One Piece Reveals How Whitebeard First Met Marshall D Teech

One Piece's Wano Country arc has been a huge surprise thus far as it's been revealed that the Wano region has been an integral part of the series as a whole. More so than any arc of the series thus far, the ramifications of the arc will be felt for quite some time and this is continuing even more as the history of Oden Kozuki is being explored with each new chapter. Now that the current Oden flashback has seen him board Whitebeard's ship, the latest chapter has revealed another key piece of the past.

Chapter 965 of the series reveals how Whitebeard first met the man who eventually betrayed him, Marshall D. Teech. While it doesn't quite go into too much of their history together, it does give fans a glance at how Whitebeard first saw Teech and explains how Teech eventually was seen like one of his many sons.

Now that Oden successfully found his way into Whitebeard's crew, Chapter 965 of the series details Oden's account of his time on the ship. His diary entries reveal his discoveries of the world alongside his wife, and increasingly growing family. He mentions how Whitebeard's crew eventually grew to the size in white Whitebeard had to divide his crew into five different divisions, and one of the panels sees a young Teech make a plea to him.

Telling Whitebeard he had nowhere else to go, the young and orphaned Teech begs to be on Whitebeard's ship and without much arguing, Whitebeard agrees. Unfortunately because the chapter is through Oden's eyes, we're only given a glimpse into this first meeting between the two heavy hitters. But like the series is wont to do, this small scene will most likely be fleshed out in a future chapter of the series.

But with Teech orphaned and begging Whitebeard to come along, it does leave room for more of Blackbeard's past. He's been a curious part of the series ever since he was introduced, and now that we've seen him down and out as a child, it does reveal a little of why Teech is a dreamer in the twisted way he is. Hopefully we'll see more of Teech down the line.

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.