Warship Island Arc

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Warship Island Arc
Filler Arc Statistics
Anime Episodes:	54-61, 8 episodes
Year(s) Released:	2001
Filler Arc Chronology
← Previous	Loguetown Arc
Next →	Reverse Mountain Arc

The Warship Island Arc (also known as the Apis Arc) is a story arc in the One Piece anime. It is the first arc not to be based on any content from the manga by Eiichiro Oda, making it the first filler arc. It was left out of the 4Kids dub for an unspecified reason.

The arc takes place at the end of the East Blue Saga, just after the Straw Hat Pirates leave Loguetown (with Luffy holding his 30,000,000 bounty) and before they enter the Grand Line.

Summary

A fleet of Marine ships from Branch 8 goes through a rainstorm and a mysterious girl, Apis, plans her escape from the crew members of the ship. She manages to slip past her guard only to be chased across the deck. As she traps herself on the mast of the ship, she accidentally opens the sail, causing the wind to tip over the ship. She manages to escape by jumping off the mast and onto a small wooden boat while chanting to herself for Ryuji to protect her.

The captain of the 8th Branch, Nelson Royal, a very husky man who cannot move without support, is angered by the news and summons forth his mercenary, Eric the Whirlwind, to go after the girl, who seems to have the key to the elixir of eternal youth.

The next morning, Luffy grows impatient of getting to the Grand Line with Nami reassuring him they will reach it within a few days. Usopp spots the raft Apis is on surrounded by seagulls. Usopp and Sanji mistake this for a school of fish and ask Luffy to catch them. They only find a very confused and shocked Apis, who Luffy accidentally knocks Zoro off the boat to get. Apis wakes up later in the afternoon shocked to hear she was taken in by pirates, causing her to panic in fear. Later that night, the crew reassures Apis that they are "good" pirates. They eventually find out that she has escaped from Marine Branch 8 and is running from Commodore Nelson. The Straw Hats agree to return her back to Warship Island, and they are soon attacked by Branch 8. After escaping from the Marines, the Straw Hats realize that they are in the Calm Belt, where they find large sea kings. They then narrowly escape the Sea Kings and the Calm Belt, before continuing on their course to Warship Island. After reaching Warship Island, they find out that Apis has a Devil Fruit ability that allows her to talk to animals, and she has used it to befriend a dying Sennenryu, a type of dragon species thought to be extinct. She wants to return this Sennenryu to his homeland, but they run into two problems:

• A Marine fleet is also after the dragon because it can be used to make a powerful and valuable medicine. Their commander, Commodore Nelson Royal, has hired the mercenary Eric (a Devil Fruit user with claws so sharp that he can cut the air) to help him get the Sennenryu, but Eric has his own agenda, and wishes to keep it for himself.
• They do not know where the Sennenryu's homeland is.

This arc chronicles the Straw Hats' efforts to return the Sennenryu to his home, make Apis happy, and stay out of Eric's way.

Continuity Notes

Being the anime's first, this filler arc is somewhat more ambitious in scope than most later ones, and interweaves its original elements with manga-canon events several times. Possibly related to this, it also raises an unusual number of conflicts with later-established canon.

• Nelson is introduced as Teitoku (提督^?), which does not exist with the Marine Ranks (and indeed is typically used to describe pirates such as Krieg) in canon.
• After establishing its main characters and premise, the arc briefly adapts the beginning of the Reverse Mountain Arc, where the Straw Hats accidentally sail into the Calm Belt, run afoul of Sea Kings, and are sneezed away by the largest one. This scene is slightly changed to have Apis (rather than Usopp) briefly falling overboard, and deliberately triggering the sneeze by plucking a nosehair from the Sea King.
• The presence of the Sennenryu contradicts the manga's later, canonical approach to dragons: Zoro doubts their existence in the Thriller Bark Arc, and during the Punk Hazard Arc both he and Luffy treat Vegapunk's dragon as unprecedented (even calling them "fictional" creatures).
• When Nelson's fleet tries to blockade the Going Merry with steel chains, Zoro easily cuts through them, contradicting later revelations in the Arabasta Arc that he could not cut steel prior to battling Mr. 1.
• The arc's final episode resumes adapting the Reverse Mountain Arc, with the Straw Hats sailing up Reverse Mountain. Here, a brief scene is added with Eric stowing away on the Merry and attempting one last revenge attack on the Straw Hats, only to be tripped overboard by Nami.

(Interestingly, this arc is also one of the few filler arcs to be referenced in later filler: the Ocean's Dream Arc's main antagonist Tatsu explicitly strives to become a Sennenryu.)

Translation and Dub Issues

4Kids Entertainment's dub of the anime skipped this arc entirely, ironically hewing closer to the manga's depiction of the Straw Hats sailing directly from Loguetown to the Grand Line. No official explanation was ever given, and nothing (other than their irrelevance to the main plot of the series) would seem to be just cause for dropping them from the show entirely. Since their content is much more "kid-friendly" than the rest of the series, many fans actually expected 4Kids to heavily promote the arc, but the exact opposite happened. The precise reason for their deletion from the run of the English-dubbed anime remains unknown. However, 4Kids had been known to omit particularly strong death scenes from anime that they dubbed which could upset younger viewers, and this arc contained the passing of Ryuji.

Another possible reason for the removal of this arc in the 4Kids adaption (including the removal of both the Reverse Mountain Arc and the Little Garden arc) was that many fans stated that Al Kahn's marketing decision was to get to the Drum Island arc faster and introduce Tony Tony Chopper much earlier in the 4Kids adaption as a marketing strategy to make money off of Chopper merchandise.

Trivia

Warship Island Arc Novel cover.

• Warship Island Arc is the very first filler arc in the series.
• In December of 2001, this arc received a novelization, Legend of the Sennenryu (千年竜伝説^?). As of 2025, it remains the only filler arc that has been adapted to prose (as most One Piece novelizations focus on the theatrical films).
• Interestingly, the fact that Luffy can hear animals' voices is now true in canon, as Luffy was revealed in Chapter 648 to be able to hear Sea Kings speaking.
• In 2019, the anime's first series director Konosuke Uda revealed that the dragon plot was originally considered for use in a theatrical film, among other filler stories.

Arc Navigation

Warship Island Arc
Anime Episodes
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