Week by week, fans of One Piece grow closer to the series’ end. The title has been around for well over twenty years, and readers have stuck with Monkey D. Luffy tightly all this time. These days, the series’ creator admits the end of One Piece is in sight, but there are plenty of questions still needing to be addressed. And thanks to a recent update, fans are feeling real worried for some characters.
Over the weekend, fans around the world headed to Japan to attend Jump Festa. The annual event shares the top reveals for Shonen Jump’s coming year, and One Piece came out in force. It was there Eiichiro Oda wrote a letter for fans, and he shared some ominous words about a few fan-favorites.
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“At this point, the Wano Country arc is reaching its core!! I’ve been excited to draw these parts of the arc, so here we go! And on the flip side, Sabo will…! Vivi will….! Hancock will….! Aaaaaah!! Okay, enough of that,” Oda teased (via Artur: The New World).
“Finally, things are starting to develop in such a way that the endgame might soon be in sight! Keep an eye out for it!!”
As you can see, Oda is still teasing the eventual end of One Piece, but this time was different. The creator went so far as to single out some characters in particular. Sabo, Vivi, and Hancock are all in the fray which is rather concerning. These three are favorites with fans, and they each had some major shake-ups during the Reverie arc. Now, fans are crossing their fingers that all is well with this trio and that Oda keeps things that way moving forward.
What do you make of this new message…? 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.
