'One Piece' Sees Luffy Make an Awaited Comeback

One Piece has beaten Luffy to no end as he hit literal and figurative walls in his battle with Katakuri. Now that he's gotten his rest for 20 minutes, and his Haki has returned, Luffy is ready for Round 2.

It seems that fans won't have to wait long to see the results of Luffy's restored vigor as he makes his much-awaited comeback in the latest episode.

Luffy was pretty worried last episode as he wondered just what he could do against the incredibly strong Katakuri. When a flashback from his teachings with Rayleigh helped Luffy remember that his Haki would change in the battle with Katakuri, he renewed his sense of wanting to defeat Katakuri.

When Luffy returns to the Mirro-World, Katakuri is surprised by this. He says that Luffy running away would not be a point of ridicule as Katakuri's one of the strongest fighters, but Luffy will not back down. Luffy doesn't answer, however, and instantly takes the fight to Katakuri once more.

The odd thing here is how different the fight feels this time around. The fight between these two has already gone through many levels, even necessitating a break in between, so this is definitely the final phase of the battle.

Fans who have read ahead in the manga know that the battle is reaching a critical stage now (especially after it was hinted at in the newest opening theme sequence in the series), so it's exciting to see the series reflect just how much of a powder keg the Mirro-World is right now.

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 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.