User blog comment:Neowitch/This can't be it.../@comment-1595565-20111201171130

I think Zoro put it best when he started fighting Hyouzou. This arc is a warmup. I agree, the anime will probably stretch it to death and squeeze as much extra time as they can from it. I get the feeling that once they arrive, we're going to have about one to two months of pure, uncut, filler, like what they did in Water 7, only longer. A lot longer. If there's one thing the people at Toei like to do it's keep a fair distance from the current plot, and since Sabaody, Oda hasn't really been giving them that much wiggle room. The most filler in one episode was that stuff with Naguri. Taking into account the random bits of filler incorporated into canonical episodes, they have about 1.5-2 years of filler to make up for So they are going to take advantage like no other and squeeze out every little bit they can, then compact a year and a half's worth of filler into about 2 months.