'One Piece' Makes an Important Luffy, Ace Comparison

One Piece's Wano arc has brought out a whole new side of Luffy lately, and it means Luffy gets to channel a bit of his dear brother Ace in some of the arc's brightest moments yet.

The latest chapter of the series made the connection between Luffy and Ace even more distinct as the young O-Tama reflects on how much Luffy looked like Ace when he was rescuing her.

Luffy first met O-Tama at Wano, and she was waiting for Ace and the Whitebeard Pirates to come back someday. He vowed to save her when they returned, but his death meant he was never able to come back. When Luffy uses his Red Hawk attack to save O-Tama from Holdem's clutches, his burning rage reminded O-Tama of Ace.

The two of them escape from the burning wreckage of Holdem's base, and O-Tama says Luffy reminded her of Ace during the rescue. She doesn't know the two are brothers, so this is such a sweet moment from the young new addition to the series. Luffy is then able to steal a ship full of healthy food and water, and takes it to Leftover Town.

When O-Tama thanks him once more, Luffy says that she shouldn't be happy with just this. He vows that she'll be able to eat her fill everyday, and fans see that Ace once promised O-Tama the very same thing. This moment carries big significance as Luffy's become the kind of man Ace always knew he'd be, and although Ace is dead, his spirit still carries on in Luffy. It's strong enough to leave an impression on O-Tama, that's for sure.

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 and just how well it's selling week to week.