In perhaps the most One Piece move ever conceived, Eiichiro Oda has managed to take celebration and turn it into a form of spectacle. In order to commemorate the fact that One Piece has surpassed 600 million copies in circulation with the release of Volume 114, Oda did not simply express gratitude to fans. In fact, he created a “Great Pirate Era” in the form of a real-world event.
Eiichiro Oda sinks One Piece secrets
The legendary creator physically put pen to paper to write out the answers to the two greatest mysteries in the world of One Piece. That is to say, he finally let fans in on the secrets that have been plaguing them for years. What exactly is the One Piece? Who exactly is Monkey D. Luffy?
For the first time in nearly three decades, Eiichiro Oda has put the answers to both of these mysteries on paper. In fact, he put both the answers and the actual questions on the same piece of paper. In a dramatic flourish, he tore the paper in two. The top portion of the paper, with only the actual questions written on it, has been published in various Japanese newspapers like The Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun.
That sealed page was placed inside a small, ornate treasure chest, which was then handed over to the research team from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. It was then placed inside a pressure-resistant glass sphere and sent exactly 651 meters deep into the ocean, at a secret location. A commemorative video was uploaded on the official One Piece YouTube channel, showing the descent of the chest into the dark waters as the treasure disappeared from sight.
This stunt comes at an apt time, as the manga series enters historic sales territory, where the creator, Oda, finds himself in the same global sales conversation as icons like Superman and Batman. However, unlike those characters, who have been passed on from the pens of hundreds of authors over eight decades, Oda has been at the helm of the series for 29 years now.
As is the style of the creator, the treasure is no longer just fictional. It is literally at the bottom of the sea, waiting to be claimed.
