I feel very confident about my theory so here are two warnings, read them carefully...
WARNING 1:
BEFORE GOING AHEAD AND READING THIS THEORY, THINK CAREFULLY: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SPOIL THE END OF THE STORY?! I FEEL PRETTY CONFIDENT IN THIS THEORY AND ONCE YOU READ IT THERE WILL BE NO UNREADING IT. THAT IS TO SAY YOU WILL BECOME AN USOPP, SOMEONE WHO ASKS DARK KING WETHER THE ONE PIECE EXISTS, RATHER THAN A LUFFY, SOMEONE WHO JUST WANTS TO ENJOY THE JOURNEY. STILL SOME OF US ARE USOPP: I AM ONE OF THEM, BUT A PART OF ME REGRETS MAKING THIS DISCOVERY. ONE PIECE WILL LAST FOR SEVERAL MORE YEARS AND THIS THEORY WILL PERMANENTLY AFFECT HOW YOU READ IT, SO TAKE A MINUTE TO THINK ABOUT IT BEFORE CONTINUING.
WARNING 2:
If you an anime viewer and don’t want to get spoiled, then turn back, this theory contains mild spoilers leading up to last official chapter 1043 (nothing is spoiled from 1044).
So you are absolutely sure about this?! Then get ready for the ride…
Copyright disclaimer: I do not own the copyright to the images I am using in this post, but I am using them transformatively to produce new non-commercial content of which I am the intellectual owner. This use of images constitutes fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original. I am the owner of the intellectual ideas that come from this post, but you may re-use this content freely by citing me as your source.
A Story of Something Past
The poneglyphs are basically ancient books that pass down a story of the void century to us. Understanding that history is essential to understanding the present: you cannot really know who you are until you know where you’ve come from. The poneglyphs also tell the story of how Imu and the world government managed to steal the freedom of the people and their kingdoms to self-determine who they would be. To erase the story of the poneglyhps is to erase the very fabric of possible stories that may unfold in the present. When you leave under a regime that controls what information gets to you, your vision of reality is distorted. You cannot even imagine what it is like to be free until you see, read, or hear about people living outside your closed nation living in that way.
Stories have power, they can break the shackles of tyranny and oppression, that is why the WG fears the stories of the poneglyphs: not so much because they contain help to defeat it, but because they are a threat to its very existence.
A Story of Something Future
What is the future? Does it exist? If it is not yet hear and does not exist, how are we sometimes able to guess what happens? These are questions that all humans have asked themselves throughout history. Some, in the One Piece universe are better than others at guessing the future and are endowed with a skill we call: prophecy. Madam Sharley is one such prophet: we have seen her prophecies turn true and we know her others will become true even if we can only see the silhouettes of those prophecies (she sees luffy destroying Fishman Island, but we all know that it will be for a good cause).
Back in the void century there existed someone who was even better at prophecy than Madam Sharley. Someone who could foresee events centuries in the making (maybe thanks to a Devil Fruit). This prophet was part of the alliance that coalesced around Joy Boy and that opposed the WG. If Joy Boy was a pirate, as I think he was, the prophet was probably a member of his crew.
The World Goverment Symbol forcefully "uniting" all in one
This prophet saw that the free kingdoms of the world would loose against the World Government and loose their freedom: this was the freedom to travel across seas and for people and races to mix with each other freely. The WG would create the Red Line to control people’s movements and stop them from freely travelling across the sea. The prophet also saw that the time would come when someone (we all believe that someone is Luffy) would be able to defeat the WG and turn things back to how they were in the Void Century. The symbol of WG indicates one point control the other four. Our prophet also foresaw that the WG would try to supress this story, so asked the ancestor of the Kozuki clan to make the story indestructible as the future story would need the past story if the prophecy was going to be fulfilled.
The prophet’s predictions were so accurate that he/she even guessed the exact time and day when the saviour would come to read his prophecy and then set out to free the world. Roger finds out he is “too early” because the prophet knew exactly when the time for the “drums of liberation” would come: he understands this when he discovers the “One Piece” which is nothing else but a story, or the prophecy of the future by a member of Joy Boy’s crew.
