One Piece fans might have overlooked a crucial truth about the Red Line

One of the most intriguing geological and geographical aspects of author and illustrator Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece series is the massive ring of land known as the Red Line. Cutting the series’ version of Earth in half by stretching across the entire planet, its origins and purpose are a total mystery in the series, albeit likely to be elaborated on somehow by the end of the story.

Nonetheless, One Piece fans have come up with several theories regarding the piece of land’s origins and purpose over the years, with the Giants of Elbaf often being at the center of them. However, not all discussion of the Red Line is centered on the Giants, with fans also looking elsewhere in the story for inspiration on the topic.

Likewise, reputable One Piece community member and curator of the Library of Ohara encyclopedia website Artur recently pointed out an interesting apparent contradiction. While the Red Line is viewed as and even said to be the only continent in the series, Artur raises the point that there’s a line of dialogue which, in both English and Japanese, contradicts that notion.

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One Piece’s Crystal Ice Sheet could be more significant than the setting of Don Chinjao’s backstory

What fans might have overlooked, explained

As mentioned above, Artur first raised the point on his X (formerly Twitter) account @newworldartur. Here, the One Piece superfan references a line of dialogue from Don Chinjao during the Dressrosa arc, in which Chinjao calls the “Crystal Ice Sheet” a “continent.” While Artur uses the English dialogue in the tweet, he confirms that even in the Japanese version of the series the word “continent” is used.

The significance of this oversight from fans stems from the Red Line being viewed as the only continent in the entire series, which is seemingly not the case given this dialogue. Especially damning is how old the dialogue in question is, suggesting that if it were meant to be corrected by Oda and Shueisha it would have been corrected long ago.

With this in mind, it’s worth mentioning that not much about the One Piece world changes with this information given what fans currently know. However, given Oda’s writing style, there could be a reveal in the future which completely recontextualizes this information, though as of the time of this article’s writing it has no major impact on the series.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to know if Oda truly intended to refer to the Crystal Ice Sheet as a continent in the same way the Red Line is referred to as a continent. While the Antarctic ice sheet is considered a continent in our real world, Oda could be using the term relative to the Crystal Ice Sheet in order to communicate its size and scope via real life concepts.

There’s also the fact that the size of the Crystal Ice Sheet is unknown, with neither the One Piece anime or manga giving any proper context to its exact location or scope. Likewise, the Crystal Ice Sheet could be much too small to fit into the real-world definition of a continent, which would in turn cement the Red Line as the series’ only true continent.

In any case, it’s clear that there is some degree of discrepancy and possibility of error on the matter. While it’s difficult to say for sure what Oda’s intentions were via Don Chinjao’s dialogue, the issue at least seems to be relatively insignificant at the time of this article’s writing. However, that could very well change as the series progresses through its Final Saga.

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