Anime: Post Marineford Arc- Episode 503

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First Thoughts
I was so expecting tears when I went into this episode. You had the death of Sabo follow by his last words to his brother. How can a person not expect tears to happen.

This episode wasn't perfect though. There was one moment that made me wish to turn off my volume which I was close to doing. Overall the episode was everything I expected when it came to covering the material at the same time was able to add more to it.

Also Mikey is back to blogging. He shouldn't since he still has a convention report to do.

Summary
Ace and Dadan return home safely.

Sabo's ship is shot by the Celestial Dragon. Word spread about his death to Ace and Luffy.

Ace and Luffy receive a letter written by Sabo before his departure.

The two brothers promise that they would leave to become pirates at age seventeen.


Thoughts 

 

So if you ignore the small rewind into last week's episode, we fall back to where things left off with Sabo's ship being shot by the Celestial Dragon. Things don't look good and nobody seem to be taking this too well. They all seem surprise that a Celestial Dragon strike a kid who did nothing to him.

What is even more amazing was that the reaction from the Dragon's handler. He actually looked surprise at what the man was willing to do. Either he is new or didn't expect that these guys were willing to shot small kids.

 

If you haven't tell already, the Celestial Dragons are not like most people. They like to think using a different thought process that involves them being the biggest jerks and selfish beings that the world  has ever or will see.

The reaction from the people on the shore seems mixed. Either they see that the Dragon went to far or that Sabo shouldn't have done what he did. Either way there is nothing they can do without feeling the wrath of the pompous noble. Even Sabo's parents seems surprise of the action of the Nobel.

How can anybody be happy to see somebody that literally hold their lives in their hands. They can't speak out against the Dragons without fear of being shot. The worse part is that these guys have no real power. All their powers is just in their linage and respect. If nobody around them cared about them then somebody could just punch them and ran away. Still everybody is afraid of them and thus nobody speaks out against them.

 And now everybody in the Dadan household can breath a sigh of relief as Ace and Dadan come back. They sure were worry about the faith of these two. You have to admit that they had a right to worry. They faced a crazy pirate in the middle of an intense fire. They have to watch out from being killed by the military of the Goa Kingdom.

The whole fight with Bluejam and their escape was all filler. This was really needed since Oda left it very open ended in the manga. He literally left it to the reader's imagination on how Ace and Dadan escape the fire and Bluejam. Who knew that Ace was nice enough to help Dadan but then again she was willing to help Ace and even risk her life to make sure he was okay. That is some mom there. Got to love how the bonds of family reaches pass blood in this show.

Funny how a few chapters ago Dadan was saying that she wish Ace was dead but now she is caring for him as if he was her own flesh and blood. That at least seems to be enough to make Ace want to care for her too in her time of need.

You know? The Celestial Dragons are maybe my most hated characters in this series. They do a lot of things but it is their disrespect for human life that really gets under my skin. The fact that this guy thinks he is important enough to ride on another human being's back instead or something else such as a horse or something just disgust me. Doesn't this guy see the pain that he is putting that person though? Yet he doesn't care and keeps riding the guy like he was some sort of mule.

This is wrong on so many levels too. It shows that the Celestial Dragons see normal people as if they were animals. That they are just things to use. We seen them before at Sabaody where one was willing to make some passerbyer into his wife. Surely this whole island is just another potential place to gain slaves and if he wanted to then this guy surely could take any noble to become his slave and treat him the same way as the guy he is riding. That guy may protest all he want about how he is important but the Dragon will just ignore it and keep going on his merry way. The idea of this just fills me rage and makes me glad that Luffy punch one of these guys in the face.

"Because he'd leave the people he loved behind."
-Garp

So the son is just like the father. Even though Ace never knew his dad personally it would seems like he picked up this trait. Either way it is a trait that is worth having as long as you have the strength to enforce it. Something that Roger apparently had. At the same time it is something that Ace currently lacks.

You got to love what Dogra (Little turban wearing guy) said about not wanting to go back home. It is pretty sad to have a home that has everything but you still don't want to go home to it. Still it looks like the Dogra (voiced by Usopp's VA) was under a similar situation to Sabo. Too bad they couldn't expand on it as much but that was interesting to know.

Ace can go around wanting to beat up people that get him upset all he wants but if he has no bite then he just going to be causing trouble. Luffy kind of did that back in Sabaody when he punched the Dragon. He did good but at the time he wasn't ready to fight back. The Pacifista was easy but when it came to that dou-, I mean, Admiral Kizaru....things didn't go too well. Now that I think about it....The same thing landed Ace in Marineford since he wasn't strong enough to take down Blackbeard. The thing is that nobody knew how powerful he was so I guess that wasn't all Ace's fault.

"Sabo was killed by this country! This world!"
-Dadan

Those are some deep words. Dadan doesn't look like she keeps up to date on world events but she surely knows a lot about what is going on in the world. It is easy to say that a Celestial Dragon killed Sabo but in actually it was the world. If the world didn't let the Dragons from doing whatever that they wanted to do then this would have never happen. The police would have arrested the Dragon and show that doing things like that won't be tolerated. Instead everybody just let it happen like the people before them have done.

 

This part I expected to feel something and I did.The part where Sabo started to talk about being brothers and asked Ace who was the older brother. I began to feel the tears forming right there as I knew that they were having a serious brother to brother conversation except both brothers were suppose to be alive. The fact that Sabo was talking about all of this stuff while him being dead made it sad. He really wanted to see Ace and Luffy again out on the sea but that may never happen now.

The only bad part of this scene was Ace crying....That sounded awkwardly bad. I kind of wish that they got somebody else to act cry because it was bad......I have heard bad things though my ears before but Ace crying seems to be up there. Apparently Ace's VA doesn't do crying scenes and if has then this was not the best.

Well...at least Ace's VA does a better job in Marineford.

The last five minutes of this episode was just filled with so many deep meanings! People who love to analyses every little bit of One Piece would have a field day on these scenes alone!

"Then I protect anything or anyone! I don't have to lose anybody!"
-Young Luffy

This surely explains a lot of Luffy's actions in the past.The idea to keep getting stronger since he had already lost somebody in his past. This could be seen strongly during the Enies Lobby arc where he fought against Bruno and Luci. Luffy even said something similar to this while fighting Bruno. I wonder if Oda planned this from the beginning. This whole 'stronger to protect' scene where it matched with the one from Enies Lobby.

It is cool to see where traits come from especially for Luffy since he is a simple character on face value.

 

Awkward promise......Yeah...I guess you didn't fulfill that one.

Ace really did promise that he would never die in order to protect Luffy. Too bad Ace died though. That just makes Ace's death even sadder. Luffy was so important to Ace that he thought it was more important for Luffy to live on then himself. Wow....Ace totally wins the 'Best Older Brother' award.

And now we know why Luffy didn't leave Windmill Village until the age of 17. Both him and Ace wanted to leave before they became adults. They are trying to run away from the world of adulthood by becoming free. It just so happens that being pirates is the best way to be free. Makes sense a bit. Still this is where the epic begins.

Preview

Looks like next episode we are going to get a lot of small moments of Ace and Luffy life after Sabo being gone. It looks kind of funny with  the two brothers bowing to a chef. Overall fun including some Makino. haha

Also the title makes it sounds like Ace is going to leave or something. If anything the two kids have aged a bit so next episode will be interesting to see.

Next Episode: To Fulfill the Promise - Separate Departures!

Til next time!