One Piece 582

It's flashback time.

Is Luffy trying to spank Garp? Kids have no respect for elders these days.

Summary:
After the battle at the summit, many pirate crews are preparing to go to the grand line, while the Marines are also preparing for this influx of pirates. Not far from the island of Amazon Lily, Ivankov and his comrades say goodbye to Jimbei, Hancock and Law to head off on their own. After arriving at Amazon Lily, all the visitors are confined to a beach on the island, while Hancock heads back to her palace. At the palace, Hancock learns that Luffy has woken up and wants to meet him at once. Elder Nyon tries to warn Hancock against breaking the rules, but Hancock isn't about to listen. Near a rocky beach on the island, Luffy is busy destroying the nearby trees to let out his anguish while Law and his crew hangs out by the beach. Jimbei walks in to try to calm Luffy down, but Luffy is still beyond consoling and lets out a loud scream. At the same time, Luffy begins to think back to the first time he met Ace.

10 years ago in the East Blue after Luffy eaten his Devil Fruit, Garp put Luffy into the care of Curly Dadan, a criminal who is taking care of Ace in exchange for not going to jail. Dadan and her crew already had their hands full with Ace, but they couldn't say no to Garp. While Dadan tries to negotiate terms with Garp, Ace appeared and spat into Luffy's face. While Luffy was fuming at Ace, Garp told Luffy that he'll be living with Ace from then on.

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Contrary to what I said last week, looks like the story of One Piece is finally slowing down a bit and has gone into flashback mode. It would have been interesting to see what happened to Moria from last chapter, but we can probably assume that he bit the dust. The story going into a lull is expected after the drawn out battle at Marineford. It would have been very difficult to maintain that pace especially for a series that has no foreseeable ending. So the next few chapters is probably going to be the story of Luffy and Ace growing up together, having fights and learning to appreciate each other. I wonder about Garp's decision to let Ace and Luffy be raised by a bunch of criminals. That's probably one of the reason why both of them ended up as pirates instead of Marines. The flashback probably won't be too bad especially if Oda sticks in some interesting trivia here and there, but there won't be the kind of excitement we saw during the battle at Marineford.

Oh, and there was more crazy snot-and-tears crying from Luffy in this chapter. I'll never get used to those expressions.