Did ‘One Piece’ Just Set Up Another Straw Hat Addition?

After their tumultuous time during the Whole Cake Island arc, Luffy and the other half of the Straw Hats have finally made it to Wano in the One Piece manga. But just as how the Whole Cake Island arc brought Jinbe into the crew, is another addition coming so soon?

Luffy recently met a young girl named O-Tama early in his Wano journey, and after it’s revealed that Ace once promised to take her as part of his crew, Luffy just might want to pick up that mantle.

It turns out Ace came to Wano four years prior and once saved a village from destruction. In that time, Tama grew close to Ace with him even offering to take her on his crew when she got older. When Luffy bluntly tells her that Ace is dead, Tama is understandably distraught at the idea and calls him a liar.

Luffy has bigger things to deal with for now as the current state of Wano seems terrible, with the lower class villagers going hungry due to a polluting factory, but could Tama eventually join the crew?

Hearing Tama’s cries could bring Luffy back to his own past where he wanted to join Red Haired Shanks’ crew and was denied once because he was too young. The Wano arc has just kicked off so anything could happen, though fans certainly would not be disappointed in seeing another member join the Straw Hat crew permanently as their adventures continue to expand.

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.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece‘s future in a recent interview. Stating that he was about 80% done with the series at this pointwith the Wano arc, this might scare some fans a bit seeing how much more has been revealed about the series’ world, but it wouldn’t be wrong to infer that the ending will most likely still be years away.

The new live-action One Pieceseries also got some new information as it was revealed that the series will portray the Straw Hats’ adventures from the very beginning, and will take place in the East Blue. One Piece‘s anime series is currently in the middle of the “Whole Cake Island” arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.