'One Piece' Teaser Sets up an Awaited Katakuri Moment

One Piece's Whole Cake Island arc introduced some of the strongest characters in the series within Big Mom's extended family, and that's especially true for the strongest of the three commanders in the Charlotte Family army, Katakuri.

Fans have been wanting to see Luffy and Katakuri face off ever since Katakuri appeared, and it seems like soon they'll have their chance as the preview for the next episode of the series teases Luffy and Katakuri's fateful showdown.

Episode 849 of the series is titled, "Before the Dawn! Pedro, the Captain of the Guardians," and while it seems to emphasize more of a focus on Pedro, there are a brief few moments teasing Luffy's attack on Katakuri.

Fans saw how Luffy broke through Perospero's impenetrable defense with his Red Hawk attack, and now he'll take the fight to Katakuri. Luffy and Katakuri have brawled briefly before, but Katakuri's Devil Fruit power gives him a sticky mochi body and he quickly overwhelmed Luffy.

Luffy wouldn't have been able to escape from this grasp had it not been for Jinbe officially becoming a Straw Hat member and saving him, but hopefully Luffy does better the second time around.

The only worrying part, however, is how Luffy's gatling punches don't seem to make a dent in Katakuri just as before, and couple this with Katakuri's ability to see a few seconds into the future with his honed Observation Haki, makes the situation far too stacked against Luffy than before.

If you're interested in the series, One Piece is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation. 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. Eiichiro Oda revealed some news about One Piece's future in a recent interview as well.

Stating that he was about 80 percent done with the manga at this point with the Wano arc, fans are worried that the series may be coming to an end sooner than they thought. But it wouldn't be wrong to infer that the ending will most likely still be years away given how much of the world there still is to explore.