One Piece’s remarkable twist: Every moment in its 25-year run is paying off

polygon.com:

I’d like to think that, if he were still alive, Homer would at least be a little envious of the work of Eiichiro Oda. The mangaka and creator of One Piece has created a saga in manga that rivals the work of the Greek poet. Perhaps not because of lyricism — One Piece is peak potty humor — but for the way it uses one crew of seafarers to tell a complicated history of an entire world and its nations’ conflicts.

Since 1997, the epic of One Piece has followed a band of pirates on the search for the ultimate treasure: the One Piece. The action-adventure series is known for its lighthearted tone and its protagonist, Luffy, who can stretch like rubber. There are roughly 1,070 episodes of the One Piece anime, and the manga itself is 106 volumes long, over 21,450-pages as of September 2022, with over 1,000 characters. But lately, Oda has been doing something new with One Piece, something bold, all things considered. Something for the folks who appreciate his work in all its Homeric length.

He’s built a modern arc on stuff that happened 25 years ago.

[Ed. note: This story discusses plot points of the Egghead Arc of the One Piece manga.]

It’s hard to encapsulate just how expansive Oda’s world is. Luffy and his pirates have traveled to dozens of islands and befriended countless more of their inhabitants, all in captivating detail. That’s all unfolded over 11 “sagas” so far, each made of multiple arcs — sometimes as many as five. So even though the manga is in its “final saga,” there’s still no telling how long Oda will take to wrap the story up.

Like any great long-running soap opera, One Piece will occasionally bring old characters back in new roles. Like Luffy’s brother Sabo, who first appears as a child in a memory and then