'One Piece': Did You Realize How Long Zoro Has Been Missing?

One Piece is moving through a good year of stories, and there is more to come. While the anime pushes through the 'Whole Cake Island' arc, there is more to explore in the manga. And, if you hadn't noticed, One Piece made a big move with its latest chapter.

So, if you felt like half the Straw Hats have been missing for years, you are right.

For those who keep count, it has been a ridiculously long time since One Piece visited Roronoa Zoro and the gang. The last time fans saw the group was when they parted ways with Monkey D. Luffy. While the captain took his team to retrieve Sanji from Big Mom, Zoro led the others to Wano Country.

Thanks to Weekly Shonen Jump, fans were reunited with Zoro and the Straw Hats when the latest chapter of One Piece went live. Chapter 909 held the long-awaited return, a milestone marking the first appearance of Zoro since chapter 822. For those of you who are curious, chapter 822 was published on April 11, 2016.

Yes, that's right. Zoro and the Wano crew were last seen in April 2016. They returned this week, dating the big comeback to July 2018. If you do the math, then you will see Zoro has been missing for more than a year. That is an insane amount of time for half the Straw Hat crew to be missing, but it looks like the gang have been busy. As chapter 909 reveals, each of Zoro's gang has assimilated into Wano with fake identities, but Zoro has been less successful. After all, the guy was arrested for a string of murders, and Zoro wasn't about to go quietly to his execution.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Are you happy to see One Piece entering Wano Country at long last with these characters? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!