Oh boy, this is rough. It really does depend on where Oda goes from here.
It was very obvious that Luffy was Joyboy, but there's a difference between a title that anyone can earn and the reincarnation route. I highly doubt it will be the latter, but if it is the former Oda has made a mess of the presentation. It now seems that being Joyboy is about eating the right fruit which I certainly don't like.
There has been no indication that Luffy's fruit is so special that even the WG went to lengths to change its name. That opens up such a can of worms that the execution will have to be stellar to reconcile things.
- The Kaido victory box just seems pointless if Luffy is just going to come back and beat him anyway, but that seems to be par for the course for Wano. I don't think Luffy actually died, and if he died only to be revived by Joyboy's special fruit I believe that would be even worse. Lack of tension would be putting it mildly.
- The WG should have been aware that Luffy had the gomu gomu no mi since Alabasta at earliest and at worst by Marineford that was televised to the entire world.
Saying that they didn't know it was special doesn't work because of how they punished Who's Who for losing it. Even if it were just "rumours", something that severe being so ignored when Luffy has been running around shouting "Gomu Gomu no" makes no sense. CP0 should have been on that right from the start!
- "You couldn't become JoyBoy too." It would be sad if "becoming Joyboy" wasn't about the will of the individual but just if they happened to eat a secret fruit or not. That I wouldn't like. Part of the appeal of Luffy was the relatively sucky fruit he ate and overcoming foes with better ones. He has been mocked for his powers, had it called inferior, etc, only for it to turn out to be so highly regarded by the WG, it's name had to be changed kinda invalidates all that in retrospect. Luffy already had a special ability in CoC that's highly regarded, but to have his fruit be that too would be too much.
Yes it's a shounen, but there has been plenty of time to not make it feel forced, to just be learning about it over a 1000 chapters in. There have been plenty of theories about Luffy having the prior Pirate King's devil fruit and how that wouldn't be a good development, but Luffy now seems to have the fruit of someone even beyond that, a semi-mythical figure that may be the original enemy of the WG from over 800 years ago. Even Blackbeard's Yami Yami no mi's name wasn't changed and left in the df encyclopedia, while Law's fruit is special for what it can do for someone else. So this mystery devil fruit could be even more special than all that.
I'll have to wait and see. Being pleased about the inevitable confirmation of Luffy being Joy Boy is being dampened by what that might actually entail.
.
