Spoilers

“The Girl With the Sawfish Tattoo”

The penultimate episode of Netflix’s Anime adaptation takes a look at the tragic history of Nami and we discover the reason why she is working with Arlong.

The scene where a young Nami and her sister Nojiko is protected by their ‘mother’ from Arlong, who was there to collect a fee. The mother did not have enough for both girls and herself, so she told Arlong to accept the money for her daughters. Arlong shot her in front of the girls, which is a horrendous moment.

You would think that this would lead to Nami to get revenge, but instead she went to Arlong and offered to work for him, being a great map-drawer. She asked to join on the condition that she could buy back her village. It was a huge amount of money, but he agreed.

Nami in current day had the money, but Arlong double-crossed her, taking the money for himself and still going to destroy the village. This led to Nami finally asking Luffy for help in one of the best scenes of the series so far.

There were also some good scenes in this episode with Garp and Zeff, Kobe and Helmeppo and Luffy and Zoro. Luffy definitely took a different tone this episode as he was much more serious despite never giving up on Nami. It would be easy to say that she betrayed them and just sail off, but Luffy refused to do so, dedicating himself to helping her, even if she did not want it. When he places that straw hat on Nami’s head after she finally, tear-filled, asjed for his help was just tremendous.

I want to wait for the finale for Talk Like a Pirate Day on Tuesday, but that is a long way away. I hope I can wait that long. Honestly, I wanted to continue to the final episode right away. This has been one of my favorite series of the year so far.