Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlPZNgGoGUs

At this year’s Jump Festa Convention Oda revealed in an interview that a massive battle royale war will take place in the world of One Piece, and inferred that some main characters may actually die in this war. And said conflict is one we are seeing that already play out under our eyes right now! With several factions coming into conflict, including Law and Garp vs Blackbeard, and now even Kid vs Shanks in the country of Elbaf. However, you may have struggled to keep track of how many Road Poneglyphs every faction ha, which will prove critical in who will be able to reach the One Piece first, so allow me to remind you of everyone’s current standings right now.

Oda’s Message

So specifically, in his Jump Festa message Oda stated “Regarding the One Piece source material in 2023,
it’ll be a type of story that will have you going “No way!! That person and that person are
gonna be fighting?!” If I were to give it a descriptive title, I’d call it a ‘Great Battle Royale’!!
I hope no one dies~!!”

So essentially what Oda is saying here is that One Piece in 2023 is gonna have us going “No way, that person and that person are gonna be fighting?!” a lot, which to be fair is already happening right now, I mean that’s probably how you felt this week reading the last chapter, as I’m sure not that many people expected this match up right now. Given the way it’s worded in Japanese, it comes off more like Oda is saying that we are going to have this reaction several times this year, like we did with Garp vs Blackbeard or Kid vs Shanks rather than referring to one single specific battle. After all he described this situation as a battle royale, which is a conflict where several different groups are all fighting each other at the same time in separate places. We have both Yonko and the Worst Generation struggling to attain all of the Road Poneglyphs. And since Morgans said he believed that one of the members of the Worst Generation will be the one to attain the One Piece, then this means that either Law, Kid, or Blackbeard, may gain a major leg if they are able to win any of their battles.

Straw Hats vs World Government

So let’s take a quick look at what the current situation is with all the important members of each faction and how many Road Poneglyphs each of them have. For starters, Luffy, Law, and Kid left Wano with the three different destinations the log pose led to. Luffy lost all bets and was forced to head South-East, though perhaps that may have been a twist of fate, as that led him to Egghead where he met Vegapunk, now stuck in the struggle to escape the Labophase alongside the Punks, one of them being a traitor, Bonney, Lucci and Kaku, with Admiral Kizaru, Gorosei Jaygarcia Saturn, and 100 Marine ships heading for Egghead. It should be noted that it’s specified that these 100 ships are of different sizes, so they’re not all battleships like the ones you’d use in a buster call, but regardless this is a mighty force, especially including an Admiral and the unprecedented movement of a Gorosei, all likely because the Gorosei now see Luffy having transformed as Nika as too much of a threat.

As you likely well know, the Straw Hats currently have three Road Poneglyphs, the one from Zou, the one form Whole Cake Island, and the one from Wano, now only lacking the final one originally found on Fishman Island whose current location is unknown. Robin has also read at least 10 confirmed normal blue poneglyphs out of the total 26 that exist, though it’s possible she may have read others off-screen during her younger years. Among these, it’s implied she has read some of the 9 Rio/Real Poneglyphs that tell the history of the Void Century if read in order up until the final one found on Laugh Tale.

Law vs Blackbeard

Meanwhile, Law sailed North-East towards Winner Island, where he was confronted by Blackbeard, who specifically ambushed him expecting one of the three Supernova to come at one of the three locations. In this conflict, we on one hand have the Heart Pirates, who have attained the Road Poneglyph on Wano and implicitly the one on Zou as well. It’s possible that the Straw Hats probably gave him a copy of the Road Poneglyph on Whole Cake Island, but that hasn’t really been confirmed yet.

On the other hand, the Blackbeard Pirates don’t have any confirmed Road Poneglyphs under their belt, though Law believed that Blackbeard would likely have one as well. It’s possible that they may have gotten the one on Whole Cake Island during their incursion there, as it seems like it’d be a waste to not have attempted to do so, but we don’t know yet. However Blackbeard holds one of the most important keys towards finding the One Piece and that’s actually Charlotte Pudding, whom he has kidnapped. As it was inferred, the three eyed tribe seems to have the power to hear the voice of all things through their third eye, which people like Roger used to quite literally hear what the poneglyphs said. Since Pudding is a half-blood three eyed, she still hasn’t awakened this power yet, but it’s likely to happen soon, giving Blackbeard a big edge in attaining the One Piece.

It’s hard to say exactly who would win between Law or Blackbeard because in all honesty I’m not really a powerscaler, but I want to bring emphasis to the fact that the last panel we saw of their fight showed Blackbeard using “Kurouzu”, or his “black water vortex” technique, which negates devil fruit powers, so for someone like Law who is so reliant on his devil fruit powers, that makes his chances of succeeding very poor.

We should also remember that some weeks ago, Blackbeard invaded Amazon Lily, though he was forced to retreat. Hancock now finds herself forced to leave Amazon Lily, as she feels her people will be put in danger if she stays on the island. She wants to just elope with Luffy, though we don’t know yet if she’ll go after him or if she’ll go somewhere else. Meanwhile Koby was kidnapped by Blackbeard, and is now supposedly held hostage in Hachinosu. This is particularly fitting, because if Blackbeard managed to kidnap Law as well, then that would mean that together with Koby, the three central figures of the Rocky Port Incident will be in one place at the same time again. Furthermore Koby’s kidnapping mobilized Garp to go rescue him at Hachinosu, picking Helmeppo and Hibari along the way at G-14, despite not having been given clearance to engage against a Yonko, which will most likely lead to a confrontation between the two very soon. And Garp is actually Blackbeard’s natural enemy, since being one of the most powerful non-devil fruit fighters in the world right now makes him a foil to Blackbeard’s reliance on his powers.

