Going back to ten years ago...
Beyond Luffy's hometown, the idyllic Windmill Village lies Mt. Corvo, a place of untamed wilderness and unseen danger. We find Garp dragging a 7 year old Luffy through the forest, with the former grumbling over how it was a mistake to leave Luffy there. Not only did he eat a Devil Fruit, but he became acquainted with the pirate "Red-Haired" Shanks and got the idea to become Pirate King stuck in his head.
After much arguing they reach a cabin. Garp bangs on the door, and he is eventually met by a gorilla of a woman named Carly Dadan and her two underlings, the dwarf Dogra and the larger, slow-witted Magra. Dadan is none too happy to see Garp and complains about how he already dumped Ace on them ten years ago, so the three are horrified to learn that Garp wants them to take care of his grandson, too. Garp gets them to agree by claiming that he could have them arrested if they refuse.
Luffy, meanwhile, goes running off until he ends up getting spat on. The culprit turns out to be a 10 year old, very surly Ace, who's sitting atop a large dead animal. He demands that Ace apologize, and is soundly ignored. Garp introduces the two, and warns Luffy to get along. Luffy's still angry at being ignored, but upon remembering Shanks's actions at Makino's bar, he calms down.
Next, he enters the rather spacious cabin to look around. There, a bunch of ruffians try to rob him at knifepoint until Dogra tells them that he'll be staying with them. Dadan then sets down a huge plate of meat for dinner, but Luffy can't compete with all of the adults present and ends up with only rice and water. When he tries to get seconds, Dadan tells him that that's all he'll get, anything more he'll have to get on his own. She explains that this is the home of the mountain bandit gang the Dadan Family, and that starting from tomorrow, she'll have lots of housekeeping work for him to do. To her shock, Luffy's apparently okay with that, since afterall, Garp had thrown him into a jungle before to fend for himself.
Upon seeing Ace exit the building, Luffy runs off after him and catches up within the forest. He says that he isn't angry at being spat on anymore and that they should be friends. Ace's response is to kick over a tree and send it rolling in Luffy's direction. Luffy catches up to him again on a rope bridge spanning a chasm, and this time Ace knocks him right off of it.
Eyecatches: Luffy (twice)
By sundown Ace returns to Dadan's cabin, but Luffy is nowhere to be seen. A week later Dogra is woken up at night by a dog barking and goes outside to find a very battered Luffy, who claims that he's been chased all around the valley by wolves. Dadan tells him to get to sleep and throws him into a side room with Ace.
The next morning Luffy goes running after Ace again and despite Ace's various attempts to lose him and attacks by vicious animals he keeps it up again, and again, and again, until one day, three months after his arrival, he manages to reach the other end of the forest, and the giant junkyard beyond.
It's two weeks late, but the fourteenth opening sequence, "Fight Together" by Namie Amura finally debuted with this episode. I said it shouldn't be difficult for them to come up with something nice considering where the story is right now, and the people behind this have succeeded admirably. While I'm not necessarily sold on techno beats in One Piece, the song itself is very nice; simultaneously soothing, hopeful, with a sense of closure and that something new is beginning, which is exactly what is happening with this arc. The footage, there's some nice shots of the Straw Hats on their respective island (including the glorious immortalization of obese Usopp) that're all well-animated, some shots from Luffy's past, and a sequence in the beginning showing Roger, then Shanks, then Luffy, which I thought was rather slick for reasons that'll become clearer later on.
I think the centerpiece of this opening was the flashback montage during its second half, which showed all of the key moments for the Straw Hats when they met Luffy (Zoro has him holding off the Shelltown marines and saying he'll join Luffy as well as he declaration to never lose again after his defeat by Mihawk, Usopp has Luffy saying that they're a team and him yelling at him when he's almost defeated by Lucci, Nami has Luffy giving her his hat and calling to her after beating Arlong, etc.). It's a major nostalgia bomb, given that over half of these scenes are at least a decade old now, and that the anime itself is rapidly closing in on its five-hundredth episode. I found it fitting all the shots of the Straw Hats at the very end came from a spread from chapter 590 where Luffy cries that he wants to see his crew again (well, save for Nami's, which comes from 597). It's a very thematic and appropriate sequence to close out this part of the story.
On to the episode. The placing of this flashback may seem a little weird. Normally, you'd expect this kind of backstory to be shown before Ace was killed off, not after, so that the audience can relate more. Maybe Oda should have put part of it inbetween Impel Down and Marineford, and shown the rest here. Just a thought.
Dadan is finally revealed. While her being a woman was a bit of a surprise in the manga originally, it wasn't so much here, since it's much harder to disguise feminine voices, even a cranky grandma kind of voice. I really wonder what Garp was thinking leaving Luffy and Ace with bandits if he wanted them to become marines. Toughening the kids up is fine and all, but bandits are certainly not good influences. With that said, I find it pretty amusing that Dogra looks a heck of a lot like Stewie Griffin. And how's that for Luffy's thickheadedness? Only someone like him would run after and try to make friends with someone who clearly wants nothing to do with him for three months. But I suppose it isn't too much of a surprise, given how adamant he was way back when about having Nami join the crew, even with Johnny and Yosaku giving up on her. Come to think of it, I wonder how those two are doing now...?
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