One Piece’s Treasure Isn’t Just A Metaphor

One Piece manga Luffy

One Piece, as a series, has been running continuously for over 25 years — first as a manga starting in 1997, and then as an anime since 1999. It’s become even more popular this year after the live-action One Piece series got off to a great start. It’s the most successful manga franchise of all time, by a pretty significant margin too, and in its almost three decades of existence, one question has been on everybody’s minds: what is the One Piece?

Let’s give a little bit of backstory. The story of One Piece starts with the execution of an infamous pirate named Gold Roger. Shortly before his death, Gold Roger reveals that he found a fantastic treasure far into the Grand Line, essentially the middle of the world. He calls it the One Piece, and says that anyone who finds it is destined to become the king of the pirates.

Related: Netflix’s One Piece Behind The Scenes Video Reveals More Secrets

That proclamation, the promise of an amazing treasure, kicked off a whole generation of piracy. Thousands took to the seas, all in search of the One Piece, all wanting to become rich beyond their wildest dreams, to command the seas. But almost nobody knows what the treasure actually is.

Luffy, the main protagonist of the One Piece series, has come into contact with just one other pirate who knew what the treasure was: Rayleigh Silvers. Rayleigh was part of Rogers’ crew when they found the treasure, and while he offered to tell Luffy what the treasure was, the young pirate turned the offer down. It would take a little bit of the magic out of the journey if Luffy was just told what the end goal was.

Eiichiro Oda, the writer and illustrator behind One Piece, asks that readers take a similar approach to Luffy. Sure, he could tell us right now what the treasure is, but then a little bit of that magic is gone. A big part of this decades-long journey has been waiting and wondering what is waiting at the end of the rainbow, and when it’s eventually revealed, we all hope that it was worth the wait.

That hasn’t stopped people from speculating, though. Some people think the One Piece has already been revealed, and some think that it could even be the Devil Fruit Luffy ate — especially after the monumental reveal of Gear 5.

Others think that the One Piece isn’t a thing, but more of a concept. Maybe the One Piece is just symbolic, maybe the treasure is the friends and found family we encountered along the way. Maybe the One Piece is the sense of fulfillment one gets for having completed such an incredible journey.

Related: Every One Piece Crew Member, Ranked From Worst To Best

Except, nope. It’s not a metaphor. In a promotional interview with Oda on Netflix’s website, the legendary manga creator stopped short of telling us what the One Piece treasure is, but he certainly told us what it isn’t.

“All I’ll say is that it’s not something abstract like ‘the treasure is the friendships of the experience gained throughout the journey.’”

One Piece is in its final saga now. We don’t really know how long that saga is going to last — the final chapter could be released next week, or it could be five years from now. But at the end, Luffy, or someone else I guess, will find the One Piece. Will it be worth the wait? We can only guess, wait, and hope.