User blog comment:Rhavkin/Countdown/@comment-24850639-20171010214448

Personally I think it's an empty promise, and I have been feeling that way for quite some time. There's just way too much action left in Whole Cake Island for me to be convinced you can fit a Reverie Arc in there AND still start Wano before the year is over. If Luffy defeats Katakuri in anything less than 5 chapters, it is a strong disservice to the hype that was built around Katakuri's character and strength. Hell, it isn't even fair to call it "hype" at this point, because Katakuri has definitely been delivering on all assumptions that we've been making about his level of power, and then some. The only logical next step for Luffy after defeating someone like Katakuri is a yonko themselves, so this fight should most definitely not be one where Oda is skimpy on the details. In addition to that, you also have the side plots of Sanji and co. making the cake, and the Sunny crew getting to Cacao and not setting off island wide chaos as they are spotted. Cake decoration, Big Mom eating it, and whatever other falling action ensues prior to them escaping her territory.

The notion of squeezing in a whole arc and then the beginning of another in the 10-11 chapters (assuming no breaks, which is another LOL) left before this year ends is just comedy to me. Oda's not gonna sacrifice the quality of his work for the sake of making some self-imposed deadline, being scrupulous about details is a large part of what has made him great up until now, and I can't see him sacrificing that for the sake of time. There would have to be an absolute absurd amount of offscreen, implied action, which would seriously hurt the overall scope of this arc. At the end of the day, the way this arc comes to a close will be quite a large contributing factor to how good/bad people felt the arc was overall, so the ending of an arc is the absolute worst time to breeze through things. Even your chapter-by-chapter breakdown, there's no way I can see Oda compressing all that down to just 5 chapters. You're basically implying that Luffy is gonna drop Katakuri next chapter, which is absolutely absurd.