Beyond the forest lies an expansive junkyard, and beyond that lies a townprotected by a massive stone wall. Two thugs walk out of it, patting themselves on the back for conning someone out of a fair amount of money, catching the eye of Ace.
Luffy meanwhile, begins to search the junkyard for Ace. It's a grim place called the Grey Terminal, covered in smog and filled with all sorts of garbage and outlaws. It's a lawless place, and as Luffy searches, a fight breaks out over the discovery of a pearl necklace that was buried beneath the heap.
While Luffy's searching, Ace has returned to the forest with the bag of loot he relieved the thugs of. He reaches a certain tree and calls for someone named Sabo. Sabo turns out to be a boy his own age, wearing a ragged top hat and suit. The two compare their findings and Sabo remarks that Ace has managed to beat him yet again. Ace says that it doesn't matter who got the most, since one day they'll use it when they go out to sea. They add their cash to the rest of a secret stash hidden in the tree branch, with Sabo wondering how much a pirate ship would cost. Then the mood is shattered by Luffy yelling out that he wants to be a pirate too and how cool it is that they want to.
Sabo and Ace quickly scurry down to the ground and yell for Luffy to shut up. They end up tying him to the tree and debate amongst themselves what they should do to him as Luffy babbles on. They decide that they have to kill him to keep him quiet about the stash.Hearing this, Luffy gets even louder as he wails that he doesn't want to die as the other two argue over how to kill someone.
A voice calls out that he heard a child in the forest and Ace decides that they should untie Luffy and get out of here before someone discovers their stash. A large brute of a man, Porchemi, enters the foliage accompanied by the two thugs that Ace stole from earlier, looking to recover the money. Porchemi growls that he can't believe the two let their guards down, and says that if their captain, Bluejam, hears about this, they themselves are as good as dead. Overhearing this from the bushes, Sabo mutters that Ace pissed off some very dangerous people, as Bluejam is apparently infamous for his cruelty. The two then look to see that Luffy has vanished...having managed to get caught by Porchemi in record time. Much to Ace and Sabo's chagrin, he begins to yell for Ace to help him.
Eyecatches: Luffy (twice)
Now knowing that the kid he's captured knows Ace, Porchemi asks if Luffy knows where Ace is keeping the stolen money. Despite Ace and Sabo's expectations to the contrary, Luffy claims to know nothing...in the most suspicious manner possible. Seeing right through him, Porchemi decides that they'll just take Luffy back with them, saying that he'll help Luffy remember. The pirates take Luffy to a shack in the Grey Terminal, and Porchemi tries hitting him with a giant mallet. Upon seeing that it's ineffective against Luffy's rubbery body, he orders one of his underlings to fetch his special pair of gloves.
Meanwhile, Ace and Sabo scramble to move their stash to a new loction. Sabo fears that if theu find it, they'll take the whole thing and not just what was stolen. In the shack Porchemi has Luffy strung up like a pinata as he puts on a pair of spiked gloves, and gives Luffy one last chance to reveal where the money is. Luffy refuses to answer, so Porchemi lets him go, and punches him in the face when he swings forward. This has the desired effect of drawing blood, and Porchemi says that he shouldn't make pirates angry. Porchemi orders his men to go look for Ace and Sabo as he continues to wail the tar out of Luffy, saying that they're running out of time.
As the sun starts to set, Ace finishes moving all of the treasure to a new spot. Sabo runs up to him and reveals that Luffy still hasn't cracked. The realize that unless they do something fast, Luffy is going to die.
The scene then moves to the docked ship of the Bluejam Pirates, with the unpleasant Captain Bluejam himself growling that Porchemi's late. He briefly considers that he ran off with the money, but then he becomes amused and decides that he couldn't have, as he values his life.
And indeed, despite beating Luffy to a bloody pulp, Porchemi is growing more and more desperate. One of the thugs tries to get him to stop, but Porchemi kicks him away and shouts that the time when they were supposed to turn the loot in has long past and that their lives are in danger. He beats up Luffy some more and screams in his face, but Luffy still remains defiant, despite trying to hold back tears. Porchemi finally tosses aside his gloves and says that fine, he doesn't care any more. He picks up his saber, but just as he's about to strike a killing blow, Ace and Sabo bust into the shack.
The flashback continues and we are introduced to the third child from the flashback part of the opening sequence, Sabo, Ace's friend and fellow partner-in-crime, and voiced by the seiyuu of Naruto Uzumaki herself, Junko Takeuchi. I was actually a little surprised that he got to meet the mysterious Sabo that Ace mentioned when he was dying so soon, given Oda's tendency of introducing or mentioning a character or plot element, letting it lie for years at a time, and then bring it back into the story long after people have forgotten about it. Since neither Luffy or Ace had made any indication that a third person existed before now, it's clear that Sabo is "not around" anymore. Since this is a flashback, the end result seems obvious, but that's not always the case...
The new setting, the Grey Terminal, is based off of Smokey Mountain, a large garbage dump in Manila, called such due to its tendency to catch fire, according to the SBS of the recently-released Vol. 62. I've also seen someone wonder if Oda was also inspired by the junkyard slums that Kenshin visited whilst suffering a Heroic BSoD towards the end of Rurouni Kenshin, the series Oda started out on as an assistant.
Visually, this episode looked pretty good and the art was very clean. I especially liked the lighting towards the end in Porchemi's shack. Though I have to say, the fact that there were only three key animators for this episode (the guys who actually draw the frames and do much of the main animation in an episode) leaves me agog. I mean sure, there were certainly plenty of outsourced grunts working on inbetween animation and such, but an average anime episode usually has at the very minimum at least twice that manner key animators, and it still looked very good! It just doesn't make any sense.
Porchemi's voice was pretty badass-sounding. Too bad he's ultimately a scrub.
