TL;DR If we want to believe in Oda's affirmation that One Piece will be over in exactly 5 years (not one more), we have only one short arc and one long arc left after Wano. Not that much, really. Also, if you believe in math and descriptive statistics, Wano could be crudely predicted as being 100-ish chapters long.

Yohohoho, yohohoho. Yohohoho, yohohoho. Yohohoho, yohohoho.

Oda's "Five Years statement"

If you are a fan of One Piece, you should live under a rock to have never heard that One Piece will end, probably a lot sooner than you expected. Every other year, Oda says something on the lines of "One Piece is at XX% of completion" or something like that, but quite recently he came out with a true and true expiration date.

Oda was involved in a interview with Fisher, a very famous Japanese youtuber with millions of subscribers, last year in between August and September 2019. This is the link to the video and the following is an extract coming from The Library of Ohara's translation.

Question 13:

F (Q): Considering the entirety of One Piece, how many years does the story have left?

O (A): I want to end it in five years.

Many were skeptical at first, Oda's former manga editor and current media editor, Takuma Naito, included. He made some tweet about it and released few interview about it in the next few months and many could say that his statement were exaggerated to promote interest in the interviews around some of the future released One Piece properties.

First, he said the following during an Interview about the release of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, that came out last September, few weeks after Fischer's interview:

According to translator Eten, Naito told the audience he was surprised everyone took Oda at his word.

N: I thought to myself, 'Why did everyone believe that? There's no way."

N: It's not that we want to drag anything. The stories ahead are just that dense, we still have so much to do, to finish all of them in 5 years...

Later (during an interview about the success of One Piece: Stampede), he said that his statement was untrue and, based on the current pacing of the Wano arc, One Piece could very well end in 5 years. The following is an analysis that come, again, from Library of Ohara.

This ties into a question by Oricon asking if Oda’s claim in the Fischer’s interview some months ago that One Piece would end in 5 years was true. The editor admits that at first, he was skeptical about such a claim, but seeing at how the pacing of Wano has been proceeding and how we’re already at the Onigashima raid, he believes that the series ending in 5 years is a very realistic estimate.

Of course, he iterates, the precise timeframe isn‘t set in stone. They don‘t have a set deadline they are forced to end the series by, just a general estimate based on what they want to tell left, but he believes 5 years is a realistic estimate. He claims that ultimately it all depends on if Oda wants to introduce more elements or islands to explore than he already has, so it could obviously go on longer. In his words, Oda has the habit to stretch plot points all the time, so it could vary. But he warns not to overestimate this timeframe too much and that 5 years might be a very likely reality.

So... where are we left now?

The original Oda "5 years statement" was largely misread and misquoted, but now that we had more weight behind it due to Naito's sudden change of ideas I think that it has become more believable. Worth to notice that Oda said that One Piece would end in 5 years time last year (in September 2019), so by his estimate the series should end by middle 2024. With an average of 46~48 chapter per year, we can second guess the number of chapters left and the number of arcs left in the story to see how much this is statement is true/probable given the way Oda is used to lay out the story.

• Chapter 967 - January 2020
• Chapter 1012~1015 - January 2021
• Chapter 1057~1063 - January 2022
• Chapter 1102~1111 - January 2023
• Chapter 1147~1159 - January 2024
• Chapter 1172~1186 - Middle 2024
• Chapter 1192~1207 - January 2025

So lowballing the number of chapters left we got 195 chapters left. Highballing the number we got 209 chapters left and for the sake of the argument I will use an approximate number of 200 chapters, but the same could go both ways quite easily, with the series ending just a little bit shy of 1200 chapters.

Accounting for the current pace of release made by Oda (with an average of a break after three straight chapter releases), with an average of 36-40 chapters per year, we can second guess the number of chapters left and the number of arcs left in the story to see how much this is statement is true/probable given the way Oda is used to lay out the story.

• Chapter 967 - January 2020
• Chapter 1003~1007 - January 2021
• Chapter 1040~1047 - January 2022
• Chapter 1076~1087 - January 2023
• Chapter 1103~1127 - January 2024
• Chapter 1125~1147 - Middle 2024
• Chapter 1139~1167 - January 2025

So lowballing the number of chapters left we got 150 chapters left. Highballing the number we got 190 chapters left and for the sake of the argument I will use an approximate number of 175 chapters, but the same could go both ways quite easily, with the series ending just a little bit shy of 1150 chapters.

So where could we go with 175 more chapters?

Average Arc Length and Percentiles

First, it's important to point out that most of the following analysis has been made based on the fact that arcs have an official beginning and an official ending (more or less), while Saga's grouping is always on the readers (and the collective effort of the people who submit information to the wiki) so it's far from being something that come directly from Oda.

https://preview.redd.it/is1jh61of9q41.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6fbeb364c8dc381282fd8f0de1d951dd72d4264

I put all my calculations in the following Google Sheet, using datas from the previous bar chart and open data from the wiki. For all different arcs I put down their duration (in chapters and in days) and the beginning time, that is the elapsed time (measured in days) since the beginning of that specific arc since the beginning of the series.

