One Piece is back. After a three-month break following the end of the Egghead arc, the Elbaph arc officially began on April 5, 2026. Episode 1156, titled “The Long-Sought Elbaph! The Big Reunion Banquet,” is now streaming on Crunchyroll. It is the first episode of Season 22 and the first to air under Toei Animation’s new seasonal format.
The episode looks great. But manga readers noticed things. Here is the full breakdown of what Chapter 1126 contains, what Episode 1156 adapted, and exactly what the anime skipped or changed.
Which Manga Chapter Does One Piece Episode 1156 Cover?
Episode 1156 adapts Chapter 1126, titled “Settling the Score.” This chapter was first published in Weekly Shonen Jump in September 2024 and is part of Volume 111. The Elbaph arc in the manga starts from Chapter 1126, so this is exactly where the anime picks up.
Going forward, Toei has confirmed a 1:1 chapter-per-episode pacing for the entire Elbaph arc. Each new episode will cover one chapter of the manga.
Quick facts:
- Episode title: The Long-Sought Elbaph! The Big Reunion Banquet
- Manga chapter adapted: Chapter 1126, “Settling the Score.”
- Pages covered: Pages 2-3 and 5-17
- Air date: April 5, 2026
- Streaming: Crunchyroll (day one), Netflix (one-week delay)
What Happens in Episode 1156?
Chapter 1126 is unusually dense. It covers four separate storylines across different locations, and the anime follows all of them.
The banquet on the Great Eirik: The Straw Hats and the Giant Warrior Pirates are feasting aboard the giant’s ship as they sail toward Elbaph. Oimo and Kashii explain to the crew how Dorry and Brogy ended their century-long duel on Little Garden.
The answer is simple: they had destroyed all their weapons, so they agreed to return to Elbaph to get new ones before resuming the fight. It is a small scene, but it closes a question fans have had since the Little Garden arc over 1,000 episodes ago.
The Bartolomeo and Shanks confrontation: At Gartel Island, Shanks puts Bartolomeo through a loyalty test after Bartolomeo burned the Red Hair Pirates’ flag. Bartolomeo takes full responsibility for his crew. Shanks spares their lives, but Yasopp destroys the Going Luffy-senpai as punishment. The Barto Club’s fate is left open.
Blackbeard at Hachinosu: Blackbeard is angry that Koby and Moria escaped after the Egghead incident, but is satisfied with Garp being captured. Catarina Devon’s ship arrives with Caribou. Blackbeard starts planning his next move.
The cliffhanger: Two days after the party, the Thousand Sunny is gone overnight. Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, and Chopper have vanished with it. Robin, Franky, Brook, Jinbe, Bonney, and Lilith are left behind on the giants’ ship with no idea where the rest of the crew went.
What Did One Piece Episode 1156 Skip From the Manga?
This is the section manga readers care about most. Here is what the anime left out or changed.
Page 4 of Chapter 1126 was skipped. The One Piece Wiki confirms the episode adapted pages 2-3 and then jumped straight to pages 5-17. Page 4 was not covered. No source has confirmed the exact content of that page, but the skip is officially documented. It is a single page and likely a transition panel, but there is a gap.
The Yamato cover story was replaced with older Bartolomeo cover stories. Chapter 1126 carries the Oni Child Yamato’s Golden Harvest Surrogate Pilgrimage cover story, Volume 14, subtitled “The girls from the soba shop in Kuri have gone missing.” Toei did not animate this. Instead, they brought the Bartolomeo cover stories from Chapters 869 to 875 to life. This is a deliberate swap; the anime chose older content over the current chapter’s cover story.
This is not unusual for Toei. Cover stories are frequently skipped or delayed in the anime. But it means anime-only viewers are missing an ongoing side story about Yamato that manga readers are following in real time.
The opening recap ran for nearly five minutes before new content began. The episode opens with flashback footage, including scenes from Little Garden and the end of the Egghead arc, before moving into new material. None of that exists in Chapter 1126, which opens directly on the banquet. Multiple reviewers confirmed the recap delay, noting it contradicts the tighter pacing the seasonal format was supposed to deliver.
Several scenes were extended with slow panning shots and reaction frames. The feast sequence had lingering camera work on giant food and crew faces that do not appear in the manga panels. The Shanks and Blackbeard scenes, which drew the most praise visually, were actually rushed through in the final minutes, even though they were short in the manga, too. The pacing trade-off within the episode was uneven.
Is the New Seasonal Format Working?
Partly yes, partly not yet. The animation quality is the clearest improvement. The Shanks and Blackbeard scenes look cinematic, far above what One Piece delivered during the worst of the Wano and Dressrosa stretch. The new late-night timeslot in Japan also means Toei can now adapt Oda’s increasingly dark and mature storytelling without daytime broadcast restrictions.
But the five-minute recap opening directly contradicts what the seasonal format promised fans. The format was announced specifically to remove padding. Starting the very first episode of the Elbaph arc with five minutes of recycled footage was not the statement Toei needed to make.
The episode is better than any pre-Egghead premiere in recent memory. But the pacing habits are not fully gone yet.
Where to Read the Manga From Here
If you want to get ahead of the anime after watching Episode 1156, start reading from Chapter 1127, titled “Adventure in the Land of Mystery.” This is where Episode 1157 picks up. You can read it legally and for free on Viz Media or Shueisha’s Manga Plus, both of which release new chapters in English on the same day as the Japanese publication.
What Comes Next in the Elbaph Arc?
Episode 1157, titled “Nami’s Confusion! The Adventure in the Land of Mystery,” adapts Chapter 1127. This is where the six missing Straw Hats, including Luffy, Nami, and Usopp, start exploring Elbaph properly for the first time, wearing Viking-style outfits with no memory of how they got there.
The first cour of the Elbaph arc runs for 13 episodes and ends June 28, 2026. The second course begins later in 2026. The full arc is expected to run for 60 to 70 episodes total across multiple years, based on the manga’s current chapter count and the 1:1 pacing model.
The Elbaph arc in the manga has already delivered the full God Valley Incident flashback, the introduction of Prince Loki and Figarland Shamrock, Robin’s reunion with Jaguar D. Saul, and the reveal of Imu’s face and Devil Fruit. Anime-only viewers have a lot ahead of them.
FAQs
Why was the Yamato cover story skipped?
The anime swapped the current Yamato cover story for older Bartolomeo side stories to give anime-only viewers the context they need for the conflict with Shanks. While this helped explain why Bartolomeo was in trouble for burning the Red Hair Pirates’ flag, it means the current events in Wano remain un-animated. This is a common Toei tactic: prioritizing immediate plot relevance over chronological side stories.
How effective is the new 1:1 chapter-per-episode pacing?
The results are a mixed bag so far. While the animation quality has reached a cinematic peak with the seasonal shift, the “1:1” model still requires padding to fill a full broadcast slot. In Episode 1156, this resulted in a nearly five-minute recap of old footage before the new content began. While the scenes that were animated look better than ever, the traditional pacing issues have been traded for heavy recaps rather than being fully eliminated.
Where does the story go after Episode 1156?
Following the Thousand Sunny’s disappearance, the narrative shifts to Chapter 1127, where the missing crew members wake up in a surreal, block-like Land of Mystery. This begins the meat of the Elbaph arc, introducing Viking-themed outfits and giant-sized creatures. Fans looking to skip the weekly wait can jump directly into Chapter 1127 via Shueisha’s Manga Plus or Viz Media to see exactly how the crew was separated.