Luffy and Ace! The Story of How the Brothers Met!

The story rewinds a decade to the quiet of Fusha Village, overlooked by the perilous Mt. Corvo. Determined to steer his grandson toward the Marines rather than piracy, Garp hauls the now-elastic Luffy up the mountain to Curly Dadan, who is startled to find the Marine hero standing beside her with the bandits Dogra and Magra. Dadan's gang assumes they are meant to hand the ten-year-old Ace over to Garp, but instead he saddles them with raising Luffy too, warning that refusal could land them behind bars.

Garp introduces the two boys, who size each other up with sour expressions. Left among the bandits, Luffy goes hungry as the gang squabbles over meat from a bison Ace had killed. Dadan tells Luffy to toughen up fast, and he insists he can survive the wild and intends to become a pirate, then trails after Ace. His attempts at friendship are rebuffed harshly: Ace topples a tree at him, strikes him on a bridge, and sends him tumbling into a gorge. Returning alone, Ace says nothing of where Luffy is, and the worried bandits fret over Garp's likely reaction. A week later Luffy turns up alive, claiming wolves had chased him, then resumes his pursuit. Over the following days and weeks he survives crocodiles, a snake, bee stings, a tiger, and a bear, never once giving up.

This is the first episode to use Fight Together as its opening, and it marks a shift toward smoother, higher frame-rate camera movement during panning scenes. It adapts portions of Chapters 582 and 583, and debuts Dogra, Magra, Pochi, and the Gray Terminal. The adaptation enlarged the Dadan Family with extra members including a pet dog, added comedic exchanges, and gave the giant tiger far more prominence than it received in the manga, where it was merely one beast among many.