We’re very far into the story now. Oda has said multiple times throughout the years that he wants to start working towards the ending of One Piece and the series will end within a couple of years. Most of the times he’s made this claim, he made himself a liar by introducing big story arcs that took many years to resolve. It does feel like Wano might be the last of those big story arcs, as the pace has picked up tremendously after Wano ended. Having gone through all of the volumes that cover the land of the Samurai, which spanned from volume 90 all the way up to volume 105. That’s 16 volumes. Yuru Camp, Frieren, Zom100, Skip & Loafer, Mononogatari and Made in Abyss are all great series that I have on my shelf, and none of them have more than 16 volumes in total. Spending that much time on just one arc is crazy, so there is a lot to unpack. However, I am not going to recap all the events that we leave behind in Wano. I will be looking at the numerous events that take place during this arc – both in Wano and elsewhere – that will have a big impact on the upcoming story arcs. So no recapping fights and all that. With that out of the way, let’s get into the swing of things.
Let’s start with the ramifications of learning about Oden’s journey alongside the King of Pirates. It is revealed during Wano that the one who was able to read the poneglyphs was not in fact Roger, but his crewmate Oden. He could also hear the voice of all things just like Roger, Luffy and later Momonosuke, and we get quite a bit of lore through him. Late in the Wano arc do we learn that Kozuki Sukiyaki – Oden’s father – was still alive and able to show the road poneglyph in Wano to Robin and Trafalgar Law. Wano is built on what was once a giant mountain at the center of the current Wano. The old land of Wano is far beneath the sea level although surrounded by a giant wall. In this underwater city, below the famous Mount Fuji, lies the ancient warship Pluton. This was the weapon for which Franky and his family defended the blueprints with their lives. The weapon still exists and we now know where it is as well.
Armed with this knowledge, the three pirate crews set off on their own adventures, but not before Killer lets slip to the other captains that the remaining road poneglyph is in the possession of “the man with the burn scar” who we have not yet identified. This is where the Straw Hats set off for Egghead, the Kid Pirates set off for Elbaf – where Shanks is – and the Heart Pirates come face to face with Blackbeard and several of his powerful crew members who by this point are all power users.
But before we dive too deeply into the outside world, let’s go back to something very major we haven’t yet spoken about in this post. That is of course the reveal that Luffy’s devil fruit actually has a different name. Hidden by the world government out of fear for it being awakened, the Gum-Gum fruit was actually the Nika-Nika fruit. A human zoan fruit modeled after the god of the sun. A smiling figure who is the most free he could ever be. This knowledge puts into perspective the actions that shanks took back in Romance Dawn. He stole this fruit from a government ship, which eventually led to Who’s Who ending up in jail before joining up with the Beast Pirates in Wano. Why Shanks went after this specific fruit and what he was eventually planning to do with it, we don’t know, but it ended up going to Luffy and it seems like Shanks didn’t mind this all that much. That or he just knew he wanted to be the one controlling the man who would become the most free man on the ocean.
Okay, I think that’s pretty much all we need to talk about when it comes to the things that happened in the land of Wano, but there is a lot of stuff that happened outside of Wano during our stay in the close off land of the samurai that is also important for our story, so let’s cover some of that as well.
The first major thing – and this is not completely new knowledge – is that there are new admirals. We met Fujitora on Dressrosa and learned that there was another, but exactly who this other person was isn’t revealed to us until the end of Wano when Ryokugyu shows up to deal with the samurai and Straw Hats and claim Wano for the world government. This goes horribly wrong as Shanks unleashes some incredibly powerful Haki to get him to back off, but even if that didn’t happen, I’m sure the crew plus their allies could take out one Admiral after what they did to two of the emperors.
But sending an admiral to Wano isn’t the only thing that the world government did. During this year’s tumultuous Reverie, during which trust was shattered, kings were murdered and revolutionaries ran rampant, one of the big things that was decided on, is the abolishment of the Seven Warlord system. We learn a little bit later on in the story what helped them make this decision and it’s pretty messed up once you really dig into it, but that also means that people like Boa Hancock, Buggy and Mihawk no longer enjoy any protection from the navy, and are once again wanted pirates in the world of One Piece.
So we enter the future island of Egghead with three new emperors – Shanks being the only remaining emperor of the previous generation – as well as a scrapped warlord system. Vivi is currently missing and with her father dead, she is the queen of Arabasta now. We have a lot still to go, but with all these pieces in the right place, we can properly descend into the final stages of the story. We still need to figure out what Shanks’ deal is, why Blackbeard can use multiple devil fruits, what exactly happened at the Reverie, who the man with the burn scar is and what there is to find on the final island of Laugh Tale. There is much still to come, and we’ll cover some of it next week as we properly set foot into the future. I hope this recap of Wano gave you a quick update on what important things happened during it, and as always, thank you for reading.
Opal Kaharis 