'One Piece' Preview Starts Climax of Luffy v. Katakuri

One Piece's Whole Cake Island arc has reached its climax as the anime has not only introduced a completed replacement wedding cake for Big Mom, but the battle between Luffy and Katakuri reached a new level.

As Luffy's attempts to mirror Katakuri's Observation Haki abilities get better, the fight is reaching its own climax as the next episode preview teases an important turn in Katakuri.

Episode 868 of the series is titled, "One Man's Determination! Katakuri's Deadly Big Fight! and the preview for the episode teases a big shift in how Katakuri's fighting. The latest episode of the series teased such a turn, as Katakuri began to grow frustrated with Luffy's performance in the fight. After keeping up with him, Luffy seemed to even impress Katakuri as the fight continued.

But after Luffy began getting stealthily attacked by Flampe, he stopped fighting back as hard. This frustrated Katakuri to no end, and the preview for 868 sees the fruit of the anger as Katakuri confronts Flampe. But the most surprising tease of the preview is that Katakuri stabs his stomach with the Mole after finding out Luffy's been attacked from the sidelines.

Now, putting his pride on the line, he apparently will reveal a secret he's been hiding for some time to Flampe and the others. This will most likely be his mouth (as evidenced by the final shots of the preview), which he's been so ashamed of that he brutally killed a few chefs who happened to see it after Luffy attacked a few episodes prior.

Given how much Flampe has been worshipping Katakuri's image, it's going to be a big deal for the Charlotte Family to see Katakuri drop this image in favor of his fighter's pride. No other fighter has challenged him like Luffy has, and it seems that now he'll be willing to go all-in to face Luffy with his full self.

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. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.