Two giants have forgotten the cause of their duel, but not what an honorable fight means.
Little Garden appears prehistoric because isolation has allowed an older ecosystem to persist. For the Straw Hats, dinosaurs are only the first surprise. The giants Dorry and Brogy have spent a century dueling whenever the volcano signals another round. Their original dispute matters less to them than the integrity of the contest, a value Usopp recognizes as the courage he wants for himself.
Baroque Works exploits that integrity. Mr. 3 prefers traps and technical advantage to an open fight, while Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine return to complete their failed assignment. The contrast is not between intelligence and strength: the Straw Hats also need ingenuity. It is between winning a contest and stripping the people inside it of the chance to choose how they fight.
Story
Two giants and a jungle full of dinosaurs Ch. 115–117
Little Garden turns out to be a jungle roamed by dinosaurs, with a volcano rumbling at the island’s heart. Luffy and Vivi ride Karoo inland and are saved from a tyrannosaur by Dorry, a giant with a viking’s beard, who invites them home for roasted dinosaur. Across the island, Nami and Usopp flee a beast of their own and end up guests of Brogy, a giant with a braided red beard, who laughs like an avalanche.
Each giant tells the same story. A hundred years ago they argued over a hunted sea king and settled it with a duel. Neither remembers who won the first round or what the quarrel was, only that the contest is not finished. Every time the volcano erupts they meet in the middle of the island and fight again. Usopp is speechless: this is the warrior’s pride he has been pretending to have since childhood.
Elbaf’s honor and a Log Pose that takes a year Ch. 116–118
The volcano fires and the giants walk to the field. Usopp and Vivi watch from opposite sides as the two old friends swing sword against axe with a joy nothing else in their lives seems to provide; the ground shakes and the dinosaurs flee. The round ends in another draw, and the giants sit in their separate camps to eat and talk about the homeland, Elbaf, where a warrior’s duel is a form of prayer.
Then Nami reads the fine print: this island’s Log Pose takes a year to set. Sanji and Zoro are still out competing to hunt the largest animal. Nami finds a candle burning where no one should be and feels a chill, because someone else is here. Mr. 3, a sculptor of wax with a candle-shaped haircut, has arrived with Miss Goldenweek to collect a fortune in bounties, and Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine have followed for revenge.
A weapon hidden in a drink Ch. 119–121
Dorry drinks the ale Luffy gave him from the Merry’s stores, unaware that Mr. 3 has laced it with explosives. He goes to the duel anyway when the volcano calls, and midway through the round his stomach bursts from within. Brogy’s axe lands on a friend who cannot dodge. The duel has been decided for the first time in a century, by cheating from outside, and the winner weeps over the man he struck.
Dorry has already knocked Luffy down and pinned him under a rock rather than let a small human fight a duel meant for giants. So the crew’s captain watches, helpless, as Mr. 3 steps out of the jungle and encases the grieving Brogy in wax. The agent explains his plan with the pride of an artist: he will turn the giants and the pirates into candle statues and collect the bounties on their frozen bodies.
The wax begins to harden Ch. 121–124
Mr. 3 springs his trap. Zoro, Nami and Vivi are caught on a wax pedestal beneath a spinning candle that rains hardening wax down on them, while a wax sword pins Brogy to the earth. The agent poses them like figures on a cake. Zoro, disgusted, begins cutting his own legs so that at least his final pose will not embarrass him, and Nami screams him back to sense.
Usopp and Karoo escape into the jungle with Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine hunting them. Luffy frees himself and charges the candle, but Miss Goldenweek’s paints stop him in his tracks: a symbol on his back makes him lie down, another makes him laugh, another makes him accept a cup of tea. While he sits in the grass drinking, the wax climbs past his friends’ knees.
Fire against wax, and a borrowed voice Ch. 124–127
Usopp understands the weakness of a candle. He fires a flaming shell at the pedestal while Karoo drags a rope soaked in oil around its base, and the wax turns to liquid light. Zoro, Nami and Vivi break free with time to spare. Luffy, his back scrubbed clean of paint, chases Mr. 3 into his own Candle Champion armor, punches through it, and knocks the agent flat.
Sanji, lost in the jungle, finds a wax house and a snail phone that rings. The voice on the other end belongs to Mr. 0. Sanji answers in Mr. 3’s manner, reports that the Straw Hats and the princess are dead, and takes note of an Eternal Pose for Alabasta that the Unluckies have delivered. He leaves the otter and the vulture in a heap and rejoins the crew with their next route in his pocket.
A giant goldfish and a gift of pride Ch. 128–129
Dorry and Brogy, wounded and unable to lift their weapons properly, insist on seeing the Merry off. They warn of the Island Eater, a goldfish the size of a mountain that waits at the coast and swallows ships whole. When it rises, the crew sails straight into its mouth. Behind them the two giants raise a broken sword and a cracked axe and cut the beast in half with a single combined blow.
The Merry sails through the gap on a river of fish. Usopp shouts across the water that he will come to Elbaf one day, and the giants roar their approval. Their weapons shatter in their hands from the effort; they do not tell the pirates. Nami sits down on the deck, flushed and shaking, and by the time anyone notices she is burning with fever.