Ace and Luffy's childhood experiences continue as the World Noble arrive at the Goa Kingdom.
Not the best day to pick for a maiden voyage.
Summary:
At the bay, onlookers are surprised to see Sabo on the waters in a fishing boat. Sabo begins to sail out of the bay when he spots the massive World Noble ship in front of him. Sabo looks at the ship at awe, but the world noble Saint Jalmack blasts Sabo's boat with his hand cannon much to the shock of the people watching from shore. Among the audience is a member of Dadan's gang name Dogura, and he quickly leaves for Mt. Colbo after seeing the shocking incident.
Back at the mountain fortress, Ace has returned with a bandaged Dadan on his back. Inside the fortress, Ace explains that he and Dadan managed to beat Bluejam, but they were surrounded by the fire and Dadan suffered some bad burns. Luckily they made it to some safe grounds and waited out the fire, and afterwards Ace stole some medicine from town to patch Dadan up before carrying her back to the fortress. A little while later, Dadan asks why Ace didn't run from Bluejam back at the fire, and Ace explains that he wanted to protect Luffy who was behind him, and at the spurt of the moment he didn't really think. Ace's answer causes Dadan to remember a conversation she had with Garp about Rogers' personality, and Dadan notes to herself that Ace's behaviour is just like his father's.
Dogura returns to the mountain fortress and brings the sad news about Sabo. While Luffy is sad and crying, Ace is extremely angry and wants to avenge Sabo, but he is stopped by Dadan and tied to a tree to cool off. The next morning, a letter from Sabo is delivered to the fortress, and Ace gets hold of the letter. In the letter, Sabo wrote that he cannot live the rotten life of a noble anymore and decided to head out to sea as soon as possible. He hopes that one day he and Ace and Luffy will meet again out on the ocean and asks Ace to take care of Luffy. After reading the letter, Ace starts crying uncontrollably.
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This chapter was focused on the expected tragedy of Sabo's death. The kid can't catch a break and chose the wrong day to sail, and we'll find out in the future what sort of impact his death had on Luffy and Ace. I wonder if it will be anything more than just motivation for them to become good pirates and take care of each other. In other developments, Ace and Dadan made it safely back to Mt. Colbo in a somewhat anti-climatic way. Apparently Oda set that little cliffhanger up only to draw similarities between Ace and Rogers' personalities. I'm also a little surprised and disappointed that Dragon didn't do anything during the world noble's arrival. Hopefully Dragon might pull off something later, but there is a chance that we won't see anything. These flashback chapter are perhaps important to build up the back story, but they aren't that compelling compared to the usual combat story arcs. With Sabo gone, the flashback will probably end soon, but it won't be next week since One Piece is taking a break once again.
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Episode: One Piece Episode 588