When is One Piece ending? Based on a Summer 2022 interview with Eiichiro Oda, One Piece’s final chapter should be released in 2025, which means the ending will happen sometime around the One Piece Chapter 1200 release date.
Oda is also planning the “greatest battle ever” in relation to the upcoming One Piece climax.
One Piece’s final arc definitely started with One Piece Chapter 1054: Flame Emperor on July 25, 2022. In the same month, Oda was questioned about his plans for One Piece’s final chapter.
Oda has been questioned about the One Piece manga’s ending many times over the years and every time it seemed like the mangaka pushed back the ending by a few years by extending the story even further. This time Oda’s answer is a bit more definitive… albeit with some disclaimers.
During a July 2022 Weekly Shonen Jump interview with Oda and Detective Conan creator Gosho Aoyama, Oda admitted that he has wrongly answered this question so many times already that he has lost credibility. He wasn’t sure he should even answer the question and started by saying, “I’m not sure how many years it will take…”
But then he decided to claim that he was targeting ending One Piece within three years, which means roughly 150 more chapters and finishing in 2025.
“I shouldn’t really say this out loud,” Oda said, “because so far I have been pretty off, but as of now it’s a three-year end goal.”
Aoyama interjected, “But you never really know. Characters move a lot.” To which, Oda joked, “We’re all navigators.”
How accurate is the One Piece writer’s prediction for ending in 2025?
Some long-time One Piece fans might scoff at Oda’s prediction of ending in 3 years by 2025. After all, way back in 1997, he originally envisioned the entire story taking about 5 years to complete.
However, Oda is not constantly saying, “5 years left,” like some critics have suggested. Oda only said this once and after drastically revising his plans over 20 years ago, his estimates became much more accurate.
For example, in a 2002 interview, Oda estimated it would take at least 20 years to draw everything. By 2014, both Oda and his editor began saying 10 years, which would have meant ending in 2024.
By 2019, Oda was still predicting that he would finish by 2024 and his editor agreed: “If Oda says it will be 5 years, then it will surely end in five years.”
It’s possible this estimate was only off by a year due to the COVID pandemic, which Oda never could have predicted. In 2020, Oda’s progress rate on new chapters began slowing due to the increased number of breaks/hiatus.
Still, it is true that Oda’s predictions related to One Piece timeline milestones have been off. Originally, the Wano Country arc was supposed to start in 2017, but it didn’t begin until much later. Shanks was supposed to make his “big move” by late 2021, but this major story event didn’t take place until One Piece 1054 was released on July 25, 2022.
One Piece climax to feature the ‘greatest battle ever’
The mangaka took a one-month hiatus in order to prepare for creating One Piece’s final story arc. And one of the highlights of One Piece 1054 was the return of Shanks. But that’s just one detail that’s leading up to the “greatest battle ever” as Oda puts it.
In Japanese narratives, there is a four-act structure known as Kishōtenketsu.
- Ki : Introduction
- Shō : Development
- Ten : Twist (complication)
- Ketsu : Conclusion (reconciliation)
During the Twist phase, the story turns toward an unexpected development, and it contains the yama, or climax, of the story. Although the One Piece climax has not been announced yet, it is definitely already planned out since the creator already talked about the conclusion act.
During a September 2020 interview, Oda was asked if the One Piece manga’s ending would be in 5 years, or 2025. He was asked how he intended to take responsibility for stopping the serialization of the worldwide sensation.
“Rather than wanting to stop, it’s that the series will end because the most exciting part of Luffy’s adventure, being the story of ‘what is One Piece’, will come to its conclusion. Things are heating up in the Wano Country right now, but if Luffy can set sail from her safely, there will be developments on a global scale, a thrilling story the likes of which no one has ever read before. I’ll draw the greatest battle ever in One Piece history. It will be exciting! In order words, I made such a statement so readers could be mentally prepared to understand that even a story as long as this one is properly heading toward its end.”
– Eiichiro Oda
Let’s just hope that the One Piece manga’ ending goes beyond our expectations. Stay tuned!