After four years and four months, One Piece has finally concluded its longest arc yet, the Wano arc. I didn’t think it would ever end, but hallelujah, it’s finally over.
As a ride-or-die One Piece fan, I have a lot of complicated thoughts on Wano as an arc. This is, by far, the largest arc that One Piece has ever attempted, with many of the seeds of this arc being established over a decade ago in the Punk Hazard arc. There was buildup upon buildup for Wano, and when we arrived in the nation of samurai, the series dedicated a significant amount of time to all of the complex relationships and dynamics of the arc. Most of One Piece‘s narrative post-timeskip was all building toward this beast of an arc, with 18% of the anime as of now being dedicated to Luffy’s adventures in Wano. But now that it’s done, we can not only look at the future with the upcoming Egg Head arc but also look back and see the strengths and weaknesses of Wano.
Because for all of the strengths that Wano has that make One Piece one of the most captivating anime and manga of all time, there are very clear flaws with the saga that make me dread ever returning back for a reread or rewatch. I will admit, despite the anime adaptation of the arc ending this past Sunday, I’ve been a bit more removed from the arc since I’ve been following along with the manga more than the anime, so I think I can safely say that Wano is going to be a polarizing arc for fans the more removed they are from it.
There’s a lot to dissect with Wano, and that’s primarily because so much of the plot is removed from the rest of the series. While the main villain of the arc, Kaido, is one of the enemies that Luffy will have to best in order to become King of the Pirates, the main thrust of the arc is a rebellion against Orochi, the puppet shogun of Wano, who is a figurehead for Kaido. Luffy and the Straw Hats are assisting the actual protagonists of the arc, a group of samurai loyal to a man named Oden, the deceased rightful ruler of Wano. Numerous flashbacks show the history of Wano and Oden as a character, showing his growth from youthful rebel to noble lord to ridiculed martyr and seeing why he was able to inspire such loyalty from his subordinates. In that essence, Luffy and his crew feel more like side characters who are just along for the ride and supporting the actual protagonists.
That’s not really anything new for the series. The Dressrosa and Alabasta arc followed a similar trajectory wherein we see how both countries were corrupted by their respective villains and how the Straw Hats are assisting the people in liberating themselves. That’s turned up to the nth degree here as we have to establish not only the nine samurai that are leading the rebellion against Orochi and Kaido but also establish the villains and their forces, the side characters caught in between, and third-party observers that are watching the events unfold. There are so many characters that are bouncing around Wano that it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on and who’s doing what.
This does help to really establish the land of Wano itself as a character. We see the nation at its peak, and it’s contrasted with the barren and exploited hellscape it has become. It’s a classist metaphor as the nobles in the capitol and those loyal to Kaido are rewarded for their status while the rest of the people starve or are given inhuman punishments like eating fruit that will force a person to never stop laughing. We want to see Wano liberated because we see how beautiful it was and really get to know its unique characters. We grow to hate Orochi and Kaido for how they’ve corrupted such a pristine land and are fully on board with Luffy and the samurai’s plan to put an end to their evil reign. But man, does it take forever to actually tell its story.
Wano, as an anime adaptation, is positively glacial with its pacing. Weeks will go by where hardly any progress is made in the narrative, and that is especially true in the second half of the arc, when the actual battle takes place in Kaido’s base of Onigashima. You know the Dragon Ball Z meme where Freiza says it’ll take five minutes until Namek explodes, only for their fight to last for nearly an hour? That’s supercharged here, as the battle in Onigashima is meant to be in a single night but lasts for around 93 episodes. That’s actual days worth of content that’s supposed to take place in the span of one night. Because of that, each episode feels emaciated, with barely any progress happening in the numerous fights taking place on the island. It becomes so hectic and chaotic, with so many different players again vying for their own agendas, that some developments may not have any resolution for weeks, if not months.
To its credit, though, Wano is wonderfully animated. There are a ton of management issues that pop up when doing a weekly series, and when the folks at Toei need to show off a pivotal story sequence, they put all of their effort into it. Case in point, the meticulously wonderful animation of Luffy’s Gear 5 debut broke Crunchyroll, not only because of the hype it received but because of just how skillfully animated it is. And even when not much is happening with these fight scenes, they’re still a visual treat, and the bright colors and thick lines that have defined Wano’s aesthetic are beautiful to admire. I mean, they turned a static dance scene from the manga into one of the best moments of the entire arc!
When Wano is good, it’s amazingly good. But you can’t help but feel at certain points that the arc is underdeveloped as Eiichiro Oda introduced too many ideas that didn’t have time to be developed. Take Cipher Pol “Aigis” Zero, who fart around during the events at Onigashima but don’t really have any presence in the arc other than forcefully interjecting themselves into the final battle. Then you have the many goons of Kaido and Orochi who don’t have much of a personality out of a single gimmick. Some of them do have some depth, like King and Who’s-Who, but most of its villains just serve to be obstacles for our heroes to overcome. That’s not unheard of for One Piece, a series that loves to introduce a new slew of villains each arc for our heroes to defeat, but there’s something especially weak about the minor antagonists of Wano since they have to spend so much time competing against each other for space.
I have this little pet theory that Wano was a manga that Oda couldn’t make due to his commitment to One Piece, so he grafted his little samurai manga into One Piece so that he could focus on other characters besides Luffy. I have absolutely no proof of that, but it would make sense, given the ridiculous amount of depth present in this arc compared to the rest of the series. That would help make sense of how little the Straw Hats factor into the arc as time goes on to the point where the Onigashima battles involving them, while visually spectacular, lack a lot of heart that other fights in the series have had. Wano started off wonderfully, taking its time to clearly establish the stakes of the samurai’s revolution, but the more it went on, the more I lost interest in it. So little progress was being made from emotional beat to emotional beat that I can’t really blame someone for dropping the series because of Wano’s atrocious pacing.
It’s kind of impossible to imagine that when Oda decides to pull the trigger on the final arc of the series and throw everything and the kitchen sink at the readers/viewers, it’s going to be even bigger than what was present here in Wano. But I think there are valuable lessons to learn from Wano that will help to make the final arc of the series perfect. Wano introduced too many elements that weren’t fully developed and split its focus too much. I admit that One Piece may be too big to ever have a clearly defined and focused arc again, but it can be more focused than Wano. Toei nailed the showstopper moments, but it’s the in-between bits that needed to be refined a lot more and reduced. Don’t throw everything at readers if there’s just too much being tossed at them.
I’m sure that as we get more and more distance from Wano, opinions of it are probably going to be divisive. Emotions are running high now that the literal curtains have closed on One Piece‘s longest arc, and fans are looking back at the past four years of the show. It will be interesting to see where opinions are going to land in retrospect as the arc becomes more of a permanent fixture in the series canon. I think that Wano is going to embody the best and worst of One Piece, and it will serve as a monument to everything that Oda has accomplished with the series post-timeskip. But now that all of that buildup has paid off, all we can do now is wait to see how Oda will tie it all together in the final saga.
