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After escaping the Marines in Loguetown, Nami breaks the news to the rest of the crew that the entrance to the Grand Line is a waterway, which goes up a mountain called Reverse Mountain. Usopp is disbelieving that a ship would be able to climb up a waterway, and Zoro brings up the idea of just sailing south to get to the Grand Line that way. Just as Nami rejects the thought, the storm suddenly ceases completely; they've drifted into the Calm Belt, a windless ocean belt that borders the Grand Line on both sides, and is inhabited by massive Sea Kings, some of whom toss the Going Merry about before it crashes back into the stormy East Blue. Nami explains that this is exactly why ships can't sail into the Grand Line from the side, and have to enter using Reverse Mountain.
Now caught in a sea current, the crew does their best to navigate the Going Merry up through the waterway, and though the steering rudder snaps, Luffy is quick enough to veer the ship on the right course towards the Grand Line, which is veiled by a blanket of mist. However, trouble suddenly arises as they face another obstacle in their path... a giant, scarred whale howling to the sky, with the crew in a tight spot due to the broken rudder. To avoid a collision, Luffy gets the idea to fire the front cannon to decrease their speed; while this does indeed slow them down, it still isn't enough to completely prevent the ship from ramming into the whale, and the ship's figurehead snaps off. In a fit of rage by the destruction of his special seat, Luffy throws a punch directly at the whale's eye, prompting it to open its maw and swallow the Going Merry whole, with only Luffy narrowly managing to avoid being eaten. His attempts to get the whale to cough up his crew are in vain, but he discovers a peculiar hatch on the whale's body moments before it submerges.
Inside of the whale, the rest of the crew come upon a peculiar sight: a blue sky and a tiny island with a summer home. A giant squid appears before them, but it is suddenly killed by harpoons shot by an old man making his residence in the small home. He introduces himself as Crocus, the lighthouse keeper of Reverse Mountain, and states that the pirates were indeed swallowed by the whale. Suddenly, their surroundings start shaking violently, and Crocus laments that the whale is ramming its head into the Red Line. As he heads off to sedate the whale, the crew prepares to attempt to leave. In the meantime, having found himself in metallic corridors, Luffy is hurled about once the whale's insides start shaking up, crashing straight into a mysterious duo and sending all three of them hurtling directly into the whale's stomach. After the rest of the crew fishes the three up, the duo fires directly upon the whale's stomach, but Crocus saves it by taking the cannon shells himself, before Luffy promptly knocks the two of them out.
With that conflict solved, Crocus tells them more about the whale: named Laboon, he came from the West Blue as a baby together with a group of pirates about fifty years ago. While the crew had tried leaving him behind because of the danger the Grand Line poses, he nonetheless followed them into the great ocean. The crew befriended Crocus, and their captain asked him to take care of Laboon for a few years, after which they would return; however, they never came back. In the present, the Straw Hats sail out of Laboon and back into the sea, and toss the mysterious duo overboard; after introducing themselves as Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, they promptly swim off. The Straw Hats and Crocus ponder the ultimate fate of Laboon's old crew; Crocus believes that they fled the Grand Line via the Calm Belt after losing hope, and while he has tried to explain this to Laboon, the whale refuses to listen, and began bellowing towards the mountain and slamming his head against the Red Line, resulting in the many scars on his head. Due to this, Crocus is adamant about remaining at the Reverse Mountain lighthouse by Laboon's side to ensure that the whale doesn't end up killing himself.
At this point, Luffy suddenly tears off the Going Merry's mast, and begins engaging Laboon in a seemingly random match, much to the shock of everyone else. However, after a vicious battle between the two of them, Luffy suddenly declares that the match is a tie, and that he'll definitely come back after their voyage around the world has finished so he and Laboon can settle the score, giving Laboon with a new goal to wait for. To mark this promise, Luffy (poorly) paints the Straw Hat Pirates' Jolly Roger on Laboon's face, covering up most of his scars and preventing him from ramming his head against the Red Line anymore, lest he rub the paint off. Nami discovers that their compass has started going haywire, and Crocus explains that, with how the Grand Line is structured, ordinary compasses are useless there. The crew needs a Log Pose to navigate from island to island, with several different possible paths, until eventually reaching the last island of the Grand Line: Raftel, supposedly where Gold Roger left his treasure, the One Piece. As it turns out, Luffy happened to procure a Log Pose after Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday dropped it when they were tossed overboard, but it's accidentally shattered thanks to Luffy's and Sanji's antics. Crocus instead offers his own Log Pose as thanks for aiding Laboon.
