The legendary moment for Mr. 2 Bon Kurei. A grand display of self-sacrifice. I forgot his speech here too, but the idea of making the flower of friendship bloom again suits this possibility I’m seeing. Unlike the other characters we’ll look at along the way, there’s nothing wrong with recruiting Bon. He was a great friend who fits a lot of the same niche. In this case, Luffy just wasn’t strong enough to save everyone. Ace died because of his own mistakes, Bon is left behind because someone had to sacrifice themselves. It’s the second time he’s done that for Luffy and in both cases Bon never balked or bemoaned his fate. Coming from someone with swan theming, not too different from a crane.
Either way, Bon’s part in the story does lay plenty of groundwork for whatever we end up doing with Kiku later. If nothing else, this friendship makes it clear that Luffy is not the type to get hung up on people with a more unique gender expression. And that he’s very much troubled by friends sacrificing so much for him. It’s a great moment on it’s own, but also one that yet again would get really cool in retrospect should that flower of friendship blossom yet again as a beautiful (and very tall) chrysanthemum.
