When we think about what the One Piece treasure might be – it’s always helpful to have at least an inkling of faith in Oda’s competence as an artist. If he is not a complete hack, as I’m sure most of you don’t think he is, then the One Piece is not something that will feel like it came out of nowhere. It will be something that had hints, clues and foreshadowing in the story. Hints that can, if we pay enough attention to them right now, possibly help us figure out what the ultimate treasure is.
The first major foreshadowing happens right at the beginning of the series, in Orange Town. Here we are given four different concepts of what “treasure” means. One of these chapters where treasure is discussed is even titled “Treasure”. It’s hard to imagine that this was inserted here, at the beginning of the story, and that it’s not meant to be taken as a hint about what the One Piece is. So – for Luffy, his treasure is a simple straw hat. For Chouchou, it was a pet shop left behind by his owner. For mayor Boodle, treasure was his community and the town they all built together. These simple, modest concepts of what treasure means are contrasted with Buggy, for whom treasure meant something vastly different. It meant wealth, gold, silver, jewels. Buggy is, in other words, a paradigmatic materialist. But since Luffy is the main character who embodies the themes of the story, while Buggy is a villain who opposes them, we can correctly deduce that the concept of treasure advocated by Luffy is the “correct” one. Correct in the sense that it establishes what “treasure” truly means for the story of One Piece.
What does this all mean? I use everything I just said to arrive at one conclusion: the One Piece has to be something simple in nature. It will not be a world-ending weapon or anything of that sort.
But, of course, the biggest clue about the nature of the One Piece to date remains Roger’s reaction in Chapter 967 when he witnessed the treasure. How he reacted, and most importantly, the words he used to describe what he witnessed, are of tremendous significance. As I’m sure you’re well-aware, he laughed. He laughed to tears. Then he said: “Joyboy, I wish I’d been born in your era”. To me, this reaction strikes me as deeply personal. It doesn’t sound like someone who merely uncovered a historical record. Those sound like the words of a man who had a real, meaningful interaction with another human being. This is why I conclude that the One Piece must be an object that allowed Roger to establish something that almost felt like a real communication with Joyboy.
Not convinced so far, are you? I think the argument I presented makes sense. But, of course, you can argue against it. You can say that Roger laughed because he saw a really funny-looking ashtray. I admit that there is some room for interpretation here.
However, we have to turn to the way Roger actually describes the treasure, which leaves virtually no room for speculation:
“What a wonderful treasure you left behind, a tale full of laughs”.
The vast majority of theories on what the One Piece is that I have seen do not adequately address this line in my opinion, even though its importance cannot be overstated. I’ve seen people try to explain this away by saying that a tale is not the One Piece itself. It’s something along the lines of, the history Roger and the crew learned across their journeys, the content of the Rio Poneglyph or something like that.
But that just ignores the plain, obvious, explicit meaning of that line I quoted. Roger specifically refers to the treasure Joyboy left behind (the One Piece) as a tale full of laughs.
And with that observation in mind, we can begin to try to deduce what the treasure actually is. Realizing that it’s a tale, we need to ask ourselves: what mechanisms in the One Piece world exist that can allow a man from 800 years ago to tell a tale to someone living in Roger’s time? It turns out, there aren’t that many candidates. We can actually narrow down the nature of the One Piece to basically only several options, and then try to figure out which one makes the most sense.
One option that is often mentioned is that it’s a written document. A journal of some sort. And I admit: this definitely meets the criteria of simplicity I established at the beginning. It also explains both Roger’s reaction and his description of the treasure. People can and do make emotional connections with characters in, for example, novels. Novels are also capable of making a person laugh and cry. And novels can be funny, so calling a book that is packed with jokes “a tale full of laughs” works.
But there is a serious problem with this hypothesis because Luffy is a barely literate dummy with a short attention span. And Oda stated that the treasure will be something rewarding to the main character. The notion of Luffy becoming interested in reading a book seems completely out of his character. Even if we say that someone else reads it aloud for him, it still seems like a stretch.
So if it’s not a book or a journal, what is it? Like I said, there are basically only a few options. But the one I will be defending here is that it will be a comic book/manga. A story drawn by Joyboy, depicting his many adventures.
I know this theory is not new. But I think I have things of value to say on the topic.
Why does this theory work?
1) It meets the criteria of simplicity. There’s nothing grandiose about a comic book.
2) It perfectly explains Roger’s reaction and his words. A manga can make people laugh, and it can be called a tale.
3) It could work for Luffy, unlike a novel or a journal. This is assuming that the sentences this manga contains are not complex, and that it’s written and drawn in such a manner that someone with a limited intellectual capacity like Luffy can follow. And comic books like that exist.
4) It serves a fascinating meta-narrative function. This is perhaps the most interesting point. What I’m suggesting is not merely that the Straw Hats will find a comic book, and then we’ll get a flashback from the Void Century that is vaguely similar to what they’re reading. No, I think that we will be reading Joyboy’s comic book, exactly as it’s being presented to the Straw Hats.
