straw hat pirates

 Stopping at a bar to fill his stomach, Luffy encounters two eccentric figures: a swordsman who gets involved in a local brawl with a nobleman named Helmeppo, who introduces himself as the son of the local officer, Axe Hand Morgan —a claim that doesn’t seem to impress the man, who knocks him out with ease and is subsequently arrested. The second is a red-haired thief who takes advantage of the commotion to kidnap one of the sailors; it is her that Luffy follows all the way to the official Marine base, completely ruining the complex infiltration plan she had orchestrated.

 The thief introduces herself as Nami and sees in Luffy a new way to carry out her plan: by posing as a sailor and him as a detained pirate, she can move freely through the facility until she reaches Morgan Axe Hand’s office, where the map of the Grand Line is kept. Upon breaking into the place, they manage to locate the safe, which Luffy grabs and throws himself out the door with, before they are caught by Officer Morgan, who tries to break into his office after being locked out.

 They land in the courtyard, where the swordsman seen in the bar is now imprisoned, awaiting execution. Luffy frees him; he introduces himself as Roronoa Zoro, a pirate hunter, and says he went there to deliver the bodies of criminals like himself, and that he owes Luffy nothing for his generosity, but Luffy says he doesn’t mind.

 Marine officers surround them, while Morgan Axe Hand throws himself from the second floor to the ground. A fierce battle ensues, which only ends when Zoro takes Helmeppo hostage, threatening to execute him if his father doesn’t let them escape with the safe—which he does.

 The group reaches the coast safely; Zoro releases his hostage, but not before offering him a free haircut. Helmeppo then breaks free and threatens them with a pistol, but is knocked out by Koby, who attacks him from behind with a frying pan.

 Luffy thanks him and asks him to get on the boat, since they’re in a hurry, but Koby replies that he won’t be going with them. His dream is to become a sailor, to stop cruel people who abuse their power, as Alvida did to him, and he states that he’ll use Helmeppo as a stepping stone to his military career, taking him to the officer and claiming he found him unconscious in the bay. 

 Luffy and Koby say goodbye, and the pirate heads toward the horizon, along with his newly formed crew—though they don’t know it yet.

notable ADVENTURES

• As they leave the area patrolled by the Marines, the ship is hijacked by a larger vessel, Buggy’s Pirates, who are after the Grand Line map but can’t find it anywhere on board, so they take the pirates they find there with them. The crew discovers they have been surrounded by Buggy, the Star Clown, who resides on an isolated island where he has enslaved the population to serve as the audience for his circus ring, in a circus of horrors orchestrated by him where the fun never ends. The crew must survive sadistic torture games that amuse the circus owner, while he interrogates them in search of the Grand Line map. When Zoro and Nami manage to escape, they rescue Luffy, found on the brink of life and death in a seawater tank. Luffy then regurgitates the map, which he had hidden in his intestines, and the crew unites to fight Buggy. They discover that the clown is a Devil Fruit user who possesses the ability to detach each part of his body from its original place. He uses this to engage in multiple battles at once, but is stopped when the crew imprisons his limbs in crates, causing him to lose his head. The crew returns to sea with the map in hand—and a new enemy.

• The crew stops at Syrrup Village, where, because their boat was damaged by Buggy, they need a new vessel to continue their journey. At the town’s harbor, they are rescued from their leaky boat by Usopp, who introduces himself as a local pirate and claims to have many local contacts—particularly a wealthy local businesswoman in the nautical industry who can offer one of her boats to the crew. When they arrive at the mansion Usopp mentioned, they are not allowed in—until the owner of the place, the young Kaya, spots him and asks her staff to change their minds. At Kaya’s mansion, the crew enjoys a night of luxury and revelry, but they eventually discover part of the story unfolding there: despite being a childhood friend, Kaya explains to the group that Usopp is a great storyteller and warns them that he hasn’t actually lived through all the adventures he claims to have. Meanwhile, Usopp reveals that Kaya lives in isolation in that mansion, afflicted by a serious and mysterious illness, and is kept apart from the outside world by her staff of servants, organized by her butler