If you’ve ever felt uneasy about One Piece’s turn toward “destiny,” this is me trying to put that unease into words, as someone who’s lived with this series in weekly format for 17 years. Beware of spoilers.

A Rare Binge

What a doozy… I just caught up from One Piece Chapter 1160 (released September 14th, 2025) to 1168 (December 7th, 2025). It covers the start of the God Valley Incident up until the end of this major flashback, where we get context on Loki committing patricide. I have not read any reactions, been on Twitter or Discord, nor been spoiled about what happens. 

I’m in a unique position where I get to binge a series of very important chapters for the first time without having my feelings and impressions colored by the current cultural, political, and communal response to these chapters as they came out. I’ve been reading One Piece weekly since roughly 2008. I specifically remember reading Sabaody, Amazon Lily, Impel Down, and Marineford weekly with my brothers Ismael and Elvis after we caught up to the anime via torrents and LimeWire, before any sort of legal streaming was available in English, in both manga and anime form. I was a pirate just like Luffy! (lol) 

I’VE NEVER HAD THIS KIND OF OPPORTUNITY, and it’s actually wild for me to fathom or comprehend. 17 years of weekly reading, and now I’m fresh off the climax and end of a historic flashback, with only my context being of what I’ve read and my impressions of the story leading up until now. Y’all aren’t ready, because I wasn’t either for how I felt about this.

What I actually mean is that instead of feeling hyped and satisfied, I feel hollow. This flashback drove home a truth I’ve been gauging for years through my more radical friends: the series that once screamed “resistance” and freedom at me is starting to feel like a story where fate and shadowy powers decide everything; while as a Dominican-American living under real-world fascist bullshit, that hits me in a way I can’t just ignore.

This isn’t a power-scaling or “Oda fell off” rant. It’s about what it means when a story that taught me to believe in resistance starts treating freedom like something handed down from above.

I know how historic this flashback is, and how deeply valuable and insightful this was to the state of the One Piece world prior to the events that set off the Age of Pirates with Gol D. Roger’s execution. But as an adult who now creates, I see many threads lining up and forming parts of the story into a way that just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Where the Flashback Lost Me

One Piece, for a while now–probably since Wano–has been spinning itself into a story with destined ones like Naruto and Bleach did. Luffy’s connections to Nika. The revelation of the Davy clan’s relation to the will of D. Imu’s longstanding feuds against both Joyboy and Davy. I was fine for a while, chalking things up to inherited will being more important than fate or choices being the real deciding factor in history being written. However, with Imu’s interference and the appearance of the Shallows, Depths, and Abyssal Covenants (ch. 1167), and therefore the abstraction of free will into something that can be manipulated–we also see this with the “demonification” Imu did through the Five Elders–I am increasingly at odds philosophically and creatively with how Oda is setting up the home stretch of this story. 

When I see King Harald willingly offer himself to the World Government, with the explicit wording of “I wish to prove my oath of peace, so that the children of Elbaph can lead fruitful lives… without hurting anyone!! So they can live hand in hand with humanity!!! If that means I must be a slave, so be it!!!”, I had never groaned so hard, felt so frustrated, and wanted to chuck my phone into the wall! Literally who the fuck ever feels that strongly to want to give up their freedom? After seeing his friend Rocks die, immediately following Rocks’ explicit warning that the WG was doing a manhunt for sport, on the island he sent his wife and child to, how in the world did Harald come to the conclusion he should brand himself as their object? 

I know the answer. To Harald, the character, the person in the story, his desire to make Elbaph recognized by the world was greater than his self-preservation. But that’s incongruous to my personal belief and experience as a Dominican-American who has learned through history what happens to slaves, and those who concentrate power, willingly or not. I find it irresponsible to then, narratively, force Loki into a position where he has to kill his father to save his country—because his father is the one who asks him to. As a son to an estranged father, who also got to choose his father figures, my heart was bleeding with empathy for this poor, poor child, who also witnessed his loving, accepting step-mother be poisoned by would-be supporters of his abusive biological mother. 

Yeah, it makes for a dramatic story, and incredibly salient discussion points about morality, ethics, filial piety, and what freedom is. But did we have to go this far? Does it serve more than to just nail home how far Imu and the WG are willing to dehumanize people, after we’ve seen time and time again the abyssal depths they’re willing to sink to?

Freedom vs Fate, On-Page and Off

I’ve been musing that part of what frustrates me is seeing the parallels to the tech oligarchy and super-rich controlling stuff like the political capital and ideals that reflect back into modern society. I’m talking specifically for Americans in this context, but it has bled into other places like Japan, as fascism and conservatism increases worldwide.

