Summary
Another strong episode showcases some very creative action sequences while delving further into Luffy’s most defining relationship.
This recap of the 2023 Netflix series One Piece Season 1 Episode 2, “The Man in the Straw Hat”, contains spoilers.
The flashbacks utilized in Episode 1 of Netflix‘s One Piece are clearly going to remain an integral storytelling device as the season progresses, since the second episode, “The Man in the Straw Hat”, opens in the past.
A young Luffy is learning how to utilize his Gum Gum powers, which he’s very excited about, but Makino cautions the youngster about Devil Fruit. You don’t get a nickname like that for nothing. The Devil Fruit are all unique and grant the eater a special power, but it comes at a cost, and the ocean can take that power away.
Despite his enthusiasm, Luffy is thrown for a bit of a loop when Shanks, a pirate mentor he obviously idolizes, departs to search for the One Piece and tells Luffy that he and his crew won’t be returning.
One Piece Season 1 Episode 2 Recap
What is the Grand Line?
In the present day, Nami cracks the safe and recovers the map to the Grand Line. Zoro is unfamiliar with the concept. Nami explains the Grand Line is a perilous oceanic route that circumnavigates the globe from West to East, and somewhere along it, Gold Roger hid the One Piece.
Because of the Grand Line and a strip of land running North to South known as the Red Line, the vast oceans in One Piece are divided into four quadrants – East Blue, West Blue, North Blue, and South Blue.
When they’re distracted by giant bangs outside, the gang heads out onto the deck, where thick red smoke overwhelms them and renders them unconscious. Before he passes out, Luffy swallows the Grand Line map.
Who is Buggy the Clown?
The gang wakes up to discover they have been captured not by the Marines but by Buggy, a pirate who styles himself after a clown and his entire crew after an elaborate circus act. He had been scheming for months to steal the Grand Line map from Axe-Hand, and now feels like he has been upstaged.
After Zoro threatens to kill everyone – this guy is not a good negotiator – Nami creates a distraction by offering Buggy a new freak for his act, throwing Luffy’s straw hat in the air so he reflexively reveals his stretching powers. She flees in the confusion but is promptly caught again, but outside she saw that Buggy had demolished the town where he has made his circus base.
Buggy “tortures” Luffy by stretching all his limbs in different directions, but Luffy finds it amusing more than anything. He is, though, unhappy to hear that Buggy recognises his hat because he knew Shanks, who apparently betrayed him when they were young.
What is Buggy’s special power?
When Buggy starts threatening a child from the town he destroyed – those people are all his “audience” now – Luffy flips out and breaks free of the ropes binding him. Using his “Gum Gum Pistol” ability he punches Buggy’s head clean off… but it promptly reattaches itself.
As it turns out, Buggy also ate a Devil’s Fruit. He ate the Chop Chop Fruit, which means he can be sliced and diced but always comes back together again. He’s able to once again knock Luffy out with the red smoke and his newly detached fist.
Does Koby join the Marines?
Back at Shells Town, Vice-Admiral Garp arrives in the aftermath of the raid. Koby is now a newly enlisted cadet who seems to have impressed Axe-Hand, but Garp and his man Bogard see through him and immediately accuse him of working with the pirates. When Koby gives up Luffy’s name, Garp clearly recognises it. He asks Koby if he has any allegiance to Luffy and proposes they find him together.
How do the crew defeat Buggy?
While Buggy keeps Luffy in a tank of water, which apparently inhibits his powers, we get some more flashbacks.
In the past, Shanks returned to protect Luffy from a particularly thuggish pirate. He and his crew deliver the first big action scene of the episode. During the skirmish, the pirate kidnaps Luffy, but Shanks saves him once again, this time from a giant sea monster that Shanks seems able to communicate with.
Meanwhile, Buggy’s chief of staff, Cabaji, targets Zoro, who apparently killed his brother, and throws knives at him while he’s on one of those spinning targets. Luckily Nami uses the distraction to pick the lock on her bindings, so when one of Cabaji’s knives cuts a rope holding Zoro in place, they’re able to subdue him and go after Luffy.
In a very creative action sequence, the gang fight Buggy and his various detached limbs, eventually hitting on the idea of trapping them all in the various nearby chests. With Buggy reduced to just his head, hands, and boots, Luffy Gum Gum Bazooka’s him right out of the big top, and the crew, for the first time, feel like exactly that. They free the captive audience members, and Luffy says once again that he’s “a different kind of pirate.”
One Piece Season 1 Episode 2 Ending Explained
At the end of the episode, Garp announces to the assembled Marines that he’ll personally be leading them on the hunt for the pirates who raided the base. And Axe-Hand is being punished for their failure to apprehend them at the time.
In the final flashback of the episode, we see how Shanks gave Luffy his hat, telling him that he can give it back when they meet again and he’s a pirate himself. Luffy’s promises to be a pirate with his own boat and crew are coming true by the end of this episode, as he, Zoro, and Nami set sail for the Grand Line, but in a final scene, Nami retrieves a hidden communication device from the floorboards of the boat’s galley and tells persons as-yet-unknown that she has the map.
You can stream the 2023 series One Piece Season 1 Episode 2, “The Man in the Straw Hat”, exclusively on Netflix.