Meanwhile, Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, while thinking of means to get back both their Log Pose and Laboon, are attacked by another duo called the Unluckies—an otter called Mr. 13 and a vulture called Miss Friday—who send them careening into the ocean. They emerge at Reverse Mountain near the crew and Crocus, and offer a deal with the Straw Hat Pirates: in exchange for leaving Laboon alone, the Straw Hats will take the two of them to their hometown of Whiskey Peak, one of the possible first stops of the Grand Line. Luffy agrees to this, and with the new companions at the ready, the Straw Hats bid Crocus and Laboon farewell. As they sail off, Crocus comments that Luffy has a certain aura to him, as if he's talking to Gold Roger himself...
Now caught in a sea current, the crew does their best to navigate the Going Merry up through the waterway, and though the steering rudder snaps, Luffy is quick enough to veer the ship on the right course towards the Grand Line, which is veiled by a blanket of mist. However, trouble suddenly arises as they face another obstacle in their path... a giant, scarred whale howling to the sky, with the crew in a tight spot due to the broken rudder. To avoid a collision, Luffy gets the idea to fire the front cannon to decrease their speed; while this does indeed slow them down, it still isn't enough to completely prevent the ship from ramming into the whale, and the ship's figurehead snaps off. In a fit of rage by the destruction of his special seat, Luffy throws a punch directly at the whale's eye, prompting it to open its maw and swallow the Going Merry whole, with only Luffy narrowly managing to avoid being eaten. His attempts to get the whale to cough up his crew are in vain, but he discovers a peculiar hatch on the whale's body moments before it submerges.
Inside of the whale, the rest of the crew come upon a peculiar sight: a blue sky and a tiny island with a summer home. A giant squid appears before them, but it is suddenly killed by harpoons shot by an old man making his residence in the small home. He introduces himself as Crocus, the lighthouse keeper of Reverse Mountain, and states that the pirates were indeed swallowed by the whale. Suddenly, their surroundings start shaking violently, and Crocus laments that the whale is ramming its head into the Red Line. As he heads off to sedate the whale, the crew prepares to attempt to leave. In the meantime, having found himself in metallic corridors, Luffy is hurled about once the whale's insides start shaking up, crashing straight into a mysterious duo and sending all three of them hurtling directly into the whale's stomach. After the rest of the crew fishes the three up, the duo fires directly upon the whale's stomach, but Crocus saves it by taking the cannon shells himself, before Luffy promptly knocks the two of them out.
With that conflict solved, Crocus tells them more about the whale: named Laboon, he came from the West Blue as a baby together with a group of pirates about fifty years ago. While the crew had tried leaving him behind because of the danger the Grand Line poses, he nonetheless followed them into the great ocean. The crew befriended Crocus, and their captain asked him to take care of Laboon for a few years, after which they would return; however, they never came back. In the present, the Straw Hats sail out of Laboon and back into the sea, and toss the mysterious duo overboard; after introducing themselves as Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, they promptly swim off. The Straw Hats and Crocus ponder the ultimate fate of Laboon's old crew; Crocus believes that they fled the Grand Line via the Calm Belt after losing hope, and while he has tried to explain this to Laboon, the whale refuses to listen, and began bellowing towards the mountain and slamming his head against the Red Line, resulting in the many scars on his head. Due to this, Crocus is adamant about remaining at the Reverse Mountain lighthouse by Laboon's side to ensure that the whale doesn't end up killing himself.
