Straw Hat Pirates

The Straw Hat Pirates, also known as the Mugiwara Pirates, the Straw Hat Crew, or simply the Straw Hats, are an infamous and powerful rising pirate crew that originated from the East Blue, but have various members from different areas. They are the main focus and protagonists of the anime and manga One Piece, and are led by the main protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy. The "Straw Hats" are named after Luffy's signature hat that was given to him by Red-Haired Shanks, and are first referred to as the Straw Hat Pirates by Smoker in Alabasta. The crew sailed on the Going Merry, their first official Straw Hat ship, up until the Water 7 Arc. During the Post-Enies Lobby Arc, Franky and Iceburg built them a new ship which was named the Thousand Sunny by Iceberg even though the members fought over different names. The Straw Hats currently consist of ten members whose combined bounties equal over Beli3,123,000,100.

Following the events on the Sabaody Archipelago, all nine members were separated from one another. For two years, they trained in relatively isolated locations, becoming stronger for the sake of helping each other. They then reunited and have since become an active and massive force in the New World, adding the former Shichibukai Jinbe to their crew. They have even managed to take one of Yonko Big Mom's living weapons, Zeus, into their crew, as Nami's willing servant and the crew's new weapon.

Crew Members
As a result of Luffy's choice in who joins the crew, the Straw Hats are notable for being one of the most varied, if not bizarre, pirate crews in the One Piece world.

Their ranks have members vastly different from one another. These include a doctor who is a shape-shifting reindeer that can be mistaken for something else depending on his form, such as a gorilla when full human or a tanuki when in his usual mid-form; a cyborg for a shipwright who has very eccentric behavior and wears almost nothing except shirts and swim briefs; and a lively, undead, perverted skeletal musician. If their former lives and activities are considered, it only adds to the crew's collective strangeness: the captain who has a family consisting of infamous and dangerous people; their combatant was a former bounty hunter; their cook is a fugitive prince from a family of royal assassins; their sniper is a compulsive liar whose father is a member of a Yonko's crew; and their navigator is a burglar who specialized in stealing from pirates. Their archaeologist also worked for a criminal organization formerly run by a Shichibukai and she is also a skilled assassin and the sole survivor of Ohara. The crew's helmsman is a Fish-Man who was not only a former Shichibukai and captain of the Sun Pirates, but also a former prisoner of the Great Prison, which is where he met Luffy. The crew has even captured a living weaponand Homie; formerly under the control of one of the Yonko, and have it willingly become a servant for the crew.

The Straw Hats have four Devil Fruit users: Luffy, Chopper, Robin, and Brook. The majority of them are also fairly young, with three members still being teenagers and four members being thirty or older, although two of the four oldest members are just as childish as the others. Unlike most crews, they consider their ships to be crew members.

During the Dressrosa Arc, the crew temporarily split in half, with one group staying to finish business on Dressrosa and the other heading on to Zou in order to protect Caesar Clown and Kozuki Momonosuke. The group heading to Zou (Sanji, Nami, Chopper, and Brook) was referred to as the Curly Hat Crew (Guruwara no Ichimi), named after Sanji, the de facto leader of the group ("Twirly Hat Pirates" in the Funimation Sub). This same group forms the core of the Sanji Retrieval Team (Sanji Dakkan Chīmu) during the Whole Cake Island Arc, but with some personnel changes: Luffy has resumed leadership, Sanji is missing at Whole Cake Island, and the minks Pedro and Carrot are accompanying them in their quest to "retrieve Sanji".

Nefertari Vivi is the crown princess of Alabasta, who along with her pet duck Carue ended up traveling with the Straw Hat Pirates for most of the Alabasta Saga. She was asked to become a member of the crew by the other Straw Hats after spending a lot of time with them, but ultimately, she decided to remain in Alabasta in order to fulfill her royal duties.