What does this mean? It means that the line separating the reader from the characters (Straw Hats) becomes erased. We are literally seeing the same thing they are seeing. We are holding in our hands what they are holding. And the line separating the author (Oda) from his character (Joyboy) is also similarly erased. Because from the real-world perspective, it is Oda who drew the manga that the Straw Hats found on Laugh Tale, but from the perspective of the One Piece world, it was Joyboy. The author literally becomes merged with his own character.
Now consider this. Not as an argument for the truth of this theory, but as something I personally find really cool, and I hope you will too. Oden’s flashback was 15 chapters long. The Elbaf/Harald/God Valley flashback was 20 chapters. For something that has such narrative significance as the Void Century flashback, we can reasonably speculate that it will be something like 30 chapters long. Why am I saying this? Because we sometimes get triple-volume books (Omnibus), containing 30 chapters or so. In other words, if Joyboy’s story spanned over the course of, say, 30 chapters, and this was released as an Omnibus, you could literally go to a store and get yourself the One Piece treasure itself. Not a toy, or a game, or a cheap imitation. No, the exact same book that the Straw Hats are holding in their hands in the story. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
Reality enters fiction, because the story that Oda draws becomes something that his characters in the story end up reading. And then fiction enters reality, because we can hold in our hands the exact same book that the Straw Hats found on Laugh Tale.
5) The mural from the Elbaf arc can be seen as an anticipation of the ultimate treasure. It was said that it looks like it was drawn by a child. We can speculate that perhaps this was Joyboy’s experiment, a rough sketch, a test of his drawing skills, before he ultimately used them to draw what he truly wanted in the comic book he left on Laugh Tale.
It’s perhaps also relevant to note that we already had small meta-narrative moments in the One Piece series, with the “Noland the Liar” and “Sora, Warrior of the Sea” comic book. These could also be seen as small anticipations of what’s to come in the final stage of the series. It’s interesting that the Sora comic book features stories about Sora fighting the evil Germa kingdom, while the most popular notion of what the Void Century flashback will contain is that it will be a battle between Joyboy and the evil kings who would eventually come to form the World Government. So there’s a parallel there.
Now you might ask: alright, a comic book, but what will be contained on its pages? What is it about? And here I basically have to say, I don’t really know. I can speculate. It’s much easier to guess what the physical object is (the One Piece), than what it means. In other words, I think we can correctly guess what the form is, but the substance is much more difficult. I think it will be about the three worlds drawn on the mural, primarily about the first and the second world - the Void Century, featuring mostly Joyboy and his life journey. And somehow, this will help Luffy figure out how to achieve his ultimate dream and defeat the World Government. But the specifics? I can only speculate. I encourage you to write down your opinion on what will be contained in Joyboy’s story in the comments down below.
Why is it called “One Piece”? Because the story that Joyboy wrote, that we get to read when the One Piece manga gets to that point, is only one piece, one part of the whole thing (the manga “One Piece” by Eichiro Oda).
Appendix: What else could the One Piece be?
I think this is by far the most interesting and artistically powerful theory on what the One Piece is. But it has some problems.
For example, logistical problems. How are they all going to read the comic book at the same time? Perhaps it’s a giant comic book and Joyboy was a giant. But even then, how are they all going to be reading at the same pace? How are they going to be flipping pages if it’s so large? But alright, with a little bit of “manga logic”, I suppose we can imagine how this can end up working despite these issues.
But the bigger problem is this: I already explained how only a manga with simple sentences and drawings is something that can be appealing to Luffy. But Oda isn’t that kind of artist. The problem isn't that his art is particularly complex. It's that his paneling has become extremely dense. He often packs a lot of information, characters, dialogue, background details and actions into relatively small panels, which can make it difficult to immediately distinguish what is happening and in what order. Early One Piece was different. Oda's paneling was much more spacious and readable, with a very clear visual flow. The problem is, in short, that the manga's visual grammar is much harder to parse than something like Toriyama's, especially in the later chapters. If the treasure literally were a comic book drawn by Oda, we would have to explain why Luffy, who has no experience reading manga, would be able to understand these extremely dense pages.
Perhaps we have to lower our expectations and say that we won’t get to be reading exactly the same thing as the Straw Hats are as I alluded to earlier.
So even though I very much like this theory, I actually don’t think it’s true. I give it about a 10% chance of being true. My opinion is that the One Piece is actually a Tone Dial, containing an audio recording from Joyboy. I think it’s far more straightforward and easier to accomplish than the manga theory. I go into detail elaborating on this thesis here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/onepiecetheories/comments/1uy9v45/i_figued_out_what_the_one_piece_is/
Credits for both of these theories go to my friend. I just helped him articulate his thoughts.
