The Great Swordsman Appears! Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro

Reaching Shells Town and its Marine garrison, Luffy and Koby spot the swordsman Zoro strung up on a cross in the yard. A little girl, Rika, sneaks in to bring him rice balls, but the snobbish Helmeppo grinds them into the dirt, after which Zoro eats the soiled rice all the same. Rika reveals that the town groans under the tyrant Captain Morgan, who lets his son brutalize the citizens however he pleases.

Her account fills in how Zoro ended up chained there. Helmeppo had once loosed a savage wolf inside a bar, and when Zoro beat the boy down for the cruelty, Helmeppo swore to put every patron to death unless the swordsman gave himself over to a month nailed to the cross. To spare them, Zoro agreed.

Helmeppo lets slip that he never intended to keep the deal and plans to kill Zoro outright. Furious at the betrayal, Luffy thrashes him, then heads for the base to recover Zoro's confiscated katanas. While Morgan orders a huge statue of himself raised on the rooftop, Luffy flings himself up and smashes it by accident, snatches Helmeppo, and combs the building until the swords surface. The thief who plundered the Alvida Pirates also breaks into the base to loot its supplies. When Morgan catches Koby trying to cut Zoro loose and commands his men to gun them both down, Luffy steps in and swats the bullets aside with his rubber body.

The episode debuts Rika, Helmeppo, Soro, Ririka, Morgan, Kuina in flashback, Rokkaku, Ukkari, and the location Shimotsuki Village. It closes the run of regular episodes carrying the Japanese Continued end card, after which the following entry adopts the all-English To Be Continued screen instead, though a recolored version resurfaces once in episode 406. Several beats differ from the manga: Luffy quizzes a fruit vendor about Zoro rather than sparking a restaurant panic, Zoro orders the pair to leave instead of asking to be freed, he stuns the wolf with a chair rather than slaying it with his sword, the brawl with Helmeppo moves indoors, Koby is never shot, and Ririka leads her daughter home instead of tending bar. Fittingly, the later-infamously lost Zoro here steers Luffy the right way to the base.