'One Piece' Creator Teases Major Wano, East Blue Connection

One Piece is nearing a big milestone as its manga gets closer to hitting 1,000 chapters. With all this history, it's amazing creator Eiichiro Oda can keep everything straight, but he does. And, as it turns out, the artist will be making things a little more complicated for fans.

After all, it turns out Wano has a connection to the East Blue no one knows about, and Oda is about to explore it at long last.

Recently, the artist gave up the secret when a fan sent in a question. Oda was asked if a character who appears in Wano was seen before, and he had the following to admit:

"They actually aren't the same person! They have the same last name because they're related by blood. The fact of the matter is, a ship from Wano reached East Blue a few decades ago," Oda wrote.

"One of the descendants of someone on that ship is a person that everybody is familiar with," he revealed. "This part might be featured later in the main story so I won't mention any more than that. It isn't going to be a major plot line, it will just be a minor story."

Of course, Oda wasn't willing to drop any more news about the person on that ship. The creator will keep the descendant in question quiet until the minor arc appears, but fans think they know who the character might be. Given Zoro's affinity for samurai swords, fans are willing to bet this mystery character is tied to the swordsman, so One Piece fans will want to start making their bets on the connection now.

So, who do you think Oda might be referring to here...? 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. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.

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