Top Manga Arcs

The public execution of Portgas D. Ace draws every admiral, Warlord, and Whitebeard commander into one harbor, and both Ace and Whitebeard die there. Whitebeard's last words confirm the One Piece is real, and the surviving crews scatter into a two year timeskip.

Ichigo's raid to stop Rukia's Sōkyoku execution turns into a tour of the Gotei 13, from Kenpachi to Byakuya, with bankai training compressed into three days. The payoff is Aizen faking his own murder and leaving with Gin and Tōsen, which reframes every captain fight before it.

Meruem, the Chimera Ant King, learns humanity through gungi matches with the blind champion Komugi while Chairman Netero detonates the Poor Man's Rose inside his own chest. Togashi's longest arc also spends Gon's entire future on the power to kill Neferpitou.

Guts's years in the Band of the Falcon end at the Eclipse, where Griffith offers his own men to the God Hand and is reborn as Femto. Miura's flashback costs Guts an eye and a forearm and hands the series its central grudge, and Studio 4°C adapted it as three films across 2012 and 2013.

Set on Halloween night in Tokyo, the arc ends with Gojo Satoru sealed inside the Prison Realm and Kenjaku openly wearing Geto's body. Nanami dies, a resurrected Toji kills himself after learning Megumi's name, and Sukuna takes over Itadori's body to flatten a swath of the ward against the Mahoraga Megumi summons.

Donquixote Doflamingo rules the country openly while brokering SMILE fruits to Kaido as the underworld figure Joker, and Sugar's Hobi Hobi no Mi has erased a nation's memory of its own citizens. Luffy debuts Gear Fourth against him, and the Corrida Colosseum puts Ace's Mera Mera no Mi back in play.

Robin has to be argued back into wanting her own life while her crew burns the World Government's flag to get her, and Luffy debuts Gear Second because nothing slower touches CP9. Dressrosa has the richer villain, but nothing Doflamingo does lands like the Going Merry's funeral at sea, and that is the case for sliding this arc past it.

Tengen Uzui takes Tanjiro, Zenitsu, and Inosuke into Yoshiwara to find his three missing wives and runs into Upper Rank Six, a demon split between the siblings Daki and Gyutaro. Killing them takes two simultaneous beheadings, the first Upper Moon the corps brings down in the story.

Thorfinn passes the arc as a slave clearing forest on Ketil's Jutland farm beside Einar, with almost no combat and no revenge left to chase. Arnheid's death and King Canute's seizure of the land drive him to the line the series is built on, that he has no enemies.

Stain's Quirk, Bloodcurdle, paralyzes anyone whose blood he swallows, with the hold running longer or shorter depending on blood type. The Hosu City fight forces Iida to drop his revenge for his paralyzed brother, and Stain's creed about false heroes outlives him as a recruiting pitch.

A worldwide contract on the Chainsaw Devil's heart sends government-backed killers after Denji, among them Quanxi with her fiend entourage and the doll user Santa Claus. Fujimoto then drops the survivors into Hell, where the Darkness Devil maims a squad of elite hunters in a handful of pages.

Light Yagami and L spend the first half of the twelve volume series in a surveillance duel fought with hidden cameras, false confessions, and a deliberately forfeited memory. It closes when Rem kills L and Watari to spare Misa, the one move Light arranged without touching a pen.

Frieza's hunt for the Namekian Dragon Balls kills Vegeta and then Krillin, and Krillin's death is what turns Goku golden on a planet already counting down to detonation. Toriyama's arc gave the franchise the Ginyu Force, Dende, and the Super Saiyan tier every later power level answers to.

The Scouts retake Wall Maria at the cost of nearly everyone wearing the wings, and Erwin leads the recruits' charge into the Beast Titan's barrage knowing he will never see the basement. Levi holding one syringe between a dying Erwin and a dying Armin is the cruelest choice the series stages. The reveal rewrites every earlier chapter, and it kills the mystery engine that hooked readers.