At this point, Luffy suddenly tears off the Going Merry's mast, and begins engaging Laboon in a seemingly random match, much to the shock of everyone else. However, after a vicious battle between the two of them, Luffy suddenly declares that the match is a tie, and that he'll definitely come back after their voyage around the world has finished so he and Laboon can settle the score, giving Laboon with a new goal to wait for. To mark this promise, Luffy (poorly) paints the Straw Hat Pirates' Jolly Roger on Laboon's face, covering up most of his scars and preventing him from ramming his head against the Red Line anymore, lest he rub the paint off. Nami discovers that their compass has started going haywire, and Crocus explains that, with how the Grand Line is structured, ordinary compasses are useless there. The crew needs a Log Pose to navigate from island to island, with several different possible paths, until eventually reaching the last island of the Grand Line: Raftel, supposedly where Gold Roger left his treasure, the One Piece. As it turns out, Luffy happened to procure a Log Pose after Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday dropped it when they were tossed overboard, but it's accidentally shattered thanks to Luffy's and Sanji's antics. Crocus instead offers his own Log Pose as thanks for aiding Laboon.
Meanwhile, Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, while thinking of means to get back both their Log Pose and Laboon, are attacked by another duo called the Unluckies—an otter called Mr. 13 and a vulture called Miss Friday—who send them careening into the ocean. They emerge at Reverse Mountain near the crew and Crocus, and offer a deal with the Straw Hat Pirates: in exchange for leaving Laboon alone, the Straw Hats will take the two of them to their hometown of Whiskey Peak, one of the possible first stops of the Grand Line. Luffy agrees to this, and with the new companions at the ready, the Straw Hats bid Crocus and Laboon farewell. As they sail off, Crocus comments that Luffy has a certain aura to him, as if he's talking to Gold Roger himself...
Laboon Arc has the following tropes
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Laboon, initially, comes off as quite hostile to anyone that enters the Grand Line. Fortunately, Luffy manages to placate the whale and he becomes much more friendly.
- Arc Villains: Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday are the main antagonists of the arc, though they are fairly incompetent and don't cause much actual trouble for the Straw Hats and Laboon.
- Berserk Button: Don't break Luffy's seat!
- Bigger on the Inside: Subverted when the Merry gets eaten. The crew find an oddly outdoors-like setting with a small island and house in the middle of it, confusing them, until Crocus reveals that they are inside the whale's stomach. He just built a small house-like ship and painted the stomach so he can have an atmosphere within Laboon. What's more, there are even passageways in the stomach as well.
- Breather Episode: Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday are hardly what you would call "antagonists," and this mini-arc is mere setup for Baroque Works.
- Combat Medic: Crocus. He's spent two decades fixing Laboon up from the inside and sometimes even lives there. He, of course, attacks any dangerous creatures Laboon may swallow up. The end also hints at his role in relation to Gold Roger.
- Covers Always Lie: See Buggy and Smoker in the page image above? They don't appear in this arc.
- Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The 4Kids dub skipped this arc and changed Laboon to an iceberg that Luffy blows up. Needless to say, once the Thriller Bark arc comes up, many folks were chuckling about the
Hilarious in Hindsight. It's a good thing their dub ended when it did, or they would've had a hard time explaining that. - Eye Scream: Luffy punches Laboon in the eye for breaking his favorite seat (the figurehead).
- Foreshadowing: The whole tale of Laboon's backstory, which will become relevant again in the Thriller Bark arc.
- Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Downplayed; while Laboon's stomach acid does no real damage to the Going Merry or people who take a brief dip in it (Crocus even jumps in willingly!), there are a huge number of skeletons and shipwrecks, presumably from less-fortunate sailors, floating around.
- It Runs on Nonsensoleum: After the relatively grounded environments of the East Blue (where oddities were mostly restricted to people and animals, not the land itself), the first hint of the Grand Line gleefully spits in the face of physics by having currents go up a mountain instead of down. Then the weirdness jumps exponentially with Laboon's stomach, which essentially functions as a mini-ocean with its own islands, light, and breathable air.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When the crew first meets Crocus in the anime, he somehow keeps doing dramatic close ups of himself. After the third one, the crew yells at him to knock it off.
- Metaphorically True: Much later, in the Thriller Bark arc, we learn that Crocus's explanation for the disappearance of Laboon's crew is technically right. Many of the members came down with an incurable disease, and the captain and other infected members took the ship into the Calm Belt to probably die. The remaining members, however, continued down the Grand Line until they were wiped out in the Florian Triangle, with Brook as the sole survivor.
