@blue-san said in How much time do you think is left before One Piece ends?:
No way...
You think Blacbeared isnt getting a flashback?
Obviously he's going to get something.
Getting a flashback and getting a good flashback are two different things.
Kuma just got a 7 chapter flashback. Which is probably more screentime than he had in the rest of the series combined.
Kaidou got three and a half pages. After being the main threat fought for 150 chapters.And his super brief flashback was jammed into the last chapter of his arc as almost a rapid fire summary of things that needed to be covered.
Just because something's on the checklist doesn't mean it has equal weight to everything else on the checklist, or that Oda won't skimp on it if he needs to cut a corner to hit a self imposed deadline. (Oda tries to wrap arcs at 50 and 100 marks, doesnt always succeed but he tries)
Obviously in Oda's ideal world with infinite time he spends infinite focus on everything. But that's not the reality. He's older and more tired and publicly declated multiple times he's in the home stretch and trying to wrap it up.
Oda CAN'T do everything on the checklist in detail because the series isn't going to run for another 30 years. It probably won't end as soon as he wants, but it's not going to last forever either. SOMETHING has to give, no matter what you personally think is super important and deserves multiple chapters... those are calls he has to make and be efficient about at some point. For the entire last 15 years since the timeskip once of those things has been the crew interactions, we don't get anywhere near as many little moments with them as we used to or leisure time on the ship. Heck, it was between mid-Dresserossa and mid Wano before the entire crew was in the same room at the same time, that was like a six year span. Zoro and Sanji didn't have a single interaction for ages! And that's the MAIN characters getting shafted.
It's also possible we just go really light on the fight scenes for a few arcs and that'll cut a lot of time off too.
The anime and spin off mangas will have fodder to play with and expand and make specials of for forever. Oda has to pick his battles. He didn't put the full story of Ace in the series for instance, he left that to some outside light novels. (though those obviously didn't know about Wano) Shanks' Story, Rogers? I'm sure Oda has some specific big things still to show with them, if we haven't seen a lot of the keys already during Oden's flashback... but those seem like prime real estate for spinoffs and specials and theatrical films after Oda's done, as long as he tells all the big details he wants.