@Keo2309:
I find it odd how you're missing all the critical points in the story that are leading to a time skip, at least a minimal one. The Strawhats are missing, Oda's gone out of his way to show Luffy as weak, and now he's broken. This is the perfect time for his ambition to come back, and time to skip forward a bit. There's no point focusing on him struggling to train, a training arc in One Piece would be pointless, out of character, and extremely boring. Whereas a time skip fits this situation perfectly, with the crew coming out of it for the better. And doing so would in no way alter their personal development. How much could we miss of them sitting in one place getting stronger?
you fail to understand that they all reached their islands around the same time as luffy. Luffy himself had a few days of recovery, few days of travel to the ID, about 1-2 days worth of time fighting in ID, a few days travel to Mari, about a days worth of time fighitng, 2 weeks of time to return to AL and for minor healing, and now we are in the flash back.
So thats 3+1+3+1+14 = 22 days the SH's have been on their islands. If luffy begins to train that'll be anywhere of a few week - few month of time that we'll see in an extended montage rather than a full blown time skip. So we can say its 29 - 53 days the SHs have all been on their islands or are trying to return home.
Out of all the people Zoro probably required the most rest from his injures and probably needed almost a week to recover from his injuries. the rest of the SHs are potrayed as very active from the start. So those 22 days luffy spent fighting from AL and back the SH's have either been training or finding ways to return to SA.
Out of the SH's only 2 are not in the grand line. Chopper being in South Blue and Robin being in East Blue. Robin has been recued by the rebels and with their resources can get her back in no time im sure if they took a direct route. Chopper's fate is one that'd be hard to understand how he can transverse the south blue and grand line by him self to get to SA. (Though the anime claims the bird will be giving him a ride).
Now what I'm saying is. We won't be seeing a year jump boom they are all there in a group and bad ass. Knowing oda we'll probably see haki explained to luffy and a long montage of his training over time. Eventually we'll see him set out to look for his crew.
Long montage is not the same as Time Skip!
