With everything we have going on now, and ESPECIALLY these most recent chapters, I'm starting to wonder if Oda has what I call Kingdom Hearts syndrome.
Short Version, if you're not familiar with the Kingdom Hearts games: it took YEARS for Kingdom Hearts 3 to be released after 1 and 2 were other pretty close... because Nomura (I think he was the one in charge of the franchise) realized/ wanted to tell all the little details and backstories of characters that never showed up in KH 1 &2, but would have a major impact on 3. So instead of the main title 3, we got a bunch of various side games explaining the lore for about a decade.
I feel like Oda is doing the same thing: he's got so much lore and ground to cover (Void Century, God Valley, Celestial Dragons, Imu, the Giant races... the list goes on and I think you get the idea) thaat it feels like he's dragging the story at this point to try to balance both present-day events and all the One Piece lore. I will first fully say that I tend to binge chapters... and at this point, I'd rather they just conclude present-day business at Egghead, and THEN go full HxH infodump mode so we can finally get some damn answers to all these things Oda's been teasing for years.
Then again, I feel like Oda is also just barely coming up with the ideas and hasn't fleshed out as much of the lore as we'd all like to think...
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