@Gia:
"Modern" Oda has made his arcs longer and longer. Dressrosa, WCI and Wano are the 3 longest continuous arcs in the series by far. When you realize that, you understand that he won't remotely finish in his "desired" 5 year timeline unless he intends to end the series as badly as Bleach.
Water 7 still outpaces all of them by a fair margin. From chapter 322 through 441. A solid year of that was one on one fights where each crewmember got at least one dedicated multi-chapter fight, and the crew had two less members then. Oda has not repeated that in the 13 years since unless you count the really short three page fights in Fishman Island.
More recent arcs are getting close to that in length, and this will probably be the arc to finally actually pass Water 7 in length, but they aren't spending 50 chapters on JUST 1v1 fights. Army vs army fights, maybe. And fighting is the easiest thing to skimp on and just imply when the armies are big enough..
Arlong Park, Alabasta, Skypeia, Water 7, he always gave the entire crew fights. Modern Oda hasn't done that since. He showcases side characters and mini-skirmishes instead, battles that can be done between multiple characters in a single chapter. He's cut corners and trimmed off details since FIshman Island, and everyone was super annoyed with it at the time but we've had a decade to get used to his current pacing style. If he still paced things like he did pre-timeskip we'd still be in Dresserossa right now. Yes his arcs get longer overall because he adds more characters and plotlines, (And Dresserossa was a tournament arc stacked on top of a normal arc) but he also skimps details he would have once shown as well and a lot of that is fighting stuff being off panneled or implied. SHow two opponents meeting, cut away, come back a few chapters later and one of them is on the ropes.. .
When you realize that, you understand that he won't remotely finish in his "desired" 5 year timeline unless he intends to end the series as badly as Bleach.
Even a year ago none of us ever expected Oda to meet his five year goal when he predicted it. Even when it was first said we all assumed he couldn't possibly do it in less than 7 or 8 and have it be at all satisfactory. 30th anniversary instead of the 27th, sounded and felt better overall when going down the checklist of things to do. We all knew his five year estimate was bunk then, and its really clearly bunk now.
BUT. Oda did say that was his hope and goal, and reiterated it. We don't know exactly what he has in mind and where he might cut corners or skimp with montages, or if Elbaf is actually going to be a short arc or something. But he knows the lingering checklist as well as we do, and all the same he thought "yeah I could maybe finish it five years." He's always wrong about his timetable guesses, but he still thought it.
If, when he made that prediction a year ago, he thought there were going to be two years of Wano battles plus the year of setup we've had? He would not think to himself "Okay, Wano is going to be three years, then the rest of the series can be wrapped in two."
However right or wrong, he HAD to be thinking at the time that Wano would be another year and a half, two at most. Unless Wano's results are going to sprawl into the rest of the series, he can't have been envisioning Wano being a four year arc at that time.
As bad as Oda is at guessing his own pace, and as much as he might not be able to help himself and have things ultimately go that long because he keeps adding new stuff into it… it's very, very clearly not his intent for this particular arc to be that long. It might end up being that long sure, but he knows something we don't about how its going to wrap sooner than a million solo fights later.
So I really am curious as to how people can expect his to end in year lol, especially when its not even just the battles that need resolution, but a multitude of characters who aren't even at Onigashima.
Amnesia Big Mom is a major wild card. Blackbeard is a wildcard. So is Moria for that matter. Luffy has an army with him, so a great chunk of fights can be distributed then handled largely off camera with us only getting highlights rather than full battles (and leave it for the anime to flesh out) while a main objective (Kaidou) is sought, similar to how Marineford went.
And, like I described above, if this arc doesn't need to be absolute complete 100% resolution for Kaidou, then a LOT of buisness can be put off to the actual final war rather than here and now. All the minions and underlings can be thrown against Marines or Blackbeard in the future, it doesn't have to all be wrapped up now, the same way that during Big Mom's arc we didn't get dedicated Prospero, Oven or Smoothy fights, and the same way the Blackbeard pirates weren't fought in Jaya.
Yeah, shovelling it all off to a later arc and making it next year's problem makes the final arc bigger and more complicated mess, but him planning on the last arc being two years in his (obviously faulty) five year estimate makes a little more sense.
Given the covers he just did for the new volume, so we haven't gotten a villain cover or a hero cover yet, means we're certainly here for another 30-40 chapters at least sure, especially with resolution, but thinking we'lll be here another 80 or more seems premature.