Arcs have been further divided into their length percentiles to make more meaningful description about their likely length.

• Minimum Arcs: Logue Town, Reverse Mountain, Return to Sabaody, Reverie, Romance Dawn, Whiskey Peak, Post-Enies Lobby, Amazon Lily;
  • Minimum arcs are the arcs below the 25th percentile (or the 25% shorter arcs), all with 11 chapters or less. They are often transitional arcs and their length has been kept constant during the series. The sample is polydisperse for Minimum arcs.
• Short Arcs: Orange Town, Little Garden, Post-War, Jaya, Long Ring Long Land, Syrup Village, Zou, Sabaody;
  • Short arcs are the arcs in between the 25th percentile and the 50th percentile (or the 50% shorter arcs), all within an interval given by 11 to 25 chapters. Their content is usually self-conclusive and act rarely as very small transitional arcs, but they are never the payoff arc within a saga.
• Medium Arcs: Drum Island, Impel Down, Baratie, Arlong Parc, Marineford, Punk Hazard, Thriller Bark, Fish-Man Island;
  • Medium arcs are the arcs in between the 50th percentile and the 75th percentile (or the 75% shorter arcs), all within an interval given by 25 to 50 chapters. Their content is always self-conclusive, with Big Boss Battle for Luffy and, sometimes, for some of the other crew members. Arguably, as seen in the statistical analysis, this could have been split up in between short arcs and long arcs (putting 30-ish chapters as an arbitrary separation), but I prefer to kept the slip to the a priori chosen percentiles.
• Long Arcs: Water 7, Enies Lobby, Alabasta, Skypiea, Wano\, *Whole Cake, Dressrosa;
  • Long arcs are the arcs above the 75th percentile (or the 25% longer arcs), all with more than 50 chapters. They are long arcs (except Water 7) that have a long conflict between the Strawhats and an enemy crew, with a main fight with the Big Boss and Luffy and most of the other Strawhats with a main enemy. Long arcs are payoff to long sagas.

This sub-classification is useful to look at different arcs from a descriptive point of view.

Since we have 175-ish chapters left, shouldn't we just take the averages length and determine how many of those arcs we have left? Sadly, it's not that easy. The main problem to determine how many arcs we have left is that, as the series went on, arc's length has kept growing longer and longer.

Length Creep

Plotting the beginning time against duration shows how much arcs got longer as the series has progressed. Length creep could be also partially accredited to the inflated pacing release as well, who see Oda releasing chapter less consistently now than he was used to during the earlier parts of the series.

A crude linear regression using Sagas data points and Arcs data points

It's quite easy to see that earlier arcs where shorter, on average, and recent arcs are usually longer (and the future ones will realistically surpass the ones we already have). This phenomenon could be called Length Creep and could realistically be defined as:

LENGTH CREEP

A property of shonen comic storytelling, where arcs released later tends to get more long as time goes.

That's quite common for year-spanning manga series, since you need to overcome in importance every arc with the following one (while maintaining former plot points relevant), thus leading to a slow escalation in their length. Is not a good thing, per se, but it does indeed happen in most of the battle anime manga series out there.

Accounting length creep for arc with different lengths, we have a good fit for a length creep trend for Short Arcs and for Long Arcs (being the ones with the lowest statistical coefficient of variation from the deduced data), that could be used later down the line to extrapolate for future arc length.

https://preview.redd.it/q06hfii3o9q41.png?width=401&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ea385a8f4d70ec3b9f5289b59496204a344da47

https://preview.redd.it/mkdhdm46o9q41.png?width=401&format=png&auto=webp&s=c510bb2c84e4277692107507f723d77eb65f992b

While the short arc trend shows a shockingly accurate trend, the one for long arcs is slightly more dispersed, mainly due to the fact that a significative part of the data set for this sample come from the Wano arc (that is still going on). I made all the length creep calculations neglecting Wano, but it's easy to make them again correcting for a Wano arc once we will know how much long it will be.

With this data set, Wano is predicted to be 890 days long (or 100 chapters), an estimation that I'm quite happy to begin with.

Arcs/Expected Time of Ending (EDE)

Taking into consideration both the average arc length and the length creep of later arcs is possible to try to predict how many arcs we have left. Extrapolating the linear regression for future times, is possible to infer informations about the number of arcs in between now and the ending thought by Oda. All the further predictions are made by using the Short/Long Arc Length Extrapolation table, calculated by taking into account the Length Creep as it is right now in the series.

So the shortest resolution possible, taking into account the expiration date given by Oda has a 100-ish chapters long Wano (so 68 as of today plus the ones coming out in the next year up to Februrary/March, give or take), a short transitional arc in the middle, a 25-ish chapters long Short Arc (from March 2021 up to November 2021), a 100-ish chapters long Long Arc (from December 2021 to mid-2024) and a short transitional epilogue.

• In order to have a last Long Arc (Laugh Tale?) who will finish by mid-2024, taking into consideration that the last arc would be probably the longest being the latest, it should begin in between November/December 2021.
• In order to have a last Short Arc (Elbaf?) who must finish by end-2021 to accommodate for the last long arc, that arc should start by April/March 2021.
• In order to have that second to last short arc, Wano should end by March 2021. If Wano will finish in one year by now (as it is crudely predicted by the long arc length extrapolation), it's still possible that the 5 years timeline is accurate.