Kid vs Shanks

And finally, Kid managed to go East as he had wanted, which led him to the island of Warland Elbaf. As a quick side note, since we do see it in action right here, Elbaf appears to have a colossal tree in its center, which is likely themed around the Yggdrasil, the famous gigantic tree of Norse culture. Some people have speculated if this tree could perhaps be the famous Treasure Tree Adam we’ve heard so much about, but we’ll have to see. And one last thing, let’s not forget the weird cylindrical shape that could be seen in the skies, which in this chapter we actually see several of them surrounding the tree. What are they actually?

Regardless, on Elbaf we have Shanks, who seems to have stopped over to chat with some old friends, who are revealed to be Dorry and Brogy, our old friends from Little Garden who have finally made it home. It’s particularly interesting since a cover story showed that even at the start of the post-timeskip, they were still dueling at Little Garden, so I wonder what happened for them to have decided to stop fighting and head back to the New World. Did it perhaps have to do with the news of the Straw Hat Pirates making it into the New World we saw in the cover story?

Eitherway, Shanks is happy to meet again with Dorry and Brogy, claiming them to be old friends, with the two giants even calling Shanks “brother”. This means that Shanks likely befriended the two much like Luffy did at Little Garden, since after all they’ve been fighting each other for 100 years so it would’ve been impossible for Shanks to meet them anywhere else. With them we also see Oimo and Kashi, the two giants guards from the Enies Lobby gate who were searching for Dorry and Brogy, and were said to have returned to Elbaf. A lot of people were predicting that Shanks would have ties to Elbaf given how his ship resembles a viking drakkar, so it seems like that really ended panning out, being beloved by the people of the island.

As Oda explained in the SBS, very similarly to Whitebeard, Shanks has several allied crews under his wing, which we see some of them in this chapter hugging Shanks out of admiration for him, though Oda explained there’s a lot of mutual respect among them rather than subordination, much like the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. This is why Shanks’s fleet refers to him by the title of “big boss”. The themed ships we can see around the island also seem to be those of said subordinate crews.

Furthermore Shanks is now being assisted by the Giant Warrior Pirates, who Big Mom claimed to be so strong that Elbaf’s military might would have been enough to give her the edge to attain the One Piece, so I’m not exactly fancying Kid’s chances. In fact, Killer makes it clear that Kid may very well die, which is fitting as Oda did tease the fact that he hopes no one dies in this great battle royale. Shanks is now getting serious about going after the One Piece, so he asks Kid to hand over his rubbings in exchange for survival. Kid currently has Wano’s Road Poneglyph, who Law gave to him as thanks for defeating Big Mom together, and also the Whole Cake Island Road Poneglyph, which many overlook but Kid was able to take when he infiltrated Totto Land during the timeskip, being the item he had wanted to take from that territory he talked about in Wano. During that time, Kid also fought against the Red-Haired Pirates, though he wasn’t able to even meet Shanks and instead lost his arm to one of his men, which this chapter implies was actually Benn Beckman. It’s unknown whether Law gave Kid the Zou Road Poneglyph as well, however.

As for Shanks, we don’t really know if he has any Road Poneglyphs, as he should know the location of all of them, but he couldn’t have gotten to Wano or Whole Cake Island, and Pedro claimed the Roger Pirates were the only other ones who were shown the Road Poneglyph on Zou. However, that makes me wonder if there is a Road Poneglyph in Elbaf, which is a fairly logical conclusion to make, but I think that we can actually motivate that now. Because we saw how Saul rescued all the books of Ohara after the incident. So what if he actually did the same at Fishman Island and felt that it was too dangerous for the Poneglyph to be found in such an open area where so many pirates passed by, especially now during the Great Pirate Era. So he instead took it to Elbaf with him, a much safer fortress no normal pirate can penetrate, as he expected that Robin would one day want to meet him again, so he could hand it to her personally. This is why Saul may have come to be known as the “Fire Scar”, the man who bears the final Road Poneglyph. This would make sense, since only giants of his size could take away a poneglyph with such ease. So perhaps Shanks already has access to this poneglyph due to his connection with the giants, but we can’t say for sure.

The World is Moving

But still, these are not all the factions involved in this conflict, as there are plenty of other relevant characters making their move across the world. Of course we have Morgans on his flying ship who is keeping safe Wapol and Vivi, who seem to have attained some forbidden knowledge from the Government that may relate to King Imu. Meanwhile, Dragon and the Revolutionaries are making their final preparations to begin their grand revolution, though Sabo is presumably still missing after that certain incident in the country that never existed. Kuma as well of course, is climbing up the Red Line towards Mary Geoise. Germa is escaping Totto Land alongside Caesar, Buggy, Mihawk, and Crocodile have founded Cross Guild, and Miss Buckin is pleading Marco to help rescue Weevil from Admiral Ryokugyu. And what about the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, Apoo, Urouge, Enel, and of course the Lurking Legend Imu-sama? Lots of factions are making their move in this grand battle royale that will engulf the One Piece world. What we are seeing right now are the embers, the sparks that will explode into the final conflict that will be the climax of One Piece!

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