At the end of the chapter 1113, we get to know thanks to Vegapunk’s research that the One Piece World will sink and end up underwater. When I read this, it directly came to mind an article I read once a lot of time ago about Oda’s inspirations that he had when writing One Piece.
I’m not 100 percent sure about the truth of this, but I think I read that one of his inspirations was Mirai Shōnen Konan (Future Boy Conan), which is an anime series of the late 70s/early 80s in Japan, which is one of the first directions from Hayao Miyazaki back in the day.
In this anime, one of the main themes is about an Apocalytptic World in which the humans have made so much destruction and damage to the Earth that Earthquakes and tsunamis end up submerging the world underwater, in failed hopes of trying to go to space one of the planes crashes and lands on a small island which had miraculously survived the devastation.
So when I recalled this I thought to myself what is The One Piece? How does the One Piece Treasure help with this problem? What is the solution to the world submerging? And it came to my mind that the One Piece could be Laugh Tale, the actual Island. Why? The actual name refers to it, The One Piece meaning the One and only Piece of Island left.
When we get to see the Roger Pirates in their journey, they end up reaching Laugh Tale and learn about all the mysteries of the world, one of the interesting moments I recall is when Roger says that “We have come too early”. I always thought that he meant they came early in the sense of being the next Joyboy, something along those lines. But after thinking about it, I realized that the actual meaning to it would be that they came to early to be able to use the One Piece for its actual purpose, which is to wait for the sea level to rise and be able to keep humanity alive in Laugh Tale, the last island above sea level in the whole world.
I always thought the One Piece had to have a deep meaning to it not some gold treasure and thats it, it would be disappointing, not something Oda would do, and he always stated that the One Piece Treasure will be an actual treasure not a vague thing, so what treasure would be better than the Last Island afloat.
But then why would the Gorosei be so pressed about it right? Why would they want so much for it to stay hidden? Why do the Celestial Dragons live above the Red Line?
Thats easy to understand, if the whole world sunk underwater you would want to go to the tallest place in the world so you have as much time as possible to live, which is the Red Line or Sky Islands that we know of, and by this being exposed to the whole world as a Gorosei, you would have to fear of a revolution and an avalanche of people trying to get on top of the Red Line, which is exactly what the Celestial Dragons and the World Government did when they fought and erased the Lunarians and Buccaneers.
I also think that the Celestial Dragons aren’t using space suits, they are actually using diving suits and might have an oxygen sytem to keep them alive while underwater.
I’ve thought of it a lot, you could also add to this theory the fact that when there’s only one island above the sea water which is Laugh Tale aka the One Piece, the rest of the oceans would join and form the All Blue which is what our boy Sanji is obsessed with finding.