 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we do not have a chapter review due to a holiday in Japan that I was unaware of until this morning. It was a very unfortunate way to wake up, but that is meaningless to us because there is always an abundance of One Piece related going on to discuss. And in this case, I thought it might be a good idea to address a certain piece of promotional material that read its head about a week ago, which sent a bit of a shockwave throughout the online community because it did signal the inevitable end of One Piece. And we'll get into how seriously we should be taking this, but the imaging question that made its way around would be this. And the important information we have here was translated by PRMA Leo on Twitter, as now is the time to reread One Piece to prepare for the last arc in the future. And then it also noted that this is almost the first time that the manga has been officially promoted as nearing its end, which isn't exactly true. And I suppose that's why they chose to use the word almost. Prior to this, though, the most recent statement on this matter came to us in a very unexpected vehicle being YouTube. Etch Your A Oda conducted an interview with The Fishers Channel, which is absolutely massive in Japan. In fact, they have just under six and a half million subscribers. So for any of you watching, that is what it's going to take for this channel to get an interview with Oda. So hit that subscribe button right now and let's make this happen. But admittedly, we do have an awfully long way to go. But the important aspect of this interview is that Etch Your A Oda pretty blatantly stated that he would like to end One Piece in five years. And after hearing this, the internet was divided into two camps. One group of people who took this as a set in stone sign that the world was going to end in exactly five years from that very day. And then there was another set of people who dismissed the statement entirely because it's Oda. And Oda is great at most things. Timelines is not one of those things. And most of the seasoned old and shriveled One Piece fans like myself have been in this second group because over the years we have gotten statements like this from time to time. And they always end up being pretty wildly inaccurate. And I suppose that's why we're currently 23 years into the story with no seeming imminent end in sight if you were to judge it by the story itself that is. However, several months after Oda's YouTube interview one of the editors of One Piece who was known only to me as Naito was also interviewed via traditional media. And there was a lot of really fascinating stuff in this such as Naito claiming that the Wanoak is a story which will heavily relate to the final chapter of One Piece which as manga readers will tell you in a very non-spoilers way I think we can now confirm to be quite true. But Naito also expanded upon Oda's initial statement with the following which was translated by the ever reliable Sandman. Naito can't help doubting that One Piece will end in five years from what he heard from Oda about future stories. But at the same time he says now that Oda himself said it with certainty he believes Oda will finish One Piece in five years. Naito feels the pacing in the Wanoak is so rushed that One Piece can finish in five years. And this is what caused me personally to start taking this whole end of One Piece business just a bit more seriously. Because to be perfectly frank one statement about Oda regarding time is nigh on meaningless to me. But in this interview Naito very much doubled down on Oda's timeline and not only that but he made sure to make it clear that Oda had approved all of these comments so it's not just Naito acting on his own volition. And the reason why I go through all of this is because it puts our latest announcement into some greater context. First the creator proposed a vague end date then the production team backed up that end date. And now we have a third source of input which is the publication's promotional material also adhering to this endpoint. Although the five year number was not explicitly mentioned. Any number of these factors alone is irrelevant. However seeing them together paints a very clear picture. A picture that many of us may not want to look at but it is staring us dead in the face and it's saying that One Piece is ending. With that said I do still very much encourage you all to maintain some healthy skepticism. We do very much need to keep in mind especially with promotional material like this that there is a profit motive behind such an announcement. You know Shueisha isn't printing this material for the benefit of the readers and when they say things like now is the time to reread One Piece what that actually translate into is now is the time to purchase 90 plus volumes of our best-selling manga. It's very deviously clever really. In some ways it's kind of like a positive threat. Reminding readers that One Piece is on a timeline and that they should very much hop on board to become part of the finale hype before it's over. Even though we are still very much literal years away from such a thing. And yes I am confident that we are several if not many years away from this being a cold stark reality that I exist in. And in regards to that I should address something to do with the wording of this translation because on Twitter Leo uses the word arc as in prepare for the last arc in the future. And this is one of those bits of forever confusion within the fan base which constantly argues about the distinguishment between sagas and arcs. They are different, they are very different in fact but many people still use them as interchangeable words but basically a saga is an overarching story with a specific long-term focus and within that saga there are a series of arcs which tell shorter stories usually separated by a specific location in manga that each build up towards the greater saga. And so the classic One Piece example would be the alabaster saga. This piece of story has a long-term focus of saving the nation of alabaster, defeating Sir Crocodile and following the central figure of Vivi. This saga is then composed of five arcs being Reverse Mountain, Whiskey Peak, Little Garden, Drum and finally alabaster with each of these containing shorter location specific stories that wrap up in a satisfying arc but are all related by the general theme of the saga. And this even works in weirder cases like say Dragon Ball Witch for whatever reason labels its arcs as sagas and then they label their sagas as groups which is kind of odd and annoying but the format does remain exactly the same. But due to having used the word arc this sent some