As Luffy cries over Ace's death, we flashback to a younger, roughed-up Ace angrily berating a crying Luffy for thinking that he was dead. Garp, still pinned down by Sengoku, also has a flashback to the time Gold Roger entrusted him to look after his future son. It finally hits the pirates that Ace is dead, and they all start crying as well.
Luffy eventually goes silent and Ivankov helpfully informs us that "his mind has collapsed". A mass of lava moves across the battlefield and reforms into Akainu, who declares that Luffy's next. His attack is intercepted by Marco's flames, who yells for Jimbei to get Luffy out of there, so the Fishman tucks the unresponsive boy under his arm and takes off. Marco declares that they'll protect Luffy as if he were Ace. For them to fail at fulfilling Ace's last wish would bring unthinkable disgrace to the Whitebeard Pirates. Akainu manages to repel him and continue his pursuit, but something crashes behind him.
It's Whitebeard. A very, very angry Whitebeard. He wastes no time and crushes him into the ground with a seismic punch. Despite this blow, Akainu manages to get free and fires off a barrage of lava fists, one of which clips Whitebeard's mustache, before lashing out with his Meigo (Hellhound) attack, burying his lava-coated arm in Whitebeard's stomach. Whitebeard is brought down on one knee, and a bloodied Akainu states that this is the end for him.
Eyecatches: Zoro and Brook
Despite his new wound, Whitebeard manages to pull himself together and grab the front of Akainu's shirt. He tosses him and deals a vicious blow to his side, powerful enough to cause fissures to open up all over the plaza, even making their way to the Navy Headquarters' building itself and the ground begins to crumble. Akainu goes sliding into the abyss, cursing Whitebeard's name.
When everything finally settles down, the pirates find themselves seperated from their captain by a large chasm. As Whitebeard moves to take on the rest of the Navy by himself, Marco orders everyone else to make for the escape ships. However, things stop when one soldier shouts out that there's something by the HQ.
A massive, hairy Giant is seen peering around the corner of the building, who sheepishly admits to being spotted. There are more people on the remains of the exection stand. They are Blackbeard and his men, not just the old ones that we're already familiar with, but new individuals as well, each one of them a prisoner from Level 6 of Impel Down. The massive Giant is "The Great Battleship" San Juan Wolf, the corrupt king Avaro Pizarro, a bearded man with a spotted robe, the heavy drinker Vasco Shot, a large man with a bulbous nose and a large sake bottle, Catalina Devon, a woman who resembles an ogress, and finally, Shiryuu of the Rain.
Blackbeard, the man who set this great battle in motion himself, laughs and says that he's glad that he'll get the chance to see Whitebeard before his death.
The title's a bit misleading, since while the Navy HQ building has definitely seen better days by the end of the episode, it's still standing tall. It must have been designed by the same guy would forged those quake-resistant walls from earlier, heh.
Episode's main highlight, Whitebeard's brutal and cathartic beatdown on Akainu. The fight looked very good (in fact, the whole episode did, being another Eisaku Inoue production) was a bit longer, and set to an amazing piece of music from Movie 8, "I Will Surpass You!", previously used for Rob Lucci's defeat. They did have to change a bit in it in respect to the manga. In the manga, Akainu's Meigo attack actually took off half of Whitebeard's head. Yeah, I'm not making that up. I have no idea how that got approved originally, but there was no way I expected it to be shown on TV. So to compromise, Akainu punched another hole in Whitebeard's stomach instead. I think it's a decent compromise, and it is more realistic than a guy with half his brain gone carrying on like everything's normal.
So in end Blackbeard makes an unexpected appearance, with even more new crew members from Impel Down. What I want to know is, if they were so horrible that they were sent to Level 6 to be erased from memory, why do random mooks know who they are? Anyway, they're all a rather ugly bunch, so they fit right in I suppose. I do wonder why Pizarro isn't wearing a prisoners' outfit like the others, though. And also, San Juan Wolf, what's up with him? He's absolutely huge, looks to be as big or even bigger than the building he was imprisoned in. How the hell did they keep him in there, let alone get him out, short of building the prison on top of him?! The obvious solution would be a size-changing Devil Fruit, but I don't really think that's the case for some reason. And how the hell is anyone supposed to fight him short of throwing an entire fleet at him? I suppose we'll just have to wait patiently for the ten years or so it'll take to get these answers.
