One Piece (ワンピース) is the epic pirate themed shonen battle anime based on the manga of the same name by Oda Eiichiro. The seventh story arc of the series, Escape! The Marine Fortress & The Foxy Pirate Crew, originally aired between June of 2004 and March of 2005 for a total of 33 episodes, between 196 and 228.
After following the logpose into the heavens and confirming the existence of a floating island, Skypiea, the Straw Pirates face off with a God to protect the innocent people who were just as willing to sacrifice them to it for their own safety. Along the way they learn the truth behind the fabled city of gold.
From the frying pan and into the fire, their balloon decent to the Grand Line goes off course and lands them in the middle of a heavily fortified Marine base, G-8. Their splashdown is seen my many on the base, even though its the middle of the night. The Marines search the ship, not finding any of the crew, and impound the ship. The base is commanded by Vice-admiral Jonathan, an intelligent and patient commander. The men who searched the Going Merry begin talking about it being a ghost ship. Jonathan realizes the crew has escaped and will be attempting to free their ship and flee the base. He instructs his men to keep and eye for any strange people that suddenly how up while working to set a wide ranging trap.
The Straw Hats got separated as they fled their ship. Shanji and Luffy meet each other while wandering the maze-like halls of the base. They end up in the kitchen and pose as two famous chefs who have transferred to this base from Marine headquarters. Nami ends up disguise herself as a janitor first, resulting in some aggressive menial labor. She abandons that plan quickly, favoring the role of a nurse instead. A battered Marine ship has just landed and the entire medical wing is on full swing to treat the wounded, dragging Nami into a role she has no abilities in. She finds Chopper, doing his best pretending to be a normal doctor, wanting to aid the only available doctor, who fears the sight of blood. The two pirates work diligently to help the wounded Marines.
Zoro is the first one captured and finds himself contemplating his situation in the brig. Usopp ends up meeting the head mechanic on the base, who reinforces Usopps pride in the ship he struggle to keep sea worthy. He ends up being captured and tries unsuccessfully to convince them he is an inspector that is supposed to be coming to the base. Robin, who has already encountered the inspector and subdued him, convinces Jonathan that she is the real inspector, brushing off Usopps attempts at subterfuge. Sanji and Luffy are still working in the kitchen, mostly due to Sanji being madly in love with the head chef, Jessica. Luffy delivers food to the captain, at which point their identities are uncovered. Fearing capture and learning about Zoro and Usopps imprisonment they head off to attempt to free them while evading the Marines. Jonathan anticipates their actions and sets a trap for them at the brig. Unexpectedly, Usopp and Zoro concoct a plan to escape the jail, blowing up the cell in the process. In the confusion the mostly reunited members head off to free their ship.
There is yet another trap waiting for them at the dock their ship is moored. Before the standoff can begin Chopper and Naki, still masquerading as medial staff, convince the gathered masses that the pirates are holding them hostage. They take advantage of the distraction and escape on their ship, heading into the harbor. The escape is not as easy at is seems, as the bass is surrounded by a ring of cliffs with only one sea gate. The Marines unleash the entire bases defenses in order to stop the Going Merry. In the confusion they hide their ship in an abandoned dock and head back into the base to retrieve the treasure they took from Sky Island. Jonathan, knowing that the most important thing to pirates is their treasure, has laid this as the final trap. The crew succeeds in breaching the bases vault, to learn it is empty. After escaping this trap they understand the only place their loot could be is in Jonathan's office. In a crazed sequence of events they secure the treasure and escape into the port. Yet the final trick puts their freedom in jeopardy. The port is shallow and with the tide going out the Going Marry runs aground. Thinking they are finally captured for good, Jonathon and the rest of the Marines are astonished by the final trick the crew has in store. Using the octopus they used to float back to the Grand Line, they succeed in reinflating it and using an impact dial to propel the ship over the cliffs and out to open sea, where they will need to dock to do some serious repairs before they can continue on their journey.
The next island they stop at seems to be abandoned and idyllic. Yet everything on it is...long. The only thing they find is an abandoned hut and a strange looking horse. Before they can figure out their next move, walking bamboo attacks them...or become attacked by Luffy. The bamboo ended up being extremely tall stilts piloted by an old man named Tonjit. He explains that he became trapped on his stilts ten years earlier an that his people, who are nomads, have long since moved on to other islands. The island they are on is made up of a ring of islands that become one when the tide is at its lowest, in a multi year cycle. His people move from island to island during these periods. Before they can enact a plan to help him reunite with his people a crew of pirates shows up to challenge them to a game called the Davy Back Fight.
Luffy, being as impulsive as he is, instantly agrees to the challenge by the rival captain, Captain Foxy. The Davy Back Fight is an honorable challenge between pirate captains. The opponents face off in a series of challenges, for each challenge won, the winner may choose to take something from the looser. This typically means crew mates or even the losers jolly roger. Unfortunately for Luffy and crew, Foxy is full of tricks and cheats, having a long history of using the Davy Back Fight to strengthen his own crew. The first of three challenges involves a race around the island using only a few pieces of wood. Luffy and company immediately realize how underhanded the Foxy Pirates are willing to be in order to ensure victory. After all, pirates gonna pirate. The first win goes to Foxy who claims Chopper as his first prize. This leaves the Straw Hat team for the second challenge down one member. Zoro and Sanji face off against the biggest members of the Foxy pirates in a game where a ball attached to one team members head has to land in a circle on the court.
