Chapter 8

Starving and going nowhere, Luffy and Zoro drift the sea because neither can navigate. Their conversation drifts to how each gets by, and Zoro remarks how peculiar it is that a pirate captain lacks so basic a skill, to which Luffy shrugs that aimless wandering has always worked out. He throws the same charge back, calling Zoro a drifting bounty hunter. Zoro admits he never set out to hunt at all; he took to the sea chasing one particular man, then lost the way home and turned to the trade just to eat. When Luffy plainly concludes the swordsman has been lost the entire time, Zoro snaps at him to be quiet.

A large bird soars overhead, and the famished Luffy springs at it, ending up clamped in its beak and carried off while Zoro rows in pursuit. During the chase he hauls in a band of castaways who turn out to be Buggy's crewmen trying to commandeer his boat, and he thrashes them into submission. They tell him they were marooned by a girl who duped them, robbing their boat and treasure and leaving them to sink in a storm. Zoro muses that anyone who can read the weather would be a welcome recruit. In a nearby town, that same girl bolts from Buggy's pirates after lifting their chart to the Grand Line. Buggy commands the odd bird shot down, and Luffy drops straight in front of her, then stands unharmed to the pirates' shock. The girl tries to pass him off as her boss and slips away, leaving him to handle them. When one knocks his straw hat, an enraged Luffy flattens the whole bunch. The girl reappears afterward, naming herself Nami and describing her trade as robbing pirates and pirates only.

This chapter opens the Orange Town Arc and underscores that the crew sorely needs a navigator. Zoro explains he first put to sea in search of a certain man and only took up bounty hunting once he was lost. Nami debuts here, although earlier artwork had shown her ahead of her formal introduction. Oda's concept material further suggests she was originally intended as Luffy's first crewmate, recruited back in Chapter 1 instead of Zoro.