sons as hostages—the provocation that led to this situation is very much acknowledged, and Luffy and his crew are also the ones to remedy the situation that had gone south because of their actions.
I generally think to myself, "What would Luffy do?" whenever I am having difficulties in life. Luffy is, in a lot of ways, the ideal role model for a lot of people, and as a habitual anxious overthinker, I find that trying to emulate Luffy is more often than not a way to get myself to make the decisions I'll be able to stand by most in the long-term. I do think this is a core part of why Luffy is the chosen one, if nothing else by the human-human fruit model Nika.
Luffy, at any given time, makes the best choice available to him at that time. He is greedy, and while that greed has sometimes been portrayed to *almost* overcome his morality (as for instance when he realizes the takoyaki chef he promised Camie he'd rescue was Hachi, one of Nami's former abusers), we have never seen it lead him truly, honestly astray. Any number of times Luffy has ended up in situations that those around him cannot understand, that would generally be seen as "bad", but Luffy always looks forward at the options available to him, and frequently ends up turning the situation around.
Luck—fate by another name—plays a large part in why Luffy has made it this far, as well as charisma, notoriety and personality. After all, Law (and Kidd, to a lesser degree) would have a fairly solid case to demand why Luffy gets named an emperor when they don't.
Side note for another day: there are a lot of different words used throughout One Piece around concepts like luck and fate. 運、運命、定め、etc. I do have thoughts about which is used where, and what it says about the worldview the story is espousing....but this, certainly, I think is a discussion for later, when we're closer to the end of the story.
