Code:
Notice: There's a "too long; didn't read" at the end, for those of you with short attention spans.
Ch. 22 p11
He's always amazed me. Not just him but the whole chapter 22 where he makes his debut and only appearance in the story (cover stories aside). It has always had me wondering too.
Why?
I mean, it is a great chapter, indeed. But it's also weird. Here are some things that make chapter 22 unique:
- It is its own arc. The story it tells is introduced and resolved in the same chapter. This doesn't happen in any other chapter.
- It introduces a character, Gaimon, that **doesn't reappear or is even mentioned ever again.**1
- In a sense, and despite how good it is, it looks like filler. It's between two arcs and nothing other than the chapter itself would change if the chapter didn't exist. If you read One Piece but skip chapter 22, you wouldn't know Gaimon's story, but everythign else would be the same to you. There would be nothing that felt different at all.
- With 29 pages, it's the second longest chapter of all One Piece, only second to the very first chapter (that it's 53 pages long). That's 10 pages longer than the average of that time and 12 to 14 pages longer than chapters nowadays.
- Contrary to the rest of the manga, the chapter unromanticizes piracy.
It makes no sense. Especially at that time. In pre-time skip One Piece, and even more as early as the East Blue saga, every single panel counts. There is no panel without purpose. Not one. But this whole chapter seems to be precisely that. Not only is it separated of any arc and does it make no impact on the story, but it also tells us the opposite of what we'll see in the rest of the story.
It can't be. So the only reasonable option left is:
- That it must be connected to the overarching plotline of the manga, to its essence, to its core. To the One Piece.
- That its impact is yet to be told or made apparent.
- Something will reconcile this thesis and anti-thesis pair somehow.
2. He laughed.
Ch. 967 p18_19
The most important panel of the whole post-time skip One Piece. Gol D. Roger's arrival to Laugh Tale. The reading of the true history behind the Void Century. The finding of the One Piece for which he was crowned Pirate King. It was all just teased. Left unsaid. This reaction is all we got.
The reason is obvious: not to spoil what truly deserves to be revealed only when the protagonists of this story are the ones to achieve it. But there is an obvious question too: Why? Why did they laugh?
It's funny how much relevance is given to this detail that should be nothing but an anecdote when compared to other yet-not-revealed-but-teased parts of the story such as:
- What's the One Piece? Why did the Roger pirates leave it there?
- What warranted for it to be removed from history?
- Where is Laugh Tale? How do one actually arrives there? Why has no one ever just stumbled upon it?
- Why was Roger too early? What does it even truly mean?
Isn't it quite weird as well?
3. The connection.
Interestingly enough Gaimon and Roger have more things in common than one would expect:
- They were both pirates and they looked for treasure following a treasure map****2. (I know. Lots of characters in One Piece fit in here.)
- They both arrived to their destinations. They reached that treasure-marked spot. (That already isn't as common as the previous one, is it?)
- Reaching that place was the end of their pirate careers for both. (I don't think this is relevant, but it's a further connection).
- They both had to wait for 20 years after reaching their destination. Roger couldn't afford to wait that long but he knew he was 20 years early. (This is now very oddly-specific).
- Is there one more thing? I think there is.
Ch. 22 p26
The treasure Gaimon thought he'd find, it wasn't there. And just like him, after following the poneglyphs all the way to Laugh Tale...
Roger didn't find the One Piece. It wasn't there.
And that's why they all laughed like that. After years of travel completing the most wondrous and daunting venture in the world in which they were told they'd find something, "One Piece", they arrive only to learn that their treasure isn't there yet. That they were 20 years too early.
That's the reason why the Roger pirates didn't take the One Piece with them. One Piece starts with Roger saying he left the One Piece "there" for anybody's taking. But in Gaimon's chapter we're told things don't work like that and first come, first served. If they had found the One Piece, they would have taken it. But they didn't because they couldn't. They never found it.
That's also why Shanks and Buggy are going for it now, but they weren't before. Both of them know (or at least they should) how to get to Laugh Tale even if they didn't go there with the rest of the crew. Why didn't they go sooner? It's not just the Roger couldn't accomplish something before those 20 years, it's that the treasure wasn't there and it would be for all those years either. And it is now that the time has come.
Ch. 1054 p14
But... Why would the One Piece not be there? It's true that Gaimon's story tells us that treasure maps will usually lead to no treasure because it will have been taken already, but that's the point of the One Piece: No one has reached it yet, so no one can have taken it. That's the about an aximo of this whole story.
And that's the plot twist with which those two opposite narratives reconcile: There was no treasure, not because it had been taken, but because it hadn't been left there yet!
Here comes the last piece of this puzzle. One that is also very weird as of today in this story. The reason why something so so big made it into the story at the specific moment it did, and yet it had so so little impact.
Ch. 919 p17
That's it! 800 years ago, the people of the ancient kingdom, set a lot of security measures to ensure that something, One Piece, was safe. They hid it and set up the craziest and most difficult wild goose chase ever for whoever wanted to find it, but not only that. In order to make sure it wasn't found before a certain time, they made it completely unreachable until then. Non-existent.
One Piece was sent 800 years forward with the Toki Toki no Mi.
And all the Roger pirates got was a poneglyph telling them, among other things, that their treasure hadn't arrived yet. And they had lady Toki with them to confirm that was a possibility.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
tl;dr: Roger didn't find the One Piece.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Code:
Notes:
1. Yes, Gaimon appears in a single panel in chapter 1119 as part of a background for Vegapunk's speech. He's not involved in the story at all at that point and doesn't even have text. So, storywise, it doesn't count.
2. It's not your typical piece of parchment with an ✕ marking the spot, but that's what the poneglyph (road ones more specifically) actually are: a treasure map.
