The Hermeneutic Herald

“One Piece” is perhaps the most popular and beloved manga and anime series at the moment; probably of all time. Because of its unparalleled popularity, it is highly probable that, no matter what the ending of “One Piece” will bring, it will be, unfortunately, disappointing.

Fans have been analyzing possible endings for this series for literally decades. There are, one dares say, almost exhaustive theories both for how the story can end and for what the actual ‘one piece’ treasure might be. From the world being engulfed by waters, to the main character dying, to the main character getting exactly what he wants, all possibilities have been thoroughly discussed and obsessively written about for literal years. The treasure on the last island can be a Devil Fruit, an ancient weapon, a piece of the erased history from 900 years prior to the story, a foretelling of future events, and so on; no matter which of the ideas you subscribe to, you will find endless pages online or videos detailing the scenario at various degrees of argumentation to support it.

This is a rarely seen exercise in communal story-telling which, in my opinion, freezes the author in a state where the only way out if mass disappointment. Oda is facing two options: he either subscribes himself to one of the theories vehiculated online, in which case, huge portions of the audience will feel like nothing meaningful is being delivered to them – the catharsis is weakened almost to dissolution – or he delivers something completely unseen and, betting on shock value, ruins the storytelling through narrative inconsistency, retconning, or deus ex machina devices. Either way, it will disappoint. I strongly suspect precisely the same thing has happened to the HBO’s “Game of Thrones” TV series. Besides obviously rushing the final season so they can move on to their Disney-promised Star Wars project (which never materialized), David Benioff and D.B. Weiss – known in the fandom as “Dumb and Dumber” – wrote the ending around the character whom they thought people believed least likely to become king. Of course, “Game of Thrones” had other issues, such as unfinished storylines, which have been rightfully documented by angry fans from all over the world, but large scale media, such as it and “One Piece”, bring to the surface the unique challenges of pseudo-participatory storytelling on a global scale: even if not actively contributing to the creative process, the sheer scale of passionate fans, writing essays, theories, fiction set in the universe themselves, distort the paradigm of narrative delivery. Once out there, the story no longer belongs solely to the author. And once enough people take it as their own, the sheer mass of their expectations acts as a black hole, whose gravitational force distorts even the light which passes by it.

Eiichiro Oda promised the ‘one piece’ will be a real treasure, not something metaphorical along the cliche of the “friends that were made along the way”. However, regardless of the direction he takes, the wider story cannot escape this fate: “One Piece” will always be about the journey.