- Mr. Exposition: Crocus, who explains how the Log Pose and the Grand Line works.
- Pet Baby Wild Animal: Laboon, who was only a baby that followed a certain pirate crew to the Grand Line and stayed within the area in the hopes of them returning.
- The Promise: The crew that Laboon was with promised they would return someday after sailing the Grand Line, but they never did. Luffy makes a new promise with Laboon in the form of a fight, declaring their current match a tie and vowing that they will resolve it when the Straw Hats come back. For added insurance to keep Laboon from harming himself further, Luffy paints the Straw Hat Jolly Roger on Laboon's face, claiming it'll wash off if he continues ramming his head into the Red Line.
- Recoil Boost: Inverted. When the Straw Hats are about to crash into Laboon, Luffy gets the surprisingly good idea to fire the ship's cannon, to slow it down from the recoil. The Merry's figurehead still gets broken off, but at least they avoid a lethal crash.
- Retired Badass: Crocus. His primary weapon are harpoons, and he is pretty strong.
- The Reveal:
- The final island on the Grand Line is named Raftel. It's mysterious to the point that only Roger's crew have found it, and it is believed to be where One Piece is located.
- Crocus was a crewmate of Gold Roger.
- Scars Are Forever: Laboon has some nasty ones on his face from ramming into the rocky cliffs of the Red Line so much.
- Shout-Out: Crocus's houseboat within Laboon looks an awful lot like Kame House from Dragon Ball.
- Smart Ball: Luffy, in a remarkably...unconventional manner, since he appears to be playing kick-ups with it. The Going Merry is sliding towards the Grand Line, but they're about to be smashed to bits by a giant whale serving as a blockade, so what does Luffy do? Fire a cannon at it! This slows down the ship's speed to a snail's pace and the whale barely feels the cannon, leaving the Merry completely unharmed...until the figurehead breaks and hits Luffy's Berserk Button, at which point he promptly drops this.
- Swallowed Whole: What Laboon does to the Straw Hat Pirates, and a pair of bounty hunters.
- Tempting Fate: When the Straw Hats have just found the Log Pose left behind by Miss Wednesday and Mr. 9, and Nami is reflecting on its importance:
- Vertigo Effect: In episode 62 of the anime, this is done with Nami when it appears Merry is about to crash into Laboon.
- Villains Want Mercy: After being defeated, Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday want the Straw Hat Pirates to take them home to Whiskey Peak. The Straw Hats agree to take them in exchange for them sparing Laboon. Though it's subverted in the subsequent arc, since neither of them are actually evil.
- Wham Line: "Maybe these are the pirates we've been waiting for. Don't you think so...Roger?"
- Womb Level: When the Straw Hats are briefly (and harmlessly) swallowed by Laboon.
- Worldbuilding: A lot of it. In just five chapters, we learn about the Calm Belt, Log Poses, and the general structure of the Grand Line.
- The World Is Just Awesome: The Going Merry going up the Reverse Mountain and the view of the Grand Line at the top.
Story Impact
- The Straw Hats make it to the Grand Line.
- The Straw Hats meet a whale called Laboon, and Luffy agrees to reunite with him after making it across the Grand Line. Laboon is revealed to be waiting for a crew that left him 50 years ago. The Straw Hats will go on to meet one of this crew's members, who will join them to fulfill the promise they made.
- The Straw Hats agree to take two mysterious rogues to their home island of Whiskey Peak. These rogues and their organization will drive the Straw Hats' actions for the rest of the Alabasta Saga.
- Information about the Grand Line and the Calm Belt is revealed.
- The Calm Belt is a sea surrounding the Grand Line, which has no winds and is infested with Sea Kings. It is very difficult to traverse (especially for ordinary crews with no special means of doing so), but not impossible.
- The Log Pose is introduced, which helps sailors navigate the Grand Line due to its islands carrying their own distinct magnetic fields. The Straw Hats gain one of their own.
- The location of One Piece is on an island known as Raftel (or rather, as we learn much later, "Laugh Tale").
