A Vast Fleet Appears! Here Come the Whitebeard Pirates!

The crowd at Sabaody struggles to absorb that Ace descends from Roger, with Hancock startled that he shares no blood with Luffy and Koby and Helmeppo confused since they assumed Dragon was his father. Garp's memory returns to his final visit before Roger's death, when the Pirate King confessed he was expecting a child and asked Garp to shield the baby, reasoning that an unborn infant bears no guilt for a parent's crimes. On Baterilla, Marines ransacked the island, ordered to track every pregnancy and newborn within ten months of Roger's capture and to kill any suspicious woman. Rouge endured this by holding her child inside her for twenty months, whispering to him to wait, until the soldiers concluded no heir existed.

Once the search ended, Garp arrived as Rouge gave birth. She named the boy Gol D. Ace, following Roger's wish, then died with a contented smile. Garp carried the child to Mount Colubo and left him with Dadan, later bringing a young Luffy to the same place.

A flashback shows Ace taking his mother's surname Portgas out of devotion to her while rejecting his father entirely, insisting Whitebeard is his only father. Sengoku narrates how Ace rose as captain of the Spade Pirates, how the Government realized Roger's line survived, and how Whitebeard took the boy in, making the execution a symbolic end to Roger's era. As Ace denies wanting to be Pirate King, the Gates of Justice begin opening, which Buggy claims as his own doing. A fleet of forty three ships emerges from the fog carrying New World captains allied to Whitebeard, including Doma, McGuy, the Decalvan Brothers, and Squard. Then the harbor bubbles at its center and the Moby Dick surges up from underwater, the coated flagship breaking the surface.

Rouge's face is shown clearly in the anime, unlike the manga. The Marines' brutality on Baterilla is depicted more harshly, with added scenes of soldiers assaulting civilians. Sengoku's speech reuses animation from the twelfth opening, and Akainu's eyes are revealed for the first time as he tilts his head before the flagship rises. The non-original piece Ode to Joy plays during the sequence. Doma, McGuy, the Decalvan Brothers, Squard, Elmy, Ramba, A O, and Delacuaji all debut.