'One Piece' Teases A Big, Brewing War

One Piece has struck out with some big battles before, but its wartime efforts are always something special. Now, it seems a new skirmish is on the horizon for the Straw Hats, and it will not be a pretty one by any means.

After all, Monkey D. Luffy has brought his crew to the wild world of Wano, and the Beast Pirates don't take kindly to any threat.

Recently, One Piece's latest chapter delved into its next big conflict. With the 'Wano' arc well underway, Luffy and part of his crew have come together under Kinemon. The samurai just dropped a major time-traveling bombshell on the pirates, informing the group his clan has traveled from the past to free Wano. However, war may be needed to see such freedom.

While Kinemon stresses war is not his group's mission, it seems likely the conflict will grow into such an event given its numbers alone.

"Our current forces are: the Straw Hat crew led by Luffy, the Heart Pirates led by by Law, and two groups from the Mink Tribe. The Musketeers led by Inuarashi and the Guardians led by Nekomamushi as well as the samurai we've recruited with the will to rebel," the older samurai explains.

"Ideally, our forces would need to be 5,000 strong. However, waging a war is not our intention," Kinemon continues. "Our goal is to gather information in complete secrecy and take the commander's head. The plane will comment in two weeks' time!"

While Kinemon wants to keep his operation hush-hush, fans know the chances of that going as planned are low. If the samurai has that large of an alliance backing him, the heads of Wano will pick up on the threat before long, and Kaido didn't come to lead the Beast Pirates because of his stupidity. The savage Yonko has ears everywhere on the island country, and it's just a matter of time before Luffy accidentally blows everyone's cover by doing something loudly heroic.

What do you expect to come from this fated showdown? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

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.