Carly Dadan's morning begins by greeting the watchdog and promptly falling into a hidden pitfall dug by Luffy, Ace, and Sabo to catch boars. Those troublesome kids are shown fighting a street gang in Edgetown before deciding to go hunt some deer for dinner. When they come back to Dadan's cabin the resulting chaos caused by the rush for food by the mountain bandits is so great that it wrecks both the cabin's insides and Dadan's nerves; even sleep does not give her a respite from the three devils.
The next day Dadan tells Dogura and Magura that they have to drive the three out of the Dadan Family before they end up taking over, despite the two saying that that's pretty much what's happened already. Dadan's shouts that she doesn't care about their promise to Garp, those kids need to go!
There's a voice from behind her that she initially mistakes for Garp, but it's actually the mayor of Windmill Village, Woop Slap, and the bartender Makino, come to visit Luffy. While Woop Slap and Dadan, both testy people, get into an argument, Makino has new clothes to give to Luffy and his friends, and later cooks a real meal for the entire Family. Which ends up getting interrupted, or should I say crashed, by Garp, who overhears Luffy, Ace, and Sabo taking about being pirates and gives them, along with Dadan, the what-for.
Woop Slap and Makino depart, seemingly unaware of the carnage ongoing behind them. Makino says that she's happy that Luffy now has two older brothers.
Ace later decides that if they don't want to get killed by Garp, there's only one choice, and that's to move out of the cabin on their own. The next day the three "escape" from the cabin and go off into the woods. It begins to rain, and so Dadan eventually orders the bandits to go out and look for the three.
Eyecatches: Robin and Usopp
Once things clear up, Sabo shows the other two some plans he drew up for their secret base. Using materials scavenged from the Grey Terminal, the three manage to construct a treehouse in one of the largest trees in the forest, from which they're able to see all the way out to the East Blue ocean and imagine that they're pirates, fighting adversaries on the open seas.
Back at the cabin Dadan chews out several of her underlings for failing to find the kids when Dogura and Magura return, reporting that they've found their base. One of the bandits notes that Dadan actually looks a little relieved to hear that they're safe, only to get an earful from his boss in return.
That night, Dadan finds the treehouse and the kids sleeping soundly inside. Seeing, she admits that when asleep, the three devils actually look like normal children. And then she gets sent flying out of the house by a Rube Golderg-esque booby trap.
Awoken, Luffy, Ace, and Sabo wonder if the trap going off was a malfunction, while on the ground below Dadan hobbles away, grumbling that she's never going to worry about those three again.
This episode didn't really advance the plot any, and was mostly filler as it only used a few montage panels from the manga, but that doesn't matter, because it was funny as hell.
Yes, this mostly-filler episode was far more entertaining and better-directed than a bulk of the recent canon episodes. Literally a laugh a minutes, from Dadan's not-so Dissonant Serenity, the Brick Joke involving Garp and the pitfalls, to the Rube Goldberg trap. Dadan was very much a Battered Babysitter, but inside, deep, deep, very deep down she's an old softie for the kids.
And the episode wasn't just funny too, it was well-animated, and the latter half with the three building their treehouse was rather heartwarming and did wonders for the character building between the three boys. The anime can be quite amazing when it applies itself, and this episode is one of the best examples of that.
