Here Come the Desert Pirates! The Men Who Live Free

The Straw Hats trek through the parched desert with Luffy desperate for water. Vivi and Nami pull ahead astride Matsuge while Zoro hauls a heat-stricken Chopper. Luffy abruptly hallucinates an oncoming tsunami, and Usopp recalls letting him drink from a cactus during the journey. Chopper recognizes it as a psychoactive plant that triggers visions and sedates the rampaging captain with a tranquilizer. When Luffy wakes, the group discovers they have lost track of Nami, Vivi, and Ace. Usopp hears a strange noise, and beyond the dunes a pirate ship sails across the sand with Nami and Vivi held captive aboard.

Luffy charges the vessel, stretches his arms around the mast, and rams it down onto the deck. He lands among the crew declaring only that he is thirsty, telling Nami he came for water rather than a rescue. The captain introduces them as the Barbar Pirates, who hold that anything alive in the desert besides a friend is fair game to eat. After chatting with Barbarossa, who apologizes for mistreating Luffy's companions out of hunger, Luffy agrees to gather wood to mend the mast he broke, since the ship cannot move without it. The pirates lend a sand sled and send Rasa and Zaba along to guide them to the Meriyasu Oasis. Rasa pushes the sled into quicksand, but Luffy hauls it back on course. Elsewhere, Zoro and Sanji fend off Sandora Desert Bandits and a giant dung-ball assault on the ship, while a lost Ace contends with a giant scorpion and a giant gecko. Reaching the oasis, the group finds it buried and learns of Rasa's past. Zaba debuts, along with the Melias location.

The installment is largely filler, though the segment in which Luffy hallucinates after drinking cactus juice is drawn from the source manga. It belongs to the Arabasta saga, with Luffy's anime-only Gomu Gomu no Mizu Kure technique introduced here.