List of Members

 * Monkey D. Luffy
 * Zoro Roronoa
 * Nami
 * Usopp
 * Vinsmoke Sanji
 * Chopper Tony Tony
 * Robin Nico
 * Franky
 * Brook
 * Jinbe

Ships

 * Going Merry
 * Thousand Sunny

Allies
At the end of the Dressrosa Arc, the crew becomes the leader of an alliance called the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, which involves seven groups who sided with Luffy in the conflict between himself and Doflamingo, becoming subordinate to the Straw Hats, while maintaining their status as individual crews with their own free will.
 * Heart Pirates
 * Kozuki Family
 * Mink Tribe
 * Fire Tank Pirates
 * Zeus

List of of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet Representatives

 * Cavendish
 * Bartolomeo
 * Sai
 * Ideo
 * Leo
 * Hajrudin
 * Orlumbus

Crews

 * Beautiful Pirates
 * Barto Club
 * Happo Navy
 * Ideo Pirates
 * Tontatta Pirates
 * New Giant Warrior Pirates
 * Yonta Maria Grand Fleet

Allies
Cavendish, Bartolomeo, Sai, Ideo, Leo, Hajrudin and Orlumbus asked to become Luffy's subordinates by offering him a cup of sake. Luffy refused but said they would still be bonded by their fight against Doflamingo and they would help each other out at any time. However, the captains decided to drink the sake anyway, pledging to come to Luffy's aid whenever he needed them, while Luffy was not obligated to do the same. The Straw Hat Grand Fleet, consisting of 5640 people, was then formed, and a party ensued as their fleet departed from Dressrosa.
 * Riku Family
 * Elizabello II

Protected Territories
While the Straw Hat Pirates have not shown any interests in taking control of territories like the other big name crews, they have managed to become friends and allies with the leaders of several island nations. Aside from this, Bartolomeo and his Barto Club (of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet) have been visiting and helping islands under the protection of the Yonko (specifically Shanks) while burning down the flags of their protectors in an attempt to sell them Straw Hat merchandise and spread the word of the Straw Hat Pirates.
 * Fish-Man Island's ruling royal family has shown interest in wanting to declare their island a territory of the Straw Hat Pirates and after news of their fight against Big Mom was made public, they decided to declare that their island was under the protection of the Straw Hat Pirates.

Crew Strength
Despite having a small number of members, the Straw Hats are an extremely powerful crew with amazing potential, as stated by Kuzan when he first met them, eventually growing to the point of being capable of challenging Yonko-class crews like the Big Mom Pirates. Their captain has continuously defeated people who are renowned for their incredible strength such as Crocodile, Gekko Moriah and Donquixote Doflamingo of the Shichibukai, the highly feared tyrant Enel from Skypiea, the infamous Rob Lucci of the CP9, and two of the Big Mom Pirates' mighty Sweet Commanders Charlotte Cracker and Charlotte Katakuri. The crew itself has done things which most would think impossible and completely insane like defeating an entire organization (such as Baroque Works, CP9 and the Donquixote Pirates) punching a World Noble, breaking in and out of the judicial island, Enies Lobby, and crashing the tea party of a Yonko as well as escaping her territory. In fact, after the incident that occurred at Enies Lobby, the World Government has labeled them as a very dangerous crew since their actions endangered the balance of the Three Great Powers.

All of them have at least one talent at which they are virtually perfect at and each member is, more or less, a formidable if not downright fearsome fighter in their own right. While all of them have amazing strength in one way or another, four of them have astonishingly inhuman strength: the captain, the combatant, and the chef (dubbed by some members of the crew as the "Monster Trio") as well as the helmsman, who is a Fish-Man, a race that has been stated to be physically stronger than humans as well as a former member of the Shichibukai.

So far, five of the ten current members are shown to have awakened their Haki. Luffy is shown to use all three types; Zoro and Sanji have wielded two types; whilst Usopp has recently manifested just one type (Usopp's Kenbunshoku Haki shown in Dressrosa when he sniped Sugar), and Jinbe's skill in using Busoshoku Haki is shown during his fight against the Big Mom Pirates.

Each member, in the beginning, has some fairly high fighting abilities, but as they progress, each member has had to become stronger due to each opponent they encounter either being significantly stronger than the last or having required them to develop new skills or techniques to combat new opponents.