A Story of Something Present: The Story of One Piece
You should see where I am going with this by now… The One Piece is nothing else but… our “ONE PIECE.” It is this manga, the story we’ve all been loving and reading for all these years. It is the prophesised story of Luffy/Joy Boy coming to free the world. When Roger reads the story of One Piece, he laughs, just like laugh every day watching Luffy and his crew do stupid things. Roger even tells us this. He says: “you left behind an unbelievable treasure… a funny story!”. Roger now knew the past and the future, but the future was not yet present, so he could do nothing about it, and just had to wait and set things in motion for the next Pirate King who would become the next Joy Boy, doing his part to continue the will of D. What Roger does also parallels what the crew of the 1st Joy Boy did: the split apart to spread the story of Joy Boy and the will of D. across the world, to record this sad moment, they wrote Bink's Sake, they sang this just before their crew broke up: " Waving our goodbyes, we'll never meet again!" They will carry the sake ("going to deliver bink's sake" refers to the story of the song, but also the will to bring people together and get them to drink sake) across the world so that " tomorrow night the moon will also rise! "
When Roger states “Joy Boy I really wish I had been born in the same era as you” he is not talking about the Joy Boy from the void century, he is talking about Luffy. He wishes he could have met Luffy whose story he so much enjoyed.
When Luffy discovers the One Piece he will find himself confronted with the old history of the world (and he can learn how to avoid it's mistakes and so take down the WG) as well as his own story, describing, like in a mirror, the very present moment where he would be standing in front of it. A story of something past and something future, has not become a story of something present. It is a funny story a story that makes people around the world laugh: a Laugh Tale. Joy Boy's crew refer to future of their story in their song ("Never-Ending, Ever-wandering, Our funny Traveling tale!").
There is no real value in the knowing the end of our story: what matters is the journey and the experiences to get there. Luffy instinctively understands this. When Usopp asks Rayleigh is the One Piece exists: Oda, through Luffy, tells Usopp, and us the readers, that there is no fun in a story whose ending we already know as it’s not about the finale, it is about the unfolding story that took us all together there as readers bringing us all together from different parts of the world.
One Piece is read all over the world, from Brasil, to China, from Italy, to South Africa. It is a story about friendship and honesty, that has brought us all together, we have virtually laugher and cried (and even shared cups of sake along the way). One Piece is everything: it is the prophet (Oda), the story (the One Piece manga), and its readers (those in the manga, but metaphorically also us): it is a story that brings us together without conflict, there is no war, but there is world “peace”. It is the freedome of people determing their future not the "One" World goverment controlling all by separating us.
So we are the One Piece and the people who read the One Piece story. I hope you’ve enjoyed being on this journey together and that you will help spread the message of love, acceptance freedom and peace that comes with it my nakama!
WARNING 1:
BEFORE GOING AHEAD AND READING THIS THEORY, THINK CAREFULLY: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SPOIL THE END OF THE STORY?! I FEEL PRETTY CONFIDENT IN THIS THEORY AND ONCE YOU READ IT THERE WILL BE NO UNREADING IT. THAT IS TO SAY YOU WILL BECOME AN USOPP, SOMEONE WHO ASKS DARK KING WETHER THE ONE PIECE EXISTS, RATHER THAN A LUFFY, SOMEONE WHO JUST WANTS TO ENJOY THE JOURNEY. STILL SOME OF US ARE USOPP: I AM ONE OF THEM, BUT A PART OF ME REGRETS MAKING THIS DISCOVERY. ONE PIECE WILL LAST FOR SEVERAL MORE YEARS AND THIS THEORY WILL PERMANENTLY AFFECT HOW YOU READ IT, SO TAKE A MINUTE TO THINK ABOUT IT BEFORE CONTINUING.
WARNING 2:
If you an anime viewer and don’t want to get spoiled, then turn back, this theory contains mild spoilers leading up to last official chapter 1043 (nothing is spoiled from 1044).
So you are absolutely sure about this?! Then get ready for the ride…
Copyright disclaimer: I do not own the copyright to the images I am using in this post, but I am using them transformatively to produce new non-commercial content of which I am the intellectual owner. This use of images constitutes fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original. I am the owner of the intellectual ideas that come from this post, but you may re-use this content freely by citing me as your source.
A Story of Something Past
The poneglyphs are basically ancient books that pass down a story of the void century to us. Understanding that history is essential to understanding the present: you cannot really know who you are until you know where you’ve come from. The poneglyphs also tell the story of how Imu and the world government managed to steal the freedom of the people and their kingdoms to self-determine who they would be. To erase the story of the poneglyhps is to erase the very fabric of possible stories that may unfold in the present. When you leave under a regime that controls what information gets to you, your vision of reality is distorted. You cannot even imagine what it is like to be free until you see, read, or hear about people living outside your closed nation living in that way.
Stories have power, they can break the shackles of tyranny and oppression, that is why the WG fears the stories of the poneglyphs: not so much because they contain help to defeat it, but because they are a threat to its very existence.
