Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump released earlier than usual this week, opting to release on Friday rather than its usual Sunday due to an upcoming holiday in Japan. But unfortunately for fans of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, Chapter 949 is not one of the many new chapters that got this special early release. The series is on break this week, much to the chagrin of fans as it seems like the action was about to explosively kick off.
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Chapter 949 will instead be released as part of the July 21st issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, so One Piece fans will unfortunately have to bide their time to see what Luffy’s newest ally will do.
Chapter 948 of the series ends on a bigger cliffhanger than usual as it now seems like the prisoners trapped in Kaido’s prison will finally be fighting their way out. With Big Mom’s fight against Queen wrecking the place, the Yokozuna, Kawamatsu the Kappa, was freed from his cell and has been patiently waiting for a sign of an uprising.
That sign came when he was reunited with a reinvigorated Hyogoro the Flower, and was help freed by Raizo. It also turns out that Okiku truly is a powerful samurai, and one of the legendary samurai warriors that stood by Oden too. So with the four of them and Luffy, the fight to break out of Kaido’s prison and inspire the other prisoners to revolt now begins.
But as mentioned, the start of this fight comes with a slight delay as the series is on break until July 21st. But surely fans will be just fine as the Wano arc has kicked off in the anime too, so there’s still new content coming from Wano sooner than not! And it seems like Luffy will be jumping into action too!
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.