Two of the Straw Hats greatest attributes are their charisma and unpredictability. With their extremely friendly personalities, they manage to make all the right friends in all the right places, which eventually accomplish their goals (though it was never their original intention). These friends and allies have proven to be useful depending on the location or objective, and thus the Straw Hats seem to have no regrets fighting for their sakes given the circumstances, and vice versa. Due to this, and the Straw Hats reputation and impressive bounties, there are many laymen who believe the crew is made up of hundreds, if not thousands of members. They also tend to act upon their emotions, throwing normal logic out of order. By using the freedom granted by their status as pirates, they tend to act erratically, either helping people or picking a fight, simply because it is something they wish to do. Both these attributes have been shown to destroy the carefully laid plans of criminal masterminds with large influential organizations, which took them years to cultivate, like those of the three former Shichibukai (Crocodile, Gekko Moriah, and Donquixote Doflamingo), the former 'God' of Skypiea, Enel, as well as the Yonko (Big Mom and Kaido).

Overall, their most unique strength is the fact that the Straw Hat crew, on many occasions, are extremely lucky, being able to achieve many things that would be considered impossible feats. This includes various wild escapes from Marine captures and ambushes; confronting, defeating, and escaping Shichibukai and World Governmentled organizations with no casualties; managing to reach Skypiea via the Knock Up Stream without losing anybody while simultaneously escaping the Blackbeard Pirates, and even escaping Big Mom's tea party due to a bomb going off. In fact, some of these lucky accomplishments are considered miraculous in hindsight.

While each member can hold their own by themselves, what makes the Straw Hats truly strong is their teamwork, which has become more important as the series has progressed. When one of them is incapable of doing a task, another can help out in their place instead. This helps the crew very much in facing odds that may be too much for them if they work separately.

When at sea, the Straw Hats tend to be relaxed, playing with each other, training, reading or whatever else they may do to occupy themselves. They can maintain this attitude even in the unstable waters of Paradise, New World or even in their descent down to (and ascent from) Fish-Man Island. However, whenever a crisis pops up, like storms, tidal waves, large sea life or falling ships, the crew instantly snap out of their relaxed state and swing into action. They all seem to know their place and will do what they should in the circumstances. Most of the time though, they tend to sail at a casual pace, without rushing.

After the two-year time skip, even though they have been dormant for some time, the Straw Hats are talked amongst pirates on a legendary level. Even Sentomaru casually comments that pirates are not like what they used to be. He calls the impostors of the Straw Hats a wasteful trash when Demaro Black boasts of his lineage in front of him, prompting Sentomaru to take him down with a single blow of his axe, and then saying that the real Monkey D. Luffy would never have done so.

The crew has gained legendary status since they first set sail, on par with all the other major crews of the world, even Yonko crews like the Blackbeard Pirates and Big Mom Pirates. They are currently the only known pirate crew to openly wage war against the World Government and have practically gotten away with it. It still stands that they are the only pirate crew to have escaped from every branch of law enforcement that the government could throw at them; the Shichibukai, Cipher Pol, Impel Down, and Marineford have all failed in their attempts to hold down the crew (with the captain penetrating and escaping from the latter twice by himself). Perhaps as a testament to their strength, they are the only known crew where every single member has a bounty on their head.

When news of them resurfaced, the entire Marine organization was thrown into a frenzy to stamp out their revival whilst the rest of the pirates cheered on. It is possible that their fame had led many to join the ranks of piracy, for when the fake Straw Hats started recruiting pirates, many flocked to join up, and were also greatly shocked when the "Monster Trio" gave a show of a small fraction of their power.

By the end of their two-year-long training, it could be presumed that the Straw Hats have grown exponentially in individual power, as some of them took their self-imposed training under the tutelage of prominent figures of the sea like Silvers Rayleigh, Dracule Mihawk, Emporio Ivankov, and Monkey D. Dragon. Each member of the Monster Trio (Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji) have shown to be able to defeat a Pacifista in a single attack, whereas it took the combined efforts of the entire crew to barely beat one before. Luffy easily destroyed a Pacifista with a single Haki-embedded Jet Pistol[37] as well as Zoro and Sanji, the latter using his Diable Jambe, both dealt crippling blows to a Pacifista with raw strength. Zoro and Sanji each used attacks that likely would have been sufficient to destroy the Pacifista on their own had they not been trying to outdo each other.

