Uta's Past Arc

Made to feed straight into the theatrical release One Piece Film: Red, this fifteenth filler arc, the sixth to air after the timeskip, is built around a flashback bracketed by present-day moments aboard the Thousand Sunny. It holds the earliest look at Luffy anywhere in the franchise, showing him younger than any other appearance and, apart from a sliver of the first chapter and fourth episode, the only time he lacks the scar beneath his eye. Its focus is the childhood rivalry and closeness between Luffy and Uta, the gifted performer whom Shanks was raising as his own.

Twelve years back, a nine-year-old Uta rides with Shanks and his crew as they put in near the out-of-the-way Foosha Village, a stop she finds underwhelming. A seven-year-old Luffy rushes the ship, meets the two, and at once starts pleading to sail with Shanks. Uta thinks little of him and wants him nowhere aboard, and after Shanks tells Luffy to show her around, the two children fall into contest after contest, most of which she wins. Watching a sunset from a windmill above the coast, Uta first names her dream of singing for the whole world, and later, from a cliff, she tells Luffy she wants to voyage with Shanks and write songs that will remake it into a new genesis, an idea Luffy adopts as his own.

When the Red Hair Pirates prepare to leave, Uta gives away Luffy's stowaway attempt, and Shanks removes him. She tells him to grow stronger and promises to test him on her return. But the ship comes back without her, and Shanks quietly explains that Uta has left to become a singer, a claim the heartbroken Luffy refuses to accept. Meanwhile, news breaks that the island of Elegia has been wiped out with every resident dead and Shanks named responsible, stunning Garp and Sengoku at Marine Headquarters. After bandits beat Luffy and Benn Beckman drives them off, Luffy again asks to join the crew, telling Shanks he will let him keep Uta's fate a secret just as Shanks accepts Luffy's lie about his injuries.

In the present, Uta's debut concert is being staged on Elegia, and the crew pushes Luffy to steer for it, which he does, never guessing the performer is his old friend. Uta renews her vow to use music to forge a world free of war and hunger, while far off in a storm-lashed stretch of sea, Shanks stands on his deck. The arc leads straight into Film: Red; the flashback fits comfortably just ahead of the Romance Dawn arc, though the present-day scenes cannot be tidily placed anywhere within the main timeline.