One Piece: 3D2Y is a television special that helps to fill in the time skip that takes place between Episodes 516 and 517 of the One Piece anime series.

One Piece: 3D2Y
Original Japanese airdate: August 30, 2014
Directed by: Naoyuki Ito
Runtime: 107 minutes

The special opens with a recap of the events that took place when Luffy went to rescue Ace during the battle at Marineford, as well as what led Luffy to start training for two years. The special then begins its story with Luffy training in Rusukaina with Silvers Rayleigh.

We get some comedy out of Boa Hancock worrying about Luffy. It’s always amusing how she acts like such a lovesick teenager when she thinks about Luffy, even though she’s the ruler of Amazon Lily and is also a Warlord of the Sea. Hancock helps to provide some levity early on in the special, but she also plays an important part in the overall story, so it makes sense to utilize her like this early on.

While Luffy is training, a convict named Byrnndi World escapes and wreaks havoc on the high seas. World had been locked away on Level 6 of Impel Down but had escaped during Blackbeard’s infiltration of the prison. We see that World isn’t above sacrificing his own crew to accomplish his goals, and this clearly sets him up as the villain in the special. World makes enough of a ruckus that the World Government takes notice of him and summons the Seven Warlords. When World catches wind of this, he decides he needs to strike first, and discovers that Boa Hancock is the Warlord who is closest to his location.

This leads to World kidnapping Boa’s sisters, Marigold and Sandersonia, in order to lure Hancock to him. Luffy finds out about the kidnapping, and he pauses his training in order to save Hancock’s sisters. He accompanies Hancock on the rescue attempt. As expected, this leads to a fight between Luffy and World. And I can’t neglect to mention that Buggy the Clown, who is now one of the Seven Warlords, becomes an important character in the story when he gets involved with Luffy’s fight. Mr. 3 is still with him, as well as Buggy’s original crew and the new crew members he gained when they escaped from Impel Down. The new crew members constantly misconstrue what Buggy is doing, and constantly cheer for him. I swear, these new crew members are so enamored by Buggy that they’d probably jump off a cliff if Buggy told them to. But they do help to add a little bit of humor to what is otherwise a serious story at this point in the special.

I can’t forget to mention that Hancock gets into a battle with Nightin, a prideful and arrogant woman who is part of World’s crew. These two women have an interesting fight, and it becomes especially amusing when Nightin keeps trying to avoid falling prey to Hancock’s Devil Fruit power. We’d seen how much it had affected men prior to this special, but it was interesting to see a woman potentially falling for these charms as well. At least it was nice to see that women aren’t necessarily immune to this power.

Overall, I appreciated the fact that this special tried to fill in some of missing story from the two year timeskip in the main One Piece story. And to be honest, it made sense to focus the story on Luffy, instead of trying to cover what Luffy was doing as well as the other Straw Hats. The anime series gives the viewer some insight into what happened with the other Straw Hats, but we really didn’t get to see much of Luffy’s training. We saw enough to establish the idea he was training with Silvers, but that was about it. And of the Straw Hats, Luffy is not only the main character and the leader, he’s also the one who went through a lot emotionally in the wake of the Battle at Marineford. It made the most sense to have a story that was focused on him.

The animation is a little better quality than what is normally seen in the television anime, but it’s not quite as good as the animation that appears in the feature films.

I would highly recommend the One Piece: 3D2Y special to fans of One Piece, so they can see a story that helps to fill in a piece of the two year timeskip that takes place in the series. The special doesn’t feel like it was something that was thrown together just to have something out there. While this story may not be part of the canon storyline for the manga, I feel it was a necessary work to help flesh out what was otherwise unseen events in the One Piece timeline.

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