Miraculously, Sanji and Zoro are able to put aside their own conflict in order to overcome the opposing teams tactics, cheats and crooked referee to win back Chopper. The final contest is a points race on a roller rink. Miraculously they are able to overcome Luffy's inability to roller skate, Foxy's devil fruit slow motion powers, rampant amounts of cheating and other disasters. Luffy chooses to make Tonjits horse the new member of his crew for the win, shocking everyone. Not wanting to walk away empty handed, Foxy suggest a rematch, which Luffy instantly agrees to. Now they have to face off against the massively underhanded prates for another three challenges to ensure their crews safety. The first challenge for the second round is a game of red light green light. Just before they Straw Hats can secure victory, the win is snatched from them and Foxy chooses Robin to be his newest crew mate.
The second challenge in the rematch is race to the top of the island, which the Foxy pirates easily win, securing Chopper once again. With only one challenge left, Luffy is faced with the dilema of loosing one crew member, as he can only hope to win one back. Nami suggests and all or noting bet for the final challenge, which Foxy gleefully accepts. The final challenge is a one on one boxing match between Luffy and Foxy with the ring being the entire Foxy pirate ship. Luffy overcomes a series of devastating beatings and all manner of underhanded tricks at Foxy's hands, but is able to persevere in the end using Foxy's slow motion ability against him. Now everyone except 3 members of Foxy's crew are part of the Straw Pirates. Foxy floats away in defeat but before he can get far Luffy releases all of the new members from their service to the Gong Merry.
With the crew safe and secure and the ship as stable as can be with out a real shipwright, they head off again to the next island, mooring overnight at a coral surrounded island. Something happens to them and everyone who was asleep wakes up in the morning to have no memories going back to the point at which they joined the pirate crew. The only one unaffected was Robin, as she has been awake when the attack happened. Robin works to convince them of who they all are, but not everyone readily agrees to her truths. The culprit behind the memory theft ends up being a seahorse, claiming to be a millennial dragon...or at least thinking if he consumes all those memories he will turn into one. After defeating the seahorse, the crew and inhabitants of the island get their memories back. The heroic pirates are chased away instead of getting rewarded as the villager blame them for the memory losses.
On their way to the next island, and caught in rough weather, they come across Foxy and his reduced crew/boat. Pitying the problematic pirate, they rescue them for near death and bring them onboard the Going Merry. The next day they come across his old pirate crew, who are now sailing under the banner of a pirate crew they had previously defeated in a Davy Back Fight challenge. Foxy challenges this new rival captain for the right back to his crew and ship. Luffy feels sympathy for Foxy, he is being beaten badly by the challenger, offering to step in to fight for him. Foxy takes the opportunity, recognizing that he can make use of Luffys crew to win back his crew and capture them to make up for his defeat at Long Long Island.
Before this arc I had never concerned myself with known which episodes were fillers or not. Something about the first part of the arc made me check into the list of filler episodes. Surprisingly and a little concerning is that the only part of this arc that was from the manga was the absolute worst story line in the entire series so far. Foxy and his entire ordeal was absolutely terrible. It was annoying, repetitive and went on significantly longer than it really should have. Foxy's character is terrible and his crew is a hodgepodge of caricatures that are more at home in the late 60's Hanna Barbera cartoon, Wacky Races. Too make matters worse, the final part of this arc, which sees the return of Foxy is also filler. The first part, the escape from Marine Base G-8 is really enjoyable and continued the wave of fun that took place in Skypiea. The characters are fun, the situation, even if it goes longer than it probably should have, does not get tedious or repetitive. Vice-admiral Jonathan is a really enjoyable character, too bad hes not from the manga. This entire arc makes me question Oda's intent and direction in the overall narrative of his story. Is he trying too hard to regurgitate anime he grew up on as a kid in the 80's?
The Foxy part is terrible, the short segment afterwards, with the lost memories absolutely feels like filler, but isn't too bad that you want to skip it. The final part through, is just as bad as the real Foxy segment, fortunately its only a few episodes long. With this we move onto the next part and I am beginning to question if the story can return to the quality that we had in the Skypiae and Alabasta arcs or if we are just going to continue running into more and more ridiculous characters with terrible design and narratives. We had a slight glimmer of actual plot progression with Skypiae and given the only manga based part of this arc is the Foxy challenge, we will hopefully see a return to the actual pursuit of the One Piece...but 950+ episodes left to go through at this point doesn't make that likely. As a side note, I forgot the period of time in Japan when afro's were all the rage...or at least in anime. Strange times the mid 00's were indeed. Another side note, I am picking up an a noticeable improvement to the artwork of the show compared to the original seasons...but that also means Nami's chest is becoming more of a point of interest.
Next up, now that we are finally free and clear of the terrible and annoying Foxy pirates, the Water Seven arc.
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