The season on Dawn Island changes to Winter, where we find Ace and Sabo in pursuit of a danpa bear (think a panda but with the colors reversed). They chase it into a cul-de-sac where Luffy pounces on it from above, and despite botching his landing he manages to knock the beast unconscious. As Luffy celebrates his first hunting catch, Sabo yells to look out, for a giant tiger appears on top of the ridge above and jumps down to snatch the prey for itself. Despite being scared out of his mind Luffy tries to ward it off, but gets effortlessly swatted aside and carried off by the other two.
After some shenanigans on a rope bridge and Luffy almost falling off of it, the three kids return to their tree house for the night. Luffy says that they should all be a part of the same crew when they eventually become pirates because that’ll be much more fun than it would be otherwise. He meets resistance to this idea, and eventually the three decide that whoever manages to defeat the giant tiger will become captain.
The next day the three try to use fish to lure the tiger out of the snow-covered forest, but instead they draw out a giant bear. Ace decides that this will be a perfect warm-up and attacks it, but his puny little metal pipe only serves to anger it. They get chased out of the forest, but are saved when a giant mallet is thrown square at its chest, bowling it over. An old, cloaked man whom Sabo identifies as a resident of the Grey Terminal named Naguri confronts the bear and gives it a piercing glare. Much to the surprise of the kids, the bear halts and slowly totters off back into the forest with Naguri saying that it doesn’t belong outside of its den. Luffy is amazed, as that was the same thing that Shanks did to the Sea King that attacked him in the past.
Eyecatches: Franky and Sanji
Around a campfire, the boys learn that Naguri used to be a pirate captain. Sabo admits that he finds it difficult to believe, since Naguri spends his days collecting scrap at the Grey Terminal and is often the subject of teasing from its inhabitants. Ace asks him what a captain is doing out here, and Naguri reveals that he challenged Gold Roger, the Pirate King, to a fight and lost horribly. Afterwards his crew split up, and he himself ended up here in East Blue. But despite all that, he still thinks that it was an honor to have met Roger. Luffy says that he’s got a long way to go if he wants to be a pirate then, and asks Naguri to train him. He agrees, much to Sabo exasperation.
Luffy then notices that Ace has left, and Sabo eventually reveals that Ace is Roger’s son, much to Luffy’s shock and Naguri’s quiet amazement, but to not tell Ace, since he hates Roger. Luffy asks why a child wouldn’t get along with their parents, and Sabo simply replies that some just don’t. When Luffy and Sabo get back to the tree house, they find Ace already there, and despite Sabo’s attempts to act casual, Luffy casually reveals his secret, leading to a fight between the three and everyone going to bed with ill moods.
Elsewhere, Bluejam confers with his crew, having been hired for a job: find Sabo.
So after...around two years, the anime finally has an honest to goodness filler episode. Now, then the word "filler" gets branded about, the first thing most anime watchers tend to do is groan, but that's not necessarily the case for me. Mainly because, for the first time in a long time, I have no idea how the story is going to end, so if nothing else, that is what I look forward to when a filler episode arises. Of course, filler can go very wrong (see the Little East Blue Movie 10 tie-ins for a primer on how not to do filler), but with One Piece it's generally a decent bet.
Anyway, for a rather talky filler episode, this wasn't bad in the least. Art was good (I especially enjoyed the shading during the scene around the campfire), the dialogue was good, if not necessarily deep, and hey, it showed how Luffy learned about Ace's parentage, something the manga never did. Naguri wasn't in much of the spotlight, so we'll have to wait for the next episode to learn more on him, but he can use Ambition too, and I like how it was portrayed. Much better than that Professor X mind-fry stuff that Rayleigh was pulling in Sabaody.
