'One Piece' Proves its Samurai Heroine Has No Mercy

One Piece is making its way through the Wano arc in the manga, and fans have been loving one of the major new additions to the cast of characters, the samurai heroine O-Kiku.

While seemingly shy, the latest chapter of the series prove that she really has no mercy at her core as she has no problem taking up her katana to save O-Tama.

After cutting off Urashima's top-knot in the last chapter of the series, O-Kiku has returned to her less fierce self. It seems that this might be act she puts on in order to fit into around Wano as she seems to be the only female samurai so far. This is further emphasized by the fact that she meekly reacts to the fact that she did such a thing when confronted.

After she's saved by Luffy (as Luffy lives out his sumo wrestling dreams), the three of them begin the fight to save O-Tama. O-Kiku asks Zoro what she should be doing, and Zoro, recognizing her strength, said he wasn't going to save her and she should just stop standing around.

O-Kiku meekly asks if she should cut the incoming attackers, and Luffy says of course she should if she wants to save O-Tamu. It's then that O-Kiku cuts through several new enemies without a problem.

The three of them then begin the fight to save O-Tama in earnest as the chapter comes to a close, and O-Kiku proves that she's quite the tough warrior. Hopefully the series will dig into why she's holding back so much through the Wano arc, or at least reveals how strong O-Kiku can truly be under pressure.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and 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 over 430 million copies sold.

Oda revealed some news about One Piece's future in a recent interview as well. Stating that he was about 80 percent done with the manga at this point with the Wano arc, fans are worried that the series may be coming to an end sooner than they thought. But it wouldn't be wrong to infer that the ending will most likely still be years away given how much of the world there is to explore.