People are increasingly becoming less thoughtful: consuming ‘slop’, frying their dopamine receptors, and becoming more willing to accept disinformation, falsehoods, and emotional appeal over facts, science, and truth that appeals to empathy as a moral compass (see: Elon’s enshittification of Twitter into a cesspool of fascist echo chambers). Sometimes engaging in what you know is bad-faith behavior is simply just bad-faith on your own end. People deserve better. So be better. Start that change yourself.

I’m not going to expect Oda to do his research on slavery, we already saw Fishman Island and the Fisher Tiger flashback; it was also referenced at the tail end of this flashback. But Chapter 1159, page 15, spells out to me on the page: “it feels as if some great act of fate…”, and it drives me Nuts (Island)! What happened to bucking fate! All the things the Strawhats did that were dictated by others to be impossible?! The spirit of resistance felt dead to me here. And resistance is what I think of when I imagine anyone from the D. line in this series.

So when Monkey D. Luffy says he wants to be the freest man in the sea, it’s hard not to feel like the story itself is quietly insisting that freedom is on rails. Does freedom even matter if fate, nebulous a concept as it is, apparently plays a deciding role in the history and future of the One Piece world? It makes it feel like all the political revolutions happening in our real world—many inspired by this story—won’t be decided by free will at all, but by whatever uncontrollable forces sit above us.

Obviously, that’s not really the intent or meaning to get across from One Piece. It’s great, dare I even say poetic, how the truth and attitudes in the story and characters of One Piece resonate so clearly with the oppressed, and lead to social and political change that uproots corruption! But as a literary, cultural, and historical student and archivist, it shakes me to my foundation to see such a tone-deaf approximation of what it means to fight corrupt systems from within them. Just like MLK, Harald was wrapped up in conspiratorial powers set against his message and desires for integration and acceptance. 

As a storyteller, I don’t think every story owes us perfect politics—but I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter when a series about resistance leans on fate this hard. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to watch the ideas degrade over time. I’ve always morally disagreed with Garp, who chose to “resist from the inside.” I hate Sengoku even more now and understand Dragon better. And I can already see the writing on the wall for Dragon becoming a moralistic figure who might be forgiven for his absence in Luffy’s life (or not, who knows). I feel like this is Oda trying to be deep and layered but the characters’ actions do not come off as deep or emotionally resonant when their actions get chalked up to “fate” or having no choices left but whatever is in front of them. 

So how do I feel coming off the presses of our latest weekly flashback? Severely saddened, because this writing has been on the wall for ages. It feels like the whole thing was orchestrated not by the characters’ choices but by the plot’s hunger for a grand, destined narrative.

Still Loving a Flawed Giant

Here’s where this flashback leaves me: I can see that One Piece and I have grown in different directions, because Oda’s idea of freedom doesn’t match mine, but that doesn’t erase the years where this story raised me and reshaped my world.

If you enjoyed this flashback, I’m genuinely happy for you. Please don’t take this to mean I’m shitting on the series or that I think you’re wrong. This is my personal interpretation of the series up to this point, as someone who’s engaged with it for over 17 years, am now 31 years old, and have a personal history as the child of immigrants, living in a turbulent political era of increasingly fascist government, with agents who are literally kidnapping innocent people to forcibly deport or place into concentration camps. At the same time that other countries are also using the symbolism of this series to galvanize their resistance, and my own fascist gov tries to co-opt that movement for dogwhistles and propaganda. I can’t separate real world politics from One Piece, because One Piece is inherently political. And my experience with politics will vastly differ from other people who don’t share my personal experiences. And that’s ok. Even if the polarization of the internet into political factions will have you believe otherwise.

This is just where I’m at right now. Now that I’m older, and seeing how One Piece has changed over the years, I am not sure how to reconcile my adult beliefs with the child who fell in love with Luffy because his freedom felt wild and unruly, not on rails, knowing now that Oda’s concept of freedom is different to mine. But I still love this series with all of my heart… I am not going to drop reading it. One Piece has had a profound impact on my life, as a piece of media that has grown alongside me. I still see it as something impactful in the literary world on the level of Lord of the Rings, that has shaped the landscape in unprecedented and unimaginable ways. 

But it was also made by a human, and humans aren’t perfect. There’s no such thing as a perfect story or piece of media, just ones that resonate harder to others. I’m interested in seeing if there will be more to come that will resonate with me on the level I experienced in my past. If you read this far, I salute you, and your freedom to engage in whatever you please. Don’t be an asshole, and stay safe out there.