legitimate panic into the fan base because an arc generally isn't all that long. And if we were being told to prepare for the final arc then that would mean that One Piece is ending very, very soon. Now wherever it was subsequently pointed out by another Twitter user that this article had used the kanji that we would best translate as saga or basically whatever denotes the bigger picture story. So with that in mind we can pretty safely say that this article is pointing us towards the last saga of One Piece which is unfortunately reasonable. And just to give you an idea of how long a given saga can be we are currently in the Yonko Saga and we have been there ever since 2015 when Zobe began publication. So we've already spent five years within a particular saga which has been playing out over four different arcs being the aforementioned Zo as well as Hokkei Kylan, the Reverie and of course Wano. So I do think this is very much in keeping with the timeline Oda proposed in his YouTube interview. After the Yonko Saga is completed we will have one more grand piece of story before One Piece comes to an end. Whatever that will be called whether it's like the pirate king saga or the world war saga whatever ends up happening and just thinking about how close that is it's pretty hype for me although it's also bittersweet because I never want this series to end. Although I definitely don't anticipate the final saga being quite as long as the Yonko Saga which has the pleasure slash burden of housing the Wano arc which is gigantic even by One Piece standards. In fact, putting things into a timeline it's very difficult to see Wano being completed before mid 2021. I mean, yes, we are very much getting into the serious stuff now in the manga but in a very weird way it still feels like we're in the middling section of the arc. There's still lots of setup a whole ton of mysterious characters and almost certainly flashbacks still to be had. And what's more interesting to think about is that Oda's interview actually occurred in August of 2019. So that was when he first floated the idea of having five years remaining. And here we are now in August 2020 so that's chopped one year off that end date giving us a theoretical four years and by the time Wano ends, look at best I think that would give us three and a half years remaining to tell the final saga all according to this very rough and vague timeline of course. And three and a half years is a long time in theory for most series I guess. Meanwhile, for One Piece you think back on arcs like Dressrosa which took two years to publish and yes, I mean arc not saga. If we're talking the Dressrosa saga then we were in that ever since Punk Hazard so that entire saga was well over three years. And that's sort of thinking very much impacts our predictions because one would assume that the very final arc would be something of a grand affair which doesn't leave us with a lot of room to head off elsewhere other than you know, becoming the pirate king which puts a lot of potential future stories that some people are very much looking forward to in peril such as an eventual Elbafark which other than Laugh Tale itself is probably the most mysterious island remaining that this series has been consistently building up towards ever since the early days. And while this may not be mutually exclusive there's also the tricky matter of a fourth road pornoglyph to solve as well as the looming threat of the world government as many of our straw hat allies are now in potentially perilous situations as well as everything else remaining there's a lot to solve in One Piece. And so I personally stand without a Tainto's initial train of thought in that I can't picture One Piece ending in another four years not from where we currently are anyway. And Naito very much confirms that assessment by stating that he knows the stories which Oda wishes to tell after Wano but in regards to that it's not impossible I guess it seems impossible right now because of how Oda currently constructs One Piece as this intricately detailed slow burn exploration. But Naito did also mention that he feels that Wano is being somewhat rushed in order to meet this self-imposed end date by Oda. And while I obviously won't spoil anything from Wano for anime only watches I think that Manga readers can by and large agree that the pace was really quick and significantly in recent chapters especially. And it's been quite a jolt actually because act two of Wano felt super slow and now things have sped up to the point where I almost feel like we've missed a huge chunk of story. And this format could very much continue into a future saga. You know, maybe we could squeeze four or five different arcs into it like a quick zoo style stop at obaf and so on and so forth. But even then I have such a hard time visualizing wrapping up everything so quickly without it feeling very, very sudden which I suppose is always going to be the risk of One Piece as well as any other story that gains this kind of prominence. Endings are difficult, especially if the endings center around grand mysteries. I mean, in my experience, the solving of the mystery tends to be my least favorite aspect of those kind of stories, which in this case, I suppose would be landing on Laugh Tale and finding the One Piece. There's just something so engaging about not knowing the answer that will instantly vanish as soon as we discover it. But what's more, I really do not want One Piece to be rushed towards an ending. I don't want it to be remembered as a series that was absolutely fantastic with a mediocre finale. We are not game of thrones in One Piece. We simply cannot have that. With that said, though, it is still the right decision to place faith in odor. He has held this beast for 23 years now and with each and every new chapter, you can still feel his passion and dedication for bringing this realm and its characters to life. Even with really minor characters and seemingly irrelevant locations, the utmost effort is spent making them the absolute best they could possibly be. So if we're looking at a timeline of ending One Piece four years from now, then it can probably begrudgingly be done. And while the promotional material says that now is the best time to reread the series, that's kind of redundant to me because any time is a good time to be rereading One Piece. And if you haven't yet gotten into One Piece and for some reason you're watching this video and even more miraculously, you've made it this far, then hi. Subscribe to the Grand Line Review and start this series already. I promise you will not regret it. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious One Piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.