Another example of the Monster Trio's strength is that they were able to defeat a sea monster such as the Kraken (a creature several times larger than the Thousand Sunny itself) without much of an effort underwater, where all their strength is greatly decreased. Afterward, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Brook defeat all the troops stationed in the Ryugu Palace with ease. The crew also easily took out the 100,000 lower members of the New Fish-Man Pirateswhich consisted of about 70,000 Fish-Men and 30,000 humans with Luffy alone taking out about 50,000 people with a single burst of Haoshoku Haki. Even the weaker members, Nami and Usopp, became strong enough to take down the fighters of the Donquixote Pirates; (who are both Devil Fruit Users) Buffalo and Baby 5, all by themselves.

In addition to their strength, the Straw Hats have established unofficial, and temporary alliances with other pirates, non-pirates, and sometimes Marines and royalty when fighting against powerful enemies, but they gain a permanent friendship with their allies when they came to their aid and support them on several occasions whenever they cross paths. In the Punk Hazard Arc, the Straw Hat Pirates entered into an official alliance with Trafalgar Law and his Heart Pirates with the goal of defeating Kaido. During the Zou Arc, the Straw Hat Pirates and the Heart Pirates extended their alliance to join forces with the Mink Tribe and the Kozuki Family of Wano Country in order to help bring down not only Kaido, but the Shogun of Wano as well, making the alliance even more powerful.

Following the battle with the Donquixote Pirates, the Straw Hats' allies who participated in the battle organized themselves into seven divisions and formed the Straw Hat Grand Fleet which numbered a total of 5640 members, giving the Straw Hats significantly larger amounts of manpower similar to the Whitebeard Pirates.

Reputation
Over the course of their journey, the Straw Hats' reputation continues to grow. This reputation can go to enemies and allies alike. In the eyes of their allies, the Straw Hats are regarded as saviors, heroes, or even the only crew that can overcome odds that were deemed impossible by others. Alabasta, Zou, Ryugu Kingdom, Sakura Kingdom, and Dressrosa regard the Straw Hats as saviors and heroes for their actions. Their reputation influences others such as Koby who dreams to become a Marine officer in hopes to challenge Luffy someday, Kureha takes the Isshi-100 under her guidance, and Neptune decides to continue his deceased wife's legacy by attending the Levely.

In the eyes of the World Government and Marines, the Straw Hats are labeled as notorious pirates. From their declaration of war and defeating CP-9 at Enies Lobby to their involvement in the chaos in Totto Land made the government considers the Straw Hats as a serious threat. Some enemies respect the Straw Hats such as Smokerdue to a common enemy they share, notably Caesar Clown. Admiral Fujitora originally planned to capture the Straw Hats at Dressrosa but later decided to let them go and even thanked them after what they did to defeat Donquixote Doflamingo.

In the eyes of other pirates, they labeled the Straw Hats as the craziest pirates of their lifetime. Capone Begestated that no pirates are as crazy as the Straw Hats after witnessing Zoro's attempt to strike down Saint Charlos. Eustass Kid and Trafalgar D. Water Law were amused to see Luffy and his crew assault the World Nobles at the human auction house. After the timeskip, the Straw Hats have become influential enough that Neptune believes using their flag will keep his island safe from pirate attacks.

Bounties
Though they are pirates in name, the Straw Hat Pirates do not engage in the stereotypical activities of pirates. They are all kindhearted for the most part and only fight in self-defense, or in vengeance for their friends. In fact, before the Enies Lobby Arc, when CP9 initiated the conflict by blackmailing Nico Robin and detaining her, the Straw Hats mostly fought only other pirates (with the exception of Luffy and Zoro, who took down the dreaded Axe Hand Morgan and several of his unwilling subordinates, Sanji, who beat up Fullbody and possibly some other unfortunate Marines prior to becoming an official Straw Hat, and Jinbe, who had numerous skirmishes during his time as a member of the Sun Pirates). It seems they were considered dangerous to the World Government and given bounties simply because they called themselves pirates.

They are considered villains by the World Government and the general public who aren't familiar with them. While this is a hassle for them, like most other pirates, the majority of the Straw Hats see their bounties as a form of achievement, a sign of how much fame and recognition their actions have produced. Nami notes that, as pirates, they are used to taking the blame and being portrayed as the villains. Their current bounties now total up to 3,161,000,100.