A Story of Something Future
What is the future? Does it exist? If it is not yet hear and does not exist, how are we sometimes able to guess what happens? These are questions that all humans have asked themselves throughout history. Some, in the One Piece universe are better than others at guessing the future and are endowed with a skill we call: prophecy. Madam Sharley is one such prophet: we have seen her prophecies turn true and we know her others will become true even if we can only see the silhouettes of those prophecies (she sees luffy destroying Fishman Island, but we all know that it will be for a good cause).
Back in the void century there existed someone who was even better at prophecy than Madam Sharley. Someone who could foresee events centuries in the making (maybe thanks to a Devil Fruit). This prophet was part of the alliance that coalesced around Joy Boy and that opposed the WG. If Joy Boy was a pirate, as I think he was, the prophet was probably a member of his crew.
The World Goverment Symbol forcefully "uniting" all in one
This prophet saw that the free kingdoms of the world would loose against the World Government and loose their freedom: this was the freedom to travel across seas and for people and races to mix with each other freely. The WG would create the Red Line to control people’s movements and stop them from freely travelling across the sea. The prophet also saw that the time would come when someone (we all believe that someone is Luffy) would be able to defeat the WG and turn things back to how they were in the Void Century. The symbol of WG indicates one point control the other four. Our prophet also foresaw that the WG would try to supress this story, so asked the ancestor of the Kozuki clan to make the story indestructible as the future story would need the past story if the prophecy was going to be fulfilled.
The prophet’s predictions were so accurate that he/she even guessed the exact time and day when the saviour would come to read his prophecy and then set out to free the world. Roger finds out he is “too early” because the prophet knew exactly when the time for the “drums of liberation” would come: he understands this when he discovers the “One Piece” which is nothing else but a story, or the prophecy of the future by a member of Joy Boy’s crew.
A Story of Something Present: The Story of One Piece
You should see where I am going with this by now… The One Piece is nothing else but… our “ONE PIECE.” It is this manga, the story we’ve all been loving and reading for all these years. It is the prophesised story of Luffy/Joy Boy coming to free the world. When Roger reads the story of One Piece, he laughs, just like laugh every day watching Luffy and his crew do stupid things. Roger even tells us this. He says: “you left behind an unbelievable treasure… a funny story!”. Roger now knew the past and the future, but the future was not yet present, so he could do nothing about it, and just had to wait and set things in motion for the next Pirate King who would become the next Joy Boy, doing his part to continue the will of D. What Roger does also parallels what the crew of the 1st Joy Boy did: the split apart to spread the story of Joy Boy and the will of D. across the world, to record this sad moment, they wrote Bink's Sake, they sang this just before their crew broke up: " Waving our goodbyes, we'll never meet again!" They will carry the sake ("going to deliver bink's sake" refers to the story of the song, but also the will to bring people together and get them to drink sake) across the world so that " tomorrow night the moon will also rise! "
When Roger states “Joy Boy I really wish I had been born in the same era as you” he is not talking about the Joy Boy from the void century, he is talking about Luffy. He wishes he could have met Luffy whose story he so much enjoyed.
When Luffy discovers the One Piece he will find himself confronted with the old history of the world (and he can learn how to avoid it's mistakes and so take down the WG) as well as his own story, describing, like in a mirror, the very present moment where he would be standing in front of it. A story of something past and something future, has not become a story of something present. It is a funny story a story that makes people around the world laugh: a Laugh Tale. Joy Boy's crew refer to future of their story in their song ("Never-Ending, Ever-wandering, Our funny Traveling tale!").
There is no real value in the knowing the end of our story: what matters is the journey and the experiences to get there. Luffy instinctively understands this. When Usopp asks Rayleigh is the One Piece exists: Oda, through Luffy, tells Usopp, and us the readers, that there is no fun in a story whose ending we already know as it’s not about the finale, it is about the unfolding story that took us all together there as readers bringing us all together from different parts of the world.
One Piece is read all over the world, from Brasil, to China, from Italy, to South Africa. It is a story about friendship and honesty, that has brought us all together, we have virtually laugher and cried (and even shared cups of sake along the way). One Piece is everything: it is the prophet (Oda), the story (the One Piece manga), and its readers (those in the manga, but metaphorically also us): it is a story that brings us together without conflict, there is no war, but there is world “peace”. It is the freedome of people determing their future not the "One" World goverment controlling all by separating us.
So we are the One Piece and the people who read the One Piece story. I hope you’ve enjoyed being on this journey together and that you will help spread the message of love, acceptance freedom and peace that comes with it my nakama!
