'One Piece' Finally Explains What Franky, Robin Are Up to

One Piece's Wano arc is reaching a turning point in the manga as the covert plans between the Straw Hats, Hearts, and rebels of Wano form their plan to take down the Yonko Kaido, and that means fans finally learn what the Straw Hats have been up to this whole time.

Franky and Robin were two of the Straw Hats hiding out on Wano during the Whole Cake Island arc, and the manga filled fans in on what kind of information they had been trying to gather.

Earlier in the arc, Zoro explained that the Straw Hats that had made their way to Wano first took on disguises in order to be discovered by the Beast Pirates. Zoro had been a wandering samurai, Usopp became a merchant, and Kinemon reveals in the latest chapter that Franky became the apprentice to the man who build Kaidou's castle.

In order to keep them from getting lost once they attack Kaido's banquet, Kinemon had Franky apprentice himself to get the blueprints of the estate. He also explains that Robin had become a Geisha in order to clue into the Shogun Orochi's soldiers and their movements. She's currently rising through the ranks in order to get closer to the shogun too.

Kinemon also devises ways to hide the rest of the Straw Hats, as each of them has a skill that can work into his plans. Brook's power will be good for gathering food, Nami's weather powers make her like a ninja, and Sanji's cooking will help bring people together.

The Straw Hats generally aren't great at covert missions like these, which has already been proven by how much Luffy has shaken things up since he's arrived, but it's cool to see how the members fans haven't seen in so long have been working their way into this tricky country. There's a lot of political and social intrigue this time around, and it's going to take more than Luffy's punches to really get to the core of the issues.

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.