After keeping secret for nearly 30 years, Eiichiro Oda has written it down on a paper, put that paper in a chest, and tossed it into the sea, where it remains even now.

As both the writer and illustrator of One Piece, Eiichiro Oda has proven his talents as both a storyteller and a visual artist. However, the guy is also really, really good at keeping secrets.

The core plot premise of One Piece is that before his death, the king of the pirates, Gol D. Roger, hid the world’s greatest treasure, which he called the “One Piece,” for a worthy successor to find. What is the One Piece? No one knows, but it’s still something everyone wants to find, including series protagonist Luffy. However, the journey of Luffy and his Strawhat Pirate companions meanders enough that it’s often geopolitical conflicts and personal struggles for redemption that are driving the storyline, not treasure hunting. That’s led to speculation that even Oda himself hasn’t really decided what the One Piece is, or that when the series finally does come to a conclusion, Luffy and crew will discover that it never really existed in the first place, and that, to quote the common fan prediction, “the real treasure was the friends they made along the way.”

But as asserted in a new video celebrating the One Piece manga having sold 600 million copies worldwide, Oda had decided on exactly what the One Piece is from the very beginning, way back when the series first started serialization in 1997. Not only that, he recently wrote the secret down on a piece of paper…part of which is now sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

On February 8, sitting in his work studio with appropriately dramatic lighting, Oda wrote down what the One Piece is on a parchment-like sheet. He then tore the paper into two pieces, and locked one of them inside a treasure chest.

Four days later, the chest was sealed inside a pressure-resistant glass orb…

…and then, on an undisclosed date later in the month, the orb was sailed out to the middle of the ocean…

…and dropped overboard.

The encased orb sank deeper and deeper, until roughly an hour and a half after the boat arrived at the drop point, the treasure chest reached the ocean floor, some 651 meters (2,316 feet) below the surface of the water, where it has been left.

“Until the whole story is revealed, the truth will rest far beyond anyone’s reach, at the bottom of the ocean,” the video says, followed by the promise that “The One Piece does exist” and a final shot of Oda, back at work in his studio.

Unfortunately for those looking for clues, the bits of text that can be seen on the paper in the video amount to just, “As for the One Piece, it is…” and “And then, Monkey D. Luffy…”

It’s an undeniably awesome bit of hype-building as One Piece, while not necessarily down to its final chapters, is largely considered to be significantly closer to its ending than its beginning at this point. It’s also a clear throwback to Gold Roger’s in-manga hiding of his own treasure, prompting commenters to the video to exclaim how Oda himself is now sparking interest in sailing the high seas and searching for his chest. That unavoidably triggered urge for fans to grab scuba gear and start diving is probably why the chest contains only half of the secret, meaning that even if one were to find it, you’ll still have to wait until One Piece reaches its conclusion to get the whole story.

Source, images: YouTube/ONE PIECE公式YouTubeチャンネル
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