Episode of Luffy: Adventure on Hand Island

Slotted in right after episode 576 finished airing, this hour-long special aired on December 15, 2012, deliberately timed so that its debut fell on the theatrical opening of the film subtitled Z. Its ending theme is the 2012 arrangement of We Are!, and within the anime's chronology it can rest after both the Z's Ambition arc and Film Z yet ahead of Punk Hazard, since the crew still sails on its own with Jinbe not yet aboard.

The feature is notable for several firsts. It is the earliest instance of the anime depicting how Luffy came by the scar under his eye, and it puts the post-timeskip designs of Koby and Helmeppo on screen years before those looks surfaced in the manga. The Alvida flashback here unfolds wholly aboard her own pirate vessel, the Miss Love Duck, in place of a passenger liner, and the credits reuse Nami's footage from the earlier Episode of Nami special.

Marine battleships ambush the Thousand Sunny, and a giant incoming cannonball forces the crew into a rushed Coup de Burst that overshoots and dumps them onto an unknown island. Franky sets to work relaunching the ship while the others walk into a starved little town staffed only by women, children, and elders. Luffy meets Diego, an aging wax craftsman whose house the crashing Sunny happened to flatten, and is shown a hidden gallery of remarkably lifelike statues of famous pirates, one of which stirs a memory of Shanks giving up an arm to save him years earlier.

Diego explains the island's plight. Formerly protected by Whitebeard, Hand Island fell under Marine rule after his death, and Commodore Bilić pressed the townsfolk into constructing a cannon that he then turned on his own people to keep their families hostage. Diego's son Regis, who had enlisted meaning to defend the island, sits caged for standing up to the officer. Together with Sanji and Usopp, Luffy infiltrates the base and frees him while Koby and Helmeppo quietly build a case against the crooked commodore.

Regis rigs the barrel of the giant cannon with superior wax so that it detonates itself, but Bilić rolls out a mobile cannon and torches the Whitebeard figurine to mock his enemies. With his crewmates knocking down the bladed spinning tops hurled at him, Luffy fights past the weapon's speed, grabs the snake puppet, and hammers the officer with an Elephant Gatling. Diego then crafts a wax dummy of Kizaru at Koby's request, letting Koby arrest Bilić and order the base to rebuild the town. The Straw Hats depart, belatedly realizing Zoro was left behind, as Diego adds the finishing touches to a brand-new sculpture of Luffy.

The broadcast pulled a viewership figure of 14.2, taking the top rank for its airing. Being tied to the same launch window as the film Z, it also delivered the first televised glimpse of the older Koby and Helmeppo, well ahead of the roughly five-year gap before their canonical timeskip appearance in the manga.

Fans single out the animated flashback to the mountain bandit Higuma, the moment that finally brought to motion the childhood incident behind Luffy's scar and Shanks's sacrifice. Within the anime's loose timeline, the special sits comfortably beside kindred side stories like Adventure of Nebulandia.