Is it believable? Frankly, I don't know. I honestly can't see how Oda would be able to deal with both the Laugh Tale side of the EOS content (Elbaf, Roadstar, Black Beard, Shanks, One Piece, Whitebeard Pirates/Weevil and Laugh Tale) and the World Government side of the EOS content (Mary Geuse, Ancestral Weapons, Vegapunk & Co., Marines, World Government/Ym, Revolutionaries) without dealing with them with at least a long arc each, but Mr. Naito's sudden change of idea make me think now that this has become slightly more likely.

What I personally would consider being a more believable ending, is the following one. In order to have a good build up for each long arc, Oda usually uses short arcs (such as he did with Zou for Wano and Punk Hazard for Dressrosa, the Reverie arc seems to be the build up for the next short arc as well), followed by long arcs, with minimum arcs sprinkled in between. Medium arcs are left for self-conclusive stories (such as Fish-Man island or Thriller Bark), so I don't think that there are any left in the story of those. The bare bones minimum to end in a satisfactory way, in my opinion, is the following:

• End of Wano: ~ 01/03/2021
  • 50 chapters (dealing with Big Mom and Kaido);
• Short Arc (e.g. Elbaf) - 01/04/2021 ~ 01/11/2021
  • 25-ish chapters (dealing with Shanks, build-up to Laugh Tale);
• Minimum Arc (e.g. Lodestar? WB's island?) - 01/11/2021 ~ 01/01/2022
  • Build up to Final War: 10-ish chapters (introduction of Dragon/Revolutionaries and end game stuff, as well as Ym, last poneglyph);
• Long Arc (Laugh Tale/PK Arc) - 01/01/2022 ~ 01/09/2024
  • 100-ish chapters (dealing with Black Beard);
• Short Arc - 01/09/2024~01/05/2025
  • Build up to Final War: 25-ish chapters (travel to final arc, build-up to the final arc);
• Long Arc (e.g. Mary Geuse/Final War): 01/05/2025 ~ 01/05/2028
  • 115-ish chapters (dealing with World Government, Marines, Admirals, Im and EOS stuff);
• Ending (e.g. Flashforward): mid-2028.
  • 10 chapters (dealing with Strawhats personal epilogues);

That's 325/350 chapters, at least 150 more (and 3 full years) than the one needed to keep the manga short of 5 years of content from today. It may very well require less of a decade to finish, but to finish in just 5 years it seems to me impossible without picking up the pace even further or letting too much stuff on the cutting room floor...

Edit - The actual Release Pace

Oopsie daisy! I referenced the number of chapters per year as written here, without actually second-guessing myself if that number was actually meaningful at all. For all the redditors out there who were promptly ready to point out that "Actually, we have a pace of 38.86 chapters per year" instead of the 40-ish I used (rounded down to 40 most of the time) we had before, now that's the actual data referenced in the rest of the post.

EDIT (December 2021) - Secret Edit no Justu! Nin! Nin!

Nin! Nin!

For the sake of accuracy, I wanted to tackle the problem again since Wano went on way longer than what was predicted when I made this post. Nowadays, Wano is the longest arc, sitting up at a staggering 126 chapters, so I wanted to calculate once more when One Piece will end if the roadmap I made was calculated once more today.

Let's preface that the only chance for One Piece to actually finish by mid-2024, the last long arc should have already started. So the current roadmap for the "Five Years Statement" is long gone. This is further confirmed by Oda, who wrote he is surprised that Wano hasn't ended yet during the interview at Jump Fiesta 2022.

The Last Saga roadmap I've proposed was the following, calculating the length of the arcs by the time they're supposed to start:

• End of Wano: ~ 01/07/2022
  • 20 chapters (dealing with Big Mom and Kaido);
• Short Arc (e.g. Elbaf) - 01/07/2022 ~ 07/03/2023
  • Slightly more than 25 chapters (dealing with Shanks, build-up to Laugh Tale);
• Minimum Arc (e.g. Lodestar? WB's island?) - 07/03/2023 ~ 20/06/2024
  • Build up to Final War: 10-ish chapters (introduction of Dragon/Revolutionaries and end game stuff, as well as Ym, last poneglyph);
• Long Arc (Laugh Tale/PK Arc) - 20/06/2024 ~ 10/04/2027
  • 110-ish chapters (dealing with Black Beard);
• Short Arc - 01/04/2027~15/12/2027
  • Build up to Final War: 25-ish chapters (travel to final arc, build-up to the final arc);
• Long Arc (e.g. Mary Geuse/Final War): 15/12/2027 ~ 15/02/2031
  • 130-ish chapters (dealing with World Government, Marines, Admirals, Im and EOS stuff);
• Ending (e.g. Flashforward): early-2031.
  • 10 chapters (dealing with Strawhats personal epilogues);

This is missing the mark by 6 years and the later Wano will end, the later the whole series will finish.