One Piece Reveals What Missing Straw Hats Were Doing in Wano

One Piece's Wano arc has finally kickstarted in the anime series, and along with the major facelift and production changes behind the scenes, one of the most exciting aspects of this new arc is the fact that the Straw Hats that have been missing from the anime for the past few years were finally making their grand return. Zoro, Robin, Usopp, and Franky have been hiding on Wano ever since the end of the Zou arc, but what have they been doing all this time?

With the first episode of the Wano Country arc, fans get a gist for how they have been living their lives all of this time as it turns out they have been hiding amongst the people of Wano and are living "regular" lives in order to avoid getting detected by Kaido.

As the anime reintroduces the missing Straw Hats, it's revealed that Usopp has become a salesman. This is apt for his storytelling prowess as he sells toad oil to some nearby Wano citizens. Franky has been working under a carpenter as a burgeoning carpenter in training, and is frustrated that he has to downplay his own crafting skills. Robin has taken up becoming a Geisha, and is training in order to get "selected" by the Shogun who has ties to Kaido. As for Zoro? He's become a Ronin who quickly gets himself in trouble.

Each of them has adapted their names to be more traditional, and Wano friendly. Zoro even forces himself to use the old fashioned "de-gozaru" honorific in order to better fit in, too. It's soon revealed in a flashback that when they first arrived on Wano, Kin'emon explained that the land is under the control of the Shogun, Kurozumi Orochi. Officials under Orochi are under Kaido's command as well, so they have to behave themselves in order to keep Kaido from finding out they are there before Luffy and the others arrive.

So to keep from detection, Kin'emon tells the four of them to live "quietly and peacefully" and to "play [their] roles" and bide their time until they can gather their forces to retake Wano. But this already seems to fall apart in the first episode of the arc as Zoro finds himself in a murderous conspiracy and blows his disguise out of the water. Now fans are just wondering where it'll all go from here.

Eiiichiro 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.