Term · One Piece
Wano
A country that shut its borders centuries ago, and an arc that took the better part of four years to leave.
In Otakana the clue reads: Isolated samurai country arc
- Type
- Term
- Series
- One Piece
- Letters
- 4 · Hard
Wano is a samurai nation modelled on Edo-period Japan, sealed off from the rest of the world by law and by a ring of waterfalls that only certain fish can climb. Inside, a shogun rules on behalf of an emperor of the sea, the rivers run with factory waste, and most of the country starves while one city eats very well indeed.
The arc is the longest One Piece has run. It gathered plot threads laid down across twenty years of publication, gave the crew's swordsman the fight readers had been waiting most of that time for, and rewrote the balance of power among the emperors before it finished. It also ran for so many weekly chapters that complaining about its pacing became a fandom genre of its own.
The setting lets Oda draw everything the series had been circling for years: sword duels, oiran, kabuki poses, a festival, a castle assault in falling snow. The country's late lord, Kozuki Oden, gets a flashback running for chapters that is widely rated among the strongest stretches of the entire manga, and it is the reason half the cast behaves the way it does.
Spelling WANO
WANO is four letters, though Japanese writes it as Wano Kuni, the country of Wa. Wa is an old name for Japan, so the place is called something close to Japan-land, which is precisely what it is. The tiles want the four letters only. The W at the front is worth an early guess, since very few answers in this game begin with one.