‘One Piece’ Volume 88 Reveals Official Cover

The Whole Cake Island arc is reaching its climax in the One Piece manga, and fans have been loving every moment of it. Volume 88 of the manga is set to release in Japan soon, and to celebrate, the series has released a preview of its cover.

The cover is incredibly stylish, and uses the arc’s mirror world to deliver portraits of every character involved in the arc.

Volume 88 of the series will be titled “Lion” based on the chapter of the same name in which Carrot turns into a Su Long under the light of the full moon (which is further represented along the top of the cover). Along with this, the cover features Bege, Pudding, and Chiffon in the background as Luffy charges head first through a mirror featuring the Straw Hat Pirates Nami, Brook, Chopper, Sanji, and the most recently confirmed for the crew, Jinbe.

Seeing Carrot’s prominence on the cover also has fans theorizing whether or not Carrot would join the crew indefinitely. Some fans are definitely not against the idea as Carrot has proved herself to fit right in with the Straw Hats and their shenanigans throughout the arc.

But other fans pointed out how many times support characters were featured on volume covers, but this theory also gains a bit of traction when you realize Jinbe was treated in the same manner many years back.

Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It 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 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece‘s future at Jump Festa 2018. Not only will the manga see Wano sooner rather than later, the next villain of the series is “one of the legends which lurks in the One Piece world. The greatest enemy ever for Straw Hats will hinder their way…Can you believe Marineford Summit War will look ‘cute’ compared to that?”

One Piece is currently in the middle of the “Whole Cake Island” arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and FunimationNOW.