Garp Entrusted Luffy And Ace To A Friend For Training

Status: confirmed · Technique: chekhov-explicit · dialogue-explicit

The payoff

Why this matters

Confirms Luffy and Ace shared a childhood under Garp’s arrangement — explaining their brotherhood (established @0159) at the structural level — and plants an unnamed guardian as a chekhov-explicit hook for the forward backstory of how/where the brothers were raised. Cross-link Garp, Luffy, Ace.