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Live Blogs Let's Watch One Piece: Episode Summary and Critique
ComicX62011-05-23 08:52:40

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496: To the Sea Someday! The Three Kids' Oath Over Sake Cups!

Things open with a sparring match between Ace and Luffy. Luffy opens by winding up and throwing his signiture Pistol attack, but the only thing he succeeds in hitting with it is himself, and his swiftly dropkicked by Ace. Next, Ace and Sabo spar and have a much more evenly-matched fight with Ace coming out ahead. Then Luffy tries taking on Sabo, but his Tate (Shield) defensive move works against him and Sabo easily wins. Luffy curses in frustration at his moves not working the way he wants them to and demands another round. Ace tells him to try again tomorrow, since their rule is one-hundred fights per day. Sabo is keeping track of this on a board, and reveals that Luffy's lost all of his fights, while he and Ace are almost even, with Ace just barely squeaking out ahead. Afterwards the three go hunting for crocodile.

Next we get a little geography lesson. Beyond the giant stone wall at the Grey Terminal lies a town called Edge Town, where people from the Terminal occasionally go to resell stuff they find in the junk heap. It can be a rather rough-and-tumble place, but beyond that lies a second walled city, High Town, where the nobility of the Goa Kingdom dwell. We follow a rather unsteady cloaked figure dragging a dead crocodile on a wheeled cart, and learn that this figure is simply Luffy, Ace, and Sabo standing on each other's shoulders. After selling the crocodile skin they con their way into an Eastern cuisine restaurant thanks to an amulet Sabo has and run the wait staff ragged serving them piles of food. When they're found out, they make a quick exit through the window, leaving nothing behind but an IOU.

As they flee down the main street, a well-dressed man seems to recognize and call out to Sabo, imploring for him to come home. Sabo tells his friends that the man is mistaken and they leave the man behind.

Eyecatches: Luffy (twice)

Back in the safety of the forest, Luffy and Ace pressure Sabo into giving up his secret. Sabo reveals that he actually isn't an orphan, and that the man that had called out to him was his father. He's actually the son of a noble, but he ran away from home because he was sick of the overbearing lifestyle and his parents seeing him as a way to secure their own statuses. Even though he has parents, he still feels that he's alone.

After telling his story, he jumps up and says that they have to promise that one day they'll all go out to sea, become pirates, and be free from this country. Ace says that he was going to become anyway, and declares that one day he'll be a great pirate that won't run from anything and whose name will be known around the world. After he's said his piece, Luffy runs up and bellows out to the sea that he'll become the Pirate King, causing Sabo to laugh and say that he's looking forward to what the future has in store for him. However then he realizes that all three of them want to be captains, which certainly wouldn't work if they were all on the same vessel.

They return to the forest where Ace shows up with a bottle of sake he swiped from Dadan, stating that once they drink from the same bottle, they'll be brothers despite whatever the future has in store for them. He pours out three cups, and the three make their toast to brotherhood.


Some world-building here. It's a little odd to consider that Windmill Village is part of a kingdom when it was shown to be this podunk country village seemingly in the middle of nowhere way back when, so it's pretty amusing to see it being all off to the one side of that map that was shown.

Sabo's a noble, shouldn't be much of a surprise given his clothes (and that his belt has the same symbol he used to get into the restaurant, "Eiichiro's", by the way). The nobles themselves...aren't portrayed very well, really, being stereotypically vain and garish. And rather cartoonishly evil, as we'll see later on. First the Celestial Dragons and now these guys. I wonder if Oda was beaten up by rich kids when he was young or something.

The sake scene at the end that Ace alluded to during Marineford was kind of slick in how it originally exluded Sabo, yet still hinted at him. In both the manga chapter and corresponding anime episode, during the flashback you can just make out the shadow and rim of a third cup. A really subtle touch, there. When the "To Be Continued" screen came up, there totally should have had the three hacking and coughing over it, because anyone who's had their first drops of alcohol knows you can't just down your first shot like that, especially if you're a little kid.

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