One Piece continuously sweeps fans off their feet with its current Wano Country arc. As every episode gets pretty intense with Luffy and Kaido's heated battle, will this be the end of the series?
One Piece has been in serialization since 1997. It is the eighth longest-running manga in Weekly Shonen Jump as of November, with 1012 chapters dropped so far. So, when will it come to a close?
The series' former editor, Kohei Onishi, who is also Weekly Shonen Jump's editor at large, revealed when the manga might end in an interview. As translated by Twitter user WSJ-manga via Comicbook, he said it only has four to five years left before everything comes to an end.
That is around 20 to 30 volumes more, though no one really knows its actual timeline. The only one who knows how far Luffy's story will go is its creator Eiichiro Oda, who has consistently talked about its finale.
The mangaka has said a lot about the manga's ending in the past and here is what he had to say. He revealed in 2006 that he already had an idea in mind on how the series would end, per CBR.
He had adequately thought about it even before he started writing the series. He stressed he had no plans to extend its story; it was just that there was a lot of content he had to add.
This gave Oda the ability to keep One Piece's quality that fans could never be bored. If things started to get predictable, he knew when to change its storylines and plots.
The manga artist is eyeing to give the manga 100 volumes and he is currently at 98. In 2018, he said he was already 80% done with its story and planning to end it after five years since then, so it might happen in 2023.
Oda already did the calculations and explained he didn't want the editorial department to ask him to continue Luffy's tale. By the looks of it, he had no plans to overly stretch out the series and make it a cash cow.
So, when does the manga artist see One Piece ending? In a different interview in 2019, Oda and Naito predicted the manga might conclude between 2024 and 2025.
Naito explained that if Oda had a definite date in mind to finish the series, it would be it. Knowing how the latter works, he would surely stick to it if he had already set a due date in mind.
Do you think it is time for One Piece to end? Share your comments below.
