'One Piece' Just Showed How Powerful Kaido is

One Piece's manga has hit a new phase of the Wano arc as the Straw Hats have finally formulated a plan to take on Kaido, but like most arcs in the series, it seems things aren't as quite as they seem.

The latest chapter of the series revealed just how powerful another one of the Four Emperors, Kaido, really is. How powerful? He's a dragon.

Luffy, Law, and the others prepared for the next phase of their plan as they disguise themselves in order to sneak into Kaido's special banquet with the help of the rebellious citizens of the country. The plan is to take them all on when they are drunk and partying, but clearly things have taken a turn when Kaido surprisingly appears at the end of the chapter.

When two tough samurai begin battling it out, one on behalf of Kaido and the other as someone who won't submit to his army, the sky suddenly fills with storm clouds. Then, much like when the heroes summon Shenron in the Dragon Ball series, Kaido appears out of the clouds.

Taking on a dragon form not seen in the series yet, this explains a lot about Kaido's power. His immortality could come from being a dragon initially who ate a Devil Fruit (much like Chopper), or be a pirate who ate a Dragon Devil Fruit. It could even be something else altogether as the Wano arc has introduced strange new powers like time travel as well.

Regardless of how he has this strength, Kaido being a dragon poses himself as Luffy's toughest foe in the series yet. It's going to be interested to see how he fights against this foe as the Wano arc continues.

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.