To the Future! The Path Towards the Sun!

Once the Sea Kings have brought the enormous ark Noah to a stop and rescued it, Shirahoshi hears a startling truth from them. The abducted mermaids turn up, although they have been exchanged for treasures stripped from the palace. Jinbe and the Straw Hats pen in Hody's fleeing New Fish-Man Pirates along with their human allies, while Shirahoshi drags a collapsed and senseless Luffy out of Noah's ruined hull.

The injuries Luffy took from his clash with Hody Jones and his failed bid to wreck Noah leave him in need of a transfusion to live. The merfolk waver, since their law bars giving blood to a human, but Jinbe steps up, stating that a pirate owes obedience to no such custom. The episode ends as Luffy asks Jinbe to join his crew.

The Sea Kings reveal that Shirahoshi has been their queen from the day she was born, and Neptune proclaims that the power to undo the world has finally awakened. While dragging Noah toward the Sea Forest, the Sea Kings marvel that their voices had reached Luffy, a gift they liken to the one held by Gol D. Roger, the late Pirate King, and they wonder whether the ark might be mended by the appointed time. Inside the palace, the freed mermaids are discovered where the treasure chamber once stood, the national Tamate box included, yet Neptune waves it off, set instead on restoring the falsely blamed Straw Hats' names.

Jinbe pins the escaping foes down with a warning water shot. The Minister of the Left, for his part, owns up to the kingdom's careless fact-checking. The three princes return, hauling Vander Decken IX and a thoroughly beaten Hody Jones between them, and swear the pair will trouble no one again. The rejoicing halts when a sobbing Shirahoshi cries that Luffy's bleeding will not stop; Chopper announces a transfusion is needed, and Jinbe offers his own blood. As it travels through the tube, flashbacks honor three figures who nearly bridged humans and merfolk: Otohime, Whitebeard, and Fisher Tiger. Luffy stirs with a smile and asks Jinbe to sail alongside him.

On the page, both the king and his left-hand minister had already started heading toward the plaza by the time word reached them about the recovered mermaids and the looted treasures, but the anime keeps the two stationed outside throughout. The anime additionally shows certain New Fish-Man Pirates scheming to slip away by bubble before Jinbe's cautionary shot, and it draws out the moment when the residents come to accept that the Straw Hats had no hand in the mermaid kidnappings.