🌊 For 27 years, only one person knew the answer. Since 1997, the greatest mystery in manga, "What is the One Piece?", existed in a single place: the mind of its creator, Eiichiro Oda. Now, for the first time, that answer has been written down. And it's sitting 651 meters beneath the ocean.

A Milestone That Rewrote History

In March 2026, ONE PIECE, the serialized manga running in Japan's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, surpassed 600 million copies in worldwide circulation. That's more than the entire population of North America holding a volume each. The series reached 510 million copies in August 2022, meaning it added roughly 90 million copies in just three and a half years.

This milestone makes ONE PIECE the best-selling manga series in history, and its Guinness World Record is now updated once again. To mark the occasion, creator Eiichiro Oda and publisher Shueisha unveiled a project that no one could have anticipated.

He Had Never Written It Down. Until Now.

In a special video released on the official ONE PIECE YouTube channel, Oda speaks directly to fans before sitting down to write. The message is simple and staggering: in over 27 years of serialization, he has never once put the secret of the One Piece to paper, it existed only in his head.

Then, for the first time, Oda writes the answer to two questions on a single sheet of paper: "What is the ONE PIECE?" and "Who is Monkey D. Luffy?"

The paper is then torn in half. The top half (containing the questions) was published as a full-page advertisement in two of Japan's largest national newspapers, the Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun, on the morning of March 4, 2026. The bottom half, containing the actual truth, was locked in a small treasure chest.

Real Ocean. Real Science.

This is where the story stops sounding like fiction and starts sounding like One Piece itself.

The treasure chest was sealed inside a pressure-resistant glass sphere engineered for deep-sea conditions, then submerged to a depth of 651 meters below the ocean surface at an undisclosed location. The project was carried out with the cooperation of three organizations:

  • JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology), Japan's national ocean research body, comparable to NOAA in the United States
  • Okamoto Glass Co., Ltd., manufacturer of the pressure-resistant glass sphere
  • FullDepth Inc., a deep-sea technology company

Researchers from Japan's Cabinet Office Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP Phase 3) supervised the installation, filming, and retrieval planning, with careful attention to avoiding any harm to the marine ecosystem. All items placed on the seafloor are planned to be retrieved.

In short: this is not a stunt. The answer is genuinely down there.

When Will We Find Out?

The contents of the treasure chest will only be made public after the final chapter of ONE PIECE is published in Weekly Shonen Jump. There is no timeline, no spoilers, no early access, just the wait.

Currently, the story has entered its final saga, with the manga deep into the Elbaph arc. The anime, which had been on a production hiatus since January 2026, is set to return on April 5, 2026, with weekly episodes adapting the Elbaph storyline at a rate of one chapter per episode (up to 26 episodes per year). The Netflix live-action series returns for its second season on March 10, 2026.

Where to Watch: Global Streaming

For international fans, ONE PIECE is accessible across multiple major platforms:

  • Crunchyroll, primary simulcast platform for the anime, with dubbed and subbed versions
  • Netflix, home of the live-action series; also carries the anime in select regions
  • Hulu, anime catalog available in the US

The series is available with subtitles and dubbing in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and many more languages.

The Internet Reacted Like a Grand Line Storm

Reactions from the global fan community were immediate and electric. The phrase "ONE PIECE IS REAL" trended in English-speaking countries within hours. Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube comment sections filled with excitement and disbelief.

On the same day, the second global character popularity poll, WT100 (World Top 100), launched, opening voting on 1,560 characters worldwide. The first WT100 was held in 2021 to mark the manga's 1,000th chapter. Weekly regional Top 5 results will be published starting March 16, with final results announced at "ONE PIECE DAY" later this year.

Why This Moment Matters

What makes this project resonate so deeply isn't just the spectacle. It's the time involved. ONE PIECE began serialization in 1997. Readers who discovered it as children are now adults with children of their own, and none of them know the answer yet. That shared, multigenerational mystery is rare in any medium.

Oda has stated repeatedly over the years that the One Piece is not something abstract like "friendship" or "the journey itself", it is a real, tangible thing within the story's world. The fact that he's now written it down for the first time, then hidden it in the actual ocean, is perhaps the most "One Piece" thing that has ever happened in the real world.

The story isn't over. The treasure is waiting. And somewhere on the ocean floor, the answer is getting closer to the moment it can finally be read.

What's the longest-running story you've followed in your country? Has any author or creator ever done something this dramatic to celebrate their audience? We'd love to hear your perspective.

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