Straw Hat Pirates

The Straw Hat Pirates are a pirate crew that originated from the East Blue, but have various members from different areas. They are the main focus and protagonists of the One Piece series, 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 Thousand Sunny, which was constructed after the loss of the Going Merry, their first official ship. The Straw Hats currently consist of twelve members whose combined bounties equal 800,350,050 Beli.

Following the events on the Sabaody Archipelago, all ten 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, along with the addition of two new members they recruited after Punk Hazard, have since become an active and massive force in the New World.

Information

 * Captain: Monkey D. Luffy
 * Main Ship: Thousand Sunny
 * Total Bounty: 1,570,400,100 Beli

Jolly Roger
The crew's Jolly Roger is a cartoon-like depiction of a traditional skull and cross-bone with the skull wearing Luffy's trademark straw hat. In addition to being on their flag, the jolly roger has also been shown on the sails of the Going Merry and the Thousand Sunny.

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.

Crew Strength
Despite having a small number of members, the Straw Hats are a very powerful crew. Their captain has continuously defeated people who are renowned for their incredible strength such as Crocodile and Gecko Moriah of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the highly feared tyrant Eneru from Skypiea, the infamous Rob Lucci of the CP9, the vicious Hody Jones of the New Fishman Pirates, and most recently, the mighty Patrick Redfield (a pirate who lived since the era of Gold Roger). 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 New Fishman Pirates), punching a World Noble and breaking in and out of the judicial island, Enies Lobby. 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, the captain, the swordsman, the chef, and the guard dog, have such astonishingly inhuman strength that the rest of the crew have dubbed them the "Monster Quartet".

So far, six of the twelve current members are shown to have awakened their Haki. Luffy and Blizzard are shown to use all three types; Zoro, Sanji and Aika have wielded two types; whilst Nami learned Armament Haki during the timeskip.

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 accomplishes 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 two former Warlords (Crocodile and Gecko Moriah), as well as the former 'God' of Skypiea, Eneru.

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 Warlord and World Government led organizations with no casualties; managing to reach Skypiea via the Knock-Up Stream without losing anybody while simultaneously escaping the Blackbeard Pirates. 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) Fishman 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 the Blackbeard 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 Seven Warlords of the Sea, Cipher Pol, Impel Down, and Marineford have all failed in their attempts to hold down the crew (with the captain and guard dog 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 Quartet (Luffy, Zoro, Sanji and Blizzard) 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 as well as Blizzard, Zoro and Sanji, the latter using his Diable Jambe, the guard dog delivering a powerful blow with a Haki-imbuded Twister Fang before the swordsman and cook 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 Quartet'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. Afterwards 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 Fishman Pirates which consisted of about 70,000 fishmen and 30,000 humans with Luffy alone taking out about 50,000 people with a single burst of Conqueror's 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.

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 incident, 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, and Sanji, who beat up Fullbody and possibly some other unfortunate Marines prior to becoming an official Straw Hat) - 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 blame and being portrayed as the villains. Their current bounties total up to 800,350,050 Beli.

Relationships Amongst the Crew
Each member of the crew values their friendships very highly. Despite their usual comic annoyance with each other from time to time, they very much love being together as well as being a member of the crew. So much so, that they tend to forget their worries and burdens, as shown with Nami, Robin, Franky, Blizzard, Brook, Aika and Kumi.

One of the major themes of the series is how committed they are to each other, to the point where they are willing to give up what is important to them, such as their lives, and even their dreams, for one of their crew members. If one single member is hurt by an outside force (physically or emotionally), the other members will become enraged and take drastic action to avenge their friends. Previously, they have gone as far as to take on an entire organization, make enemies with the World Government, and even attack the World Nobles.

Dreams
Each member of the Straw Hats has a dream they want to achieve. These dreams are their reasons for joining Luffy's crew, and essentially the driving force behind their lives. Each crew member's dream was inspired by tragedies (often deaths) in their childhoods that involved at least one person they idolized and cared for deeply.

Some, like Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Chopper, Franky, Blizzard, Aika and Kumi are fulfilling their dreams by accumulating knowledge and/or achieving a certain task while sailing the Grand Line. Others, like Luffy, Sanji, Robin and Brook are searching for a person, place or thing that can only be found on the Grand Line.

Whatever the reason, each of the Straw Hat's dreams involve traveling the Grand Line, and each Straw Hat member refuses to die before achieving their dreams. However, their determination does not extend to sacrificing or abandoning their comrades for the fulfillment of their dreams.

Miscellaneous
Main Article: Straw Hat Pirates/Miscellaneous