ONE PIECE S2 Episode 1 Review: "The Beginning and the End" — Loguetown, Gold Roger's shadow, and Luffy laughing at the scaffold

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

ONE PIECE* Season 2 begins with the Grand Line close enough to smell and dangerous enough to delay. The Straw Hats only need one last East Blue stop for food, swords, maps, and courage, but Loguetown is the worst place for a wanted rookie captain to go souvenir-hunting. Baroque Works is already moving, Smoker is waiting in the town where Gold Roger died, and Luffy keeps walking toward the one platform everyone else knows he should avoid. By the end, the crew has not crossed into the Grand Line because they are ready. They cross because they choose each other anyway.

Baroque Works raids a Marine base, and Zoro’s dead Mr. 7 sends the agents after Luffy

The premiere starts away from the Going Merry, which is the right call. Before the Straw Hats even pick a course, Baroque Works is already treating the East Blue as an active crime scene. Miss Valentine complains about due diligence, her partner casually grows a horrifying number of arms, and Commander Ripper’s big Marine stand collapses almost instantly.

That opening does two useful things fast. It reminds us that Zoro’s past as the pirate hunter still has teeth, and it upgrades the season’s danger from “the next island has trouble” to “an organization has a file on you.” Mr. 7 is dead, Baroque Works needs a replacement, and the agents know the name Roronoa Zoro before they know the name Monkey D. Luffy.

Then they learn it. The joke is pure ONE PIECE: the terrifying assassin network has to process the fact that the pirate hunter they wanted to recruit became a pirate himself because a rubber idiot attacked a Marine base and freed him. The threat lands, but so does the absurdity. That balance is the premiere’s engine.

Nami maps the route to the Grand Line, and Loguetown wins the crew vote one errand at a time

On the Merry, the Straw Hats are already a better crew than they were at the start of Season 1, mostly because their arguments now sound like a family inventorying a terrible road trip. Sanji is running out of food. Usopp is turning stolen pepper into experimental ammunition. Nami is tracing the waterway through the Red Line and explaining why the Calm Belt is a trap of limp sails, dead water, and sea kings.

The funny part is that everyone has a practical reason to stop at Loguetown except the one person who should be most cautious. Nami wants supplies before the Grand Line. Sanji needs food. Zoro needs two swords after Mihawk shattered his rhythm. Usopp, correctly, hears “largest Marine hub in the East Blue” and starts saying no with his whole body.

Luffy only flips when Nami gives him the one fact guaranteed to ruin the safety plan: Loguetown is where Gold Roger was executed. It is “the town of the beginning and the end,” the place where the One Piece became a world-sized dare. Nami knows exactly what she is doing. So does the hour. The crew does not go to Loguetown despite the danger; it goes because every Straw Hat still has one East Blue thread to touch before the map turns weird.

Gold Roger asks Garp to protect his son, and Luffy walks into the town built from Roger’s death

The Garp and Gold Roger flashback gives Loguetown weight before Luffy ever steps onto the dock. Roger is chained, doomed, and still the freest person in the room. Garp has the uniform, the victory, and the gallows waiting outside, but Roger is the one making a request like he expects the world to keep listening after he dies.

He tells Garp he has a son. He asks him to find the boy, care for him, and keep him safe. The line that sticks is simple and heavy: “No son should have to suffer for the sins of his father.” Garp does not soften much, because Garp rarely gives anyone that satisfaction, but Roger reads him anyway. He trusts him because he believes there is still a good man under the Marine legend.

That scene quietly scores the whole Loguetown hour. Roger talks about a dawn that is only beginning; Luffy arrives years later, all appetite and noise, trying to stand where that dawn started. The premiere does not need to explain the parallel too loudly. It puts one man walking to death beside another boy walking toward the same platform like it is a landmark on a vacation map, and lets the chill do the work.

Zoro meets Tashigi in Ipponmatsu’s shop, tests Sandai Kitetsu, and leaves with Yubashiri

Zoro’s Loguetown story is the cleanest character thread in the hour. First he bumps into Tashigi, sees Kuina in her face, and immediately covers the wound with irritation. Then he finds Ipponmatsu’s sword shop, presents Nami’s borrowed money like a man who has heard of commerce but never met it personally, and watches the shopkeeper try to swindle him out of the Wado Ichimonji.

Tashigi cuts through that con the second she sees the blade. Her excitement is nerdy, precise, and instantly useful: the Wado Ichimonji is one of the 21 Great Grade blades, worth far more than Ipponmatsu is offering. She also gives the scene its best texture. Swords are art, history, personality, and responsibility to her. To Zoro, they are vows you either keep or do not.

That is why the Sandai Kitetsu test works. Zoro hears “cursed” and responds by tossing the blade into the air over his own arm to see whether his will or the curse wins. It is stupid. It is perfect. When the blade misses and Zoro says, “I’ll take it,” Ipponmatsu understands what kind of customer he has. The gift of Yubashiri is not charity. It is one craftsman recognizing a swordsman reckless enough to be worthy of better steel.

Nami clocks the storm, Sanji buys the tuna, and Usopp sends Kaya one brave little lie

The smaller errands are where the premiere feels most like a crew piece. Nami buys an Atlas of the East Blue after Usopp tells her it can be something to remember where she started before she maps the whole world better. That is a sweet, specific kind of friendship: he is not telling her to shrink her dream, just to keep a proof of distance traveled.

Then she turns the advice back on him. Maybe Usopp does not have much from Syrup Village worth buying, but he has someone worth remembering. So he records a message for Kaya, makes himself sound braver than he feels, and lands on the most Usopp sentence possible: his crew needs him, and what kind of captain would let his people down? It is a lie and a pep talk sharing the same chair.

Sanji gets his own homeward tug through food. The blue-finned elephant tuna lets him hear that Baratie is serving a version of his dish, True Blue-Fin saute, and his first reaction is wounded pride before it turns into something warmer. Zeff put it on the menu. Zeff liked it. Sanji buying that fish is not only stocking the pantry. It is a cook carrying proof that he left home with something worth keeping.

Buggy and Alvida put Luffy on Roger’s scaffold, and lightning saves the future king at the blade

Luffy, naturally, gets separated because he asks every possible wrong person where the execution platform is. Bartolomeo spots the easiest mark in Loguetown and tries to lure him with local hospitality, only to deliver him to the one stage where Buggy could not resist making a scene.

Buggy and Alvida are a smart premiere pairing because they turn the East Blue’s old grudges into a Grand Line warning. Alvida’s Slip Slip Fruit means Luffy’s punch slides right off. Buggy brings seastone cuffs, and those cuffs feel nasty immediately: they sap Luffy’s stamina and shut down his devil fruit power like seawater. For once, Luffy cannot solve the problem by stretching farther.

Buggy’s trial is ridiculous enough to be funny and mean enough to matter. He calls story the most powerful thing in the world, then tries to end Luffy’s story on the same wood where Roger’s became immortal. Luffy answers with his whole chest: “My name is Monkey D. Luffy! I will find the One Piece and become King of the Pirates!” Then, when the blade is coming down, he smiles and says he is dead.

The lightning strike is huge, silly, and exactly tuned to the legend-machine Loguetown has been feeding all hour. Buggy gets blasted, the platform breaks, and Luffy lands in the rubble grinning about luck. The crew is horrified. Smoker is not. Smoker saw Roger laugh once. Now he has seen another pirate do it in the same place.

Smoker sees Roger’s laugh in Luffy, and the Going Merry reaches Reverse Mountain

Captain Smoker is introduced like a wall the sea built out of smoke and bad temper. He drags pirates back to Loguetown himself, snaps at his Marines, and still gives a child money after his pants eat an ice cream cone. That little beat keeps him from flattening into a Marine brute. Smoker hates pirates, but his hatred has a shape: he remembers being a child in Loguetown and watching Roger’s final words turn the world wild.

That is why the chase after the scaffold lands harder than a standard escape. Smoker does not only want Luffy’s bounty. He sees a pattern he has spent his life trying to prevent. Luffy laughs at death, Smoker hears Roger, and the Grand Line suddenly has a Marine shadow following it.

The mysterious man who stops Smoker keeps the larger myth moving without turning the premiere into a lore dump. He asks who they are to stand in the way of another man’s voyage, blocks Smoker long enough for Luffy to run, and leaves the Straw Hats with more questions than answers. Nami gets them back to the Merry, the storm hits, and Reverse Mountain rises ahead like the world changing shape. Luffy’s answer is as simple as ever: together, they can take it.

Tiny details worth clocking

• Sanji notices the missing pepper at lunch before Usopp’s pepper star pays it off in the platform fight.
• Nami’s storm read starts with air pressure and static, not rain, which keeps her navigation skill active even in the shopping-comedy stretch.
• Tashigi’s first real bond with Zoro is maintenance, not romance or rivalry: she respects anyone who takes a blade seriously.
• Smoker’s ice cream scene tells you his justice is severe, but not petty.
• The post-escape “little bird” scene adds a nasty recruitment tease without naming the recruiter or the wounded target.

Final verdict

“The Beginning and the End” comes out strong by tying ONE PIECE’s goofy errands and mythic stakes to the same tide. Luffy gets lost looking for a scaffold. Zoro haggles by accident and gambles his arm against a cursed sword. Nami buys an old atlas. Sanji buys a fish. Usopp talks to a girl who is not there. None of that slows the hour down; it gives the Grand Line a cost before the crew reaches it.

The soft spot is the franchise wiring around the edges. The opening raid is slick and useful, and the final “wings” scene is intriguing, but both are still mostly setup beside the cleaner Loguetown material: Roger’s scaffold for Luffy, Kuina’s echo for Zoro, home cooking for Sanji, weather sense for Nami, a message to Kaya for Usopp.

Still, that scaffold sequence is exactly the swing a premiere needs. The season starts with Roger trusting Garp with a dawn and ends with Smoker realizing he may have just watched that dawn laugh under a blade. That is big, messy, pirate-story television, and this cast can carry it.

Rating: 8.6/10 — A lively, emotionally keyed Loguetown premiere with a terrific scaffold payoff, even if the Baroque Works setup is still more promise than punch.

More episodes from ONE PIECE S2 — The Grand Line adventure, episode by episode. Jump to any episode in the season:

Reviewed by Mira Vance · QuizFandom Editor & Lead Reviewer. Every rating is an honest per-watch assessment from the desk that also writes the quizzes — not a press release rehash.

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