Arriving Again

Grateful islanders see the pirates off as they sail away, and Lola swears she notices a shape moving through the haze, though her crewmates insist it no longer concerns them. Three vast silhouettes loom in the fog behind the island as the Sunny clears the Florian Triangle and heads for the underwater paradise the crew has heard so much about.

Onboard, Nami challenges Luffy over abandoning his brother while the Vivre Card keeps wasting away, but he refuses to insult Ace by treating him as helpless. Brook offers an alternate course; Luffy declines, and Sanji reassures everyone that the card will mend once Ace recovers, raising a toast to Brook joining them. At Mary Geoise, meanwhile, an enraged Sengoku tears into Kuma for losing the crew, dismissing Garp's amusement at his grandson's victory over Moria and warning that the pirates now sit dangerously close to Marineford.

The voyage carries the Sunny past one impossible spectacle after another, and several days later the immense wall of the Red Line rises ahead. As Chopper and Usopp swim and Zoro trains, Luffy, Brook, and Robin take the Shark Submarine down to its operating limit, only for a sea rabbit to chase them back up. Once surfaced, Luffy knocks the monster flat, and out of its mouth tumble a starfish and a mermaid. The mermaid, who claims sea creatures have swallowed her twenty separate times, happily produces takoyaki before realizing she has no shop to sell it from.

Leaving the Florian Triangle behind, the crew reaches the Red Line, the midway marker that splits the Grand Line in two, while an enormous unknown shape stays concealed in the fog at their backs. Luffy brushes off the threat to Ace, certain his brother can fend for himself. During the journey Franky mentions that the South Blue is his birthplace.

By freeing the beast that had eaten them, the crew unexpectedly comes to know the mermaid Camie and her chatty starfish friend Pappag. On the cover, Oimo and Kashii say goodbye to Water 7 and set off toward their distant home of Elbaph.

This installment kicks off both the Sabaody Archipelago Arc and, on a larger scale, the Summit War Saga, pivoting the narrative toward the second stretch of the Grand Line. The cover advances the Where They Are Now serial with the two giants beginning their voyage home.

Sengoku's anger underscores how near the pirates have come to Marine Headquarters, while Garp's calm, snack-offering manner quietly hints at the blood tie linking him to Luffy.