Time Skips are a common phenomenon in many anime and manga series, as they give the protagonist the chance to delve deeper into his strength, learn about it, and become stronger to face the adversities in the upcoming future, and finally be strong enough to conquer them and achieve their final goal.
In One Piece particularly, Eiichiro Oda wrote one of the longest time skips the anime world has ever seen that although helped Luffy and his crewmates get stronger, seemed a little odd to many One Piece fans. This may be because fans saw a drastic change in the characters that was unexpected.
Another aspect that did not sit right with the time skip is that, unlike many other anime series, Oda almost entirely skipped over the events of the time skip and only focused on some of it, which made fans think that the mangaka might have gotten lazy by ignoring to create the time skip events more extensively for fans to understand it and feel comfortable with Luffy and the straw hat’s instantaneous transformations.
The Time Skip in One Piece Separates The Story in Two Halves
In the One Piece plot, there is a two-year time skip between Chapters 597–598 and Episodes 516–517. After failing to save his brother Ace during the Paramount War, Luffy was saved by Jinbe, and Rayleigh, the former Pirate King’s right-hand man offered to train him for two years on the island of Ruskaina.
Luffy informed his whole crew via a coded message that they would be reuniting on the island of Sabaody in two years and that they needed to build up themselves. After being split up on Sabaody, Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates rejoined this island three days and two years later to resume their quest for the New World.
However, the problem that the fans had with the time skip was that Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece decided to skip a lot of the events that happened with the Straw Hat pirates during the time skip and only showed a glimpse of it. Thus making fans confused about Luffy and the Straw Hats’ growth during the two-year time.
Eiichiro Oda Got Lazy During The Time Skip
Fans were happy to see Luffy grow stronger to the level that he was able to defeat a Yonko and himself become a Yonko, but it also led to some fans being upset because they did not get to see Luffy’s growth during the time skip. While it is not necessary for an anime or manga series to show the events of time skip, fans expected Oda to at least focus on them.
This is because Oda is known for getting into the details of the story and bringing out the important aspects of the plotline. Therefore fans believed that he might also show how Luffy trained and became so much stronger in two years. This has been done by many other prominent anime series.
Oda majorly skipped the aspects of the time skip and just re-introduced the characters with a power surge and immediately sailed them off to their new adventures. He didn’t even let the Straw Hats discuss the time skip among themselves, and this in turn led the fans to believe that Oda might be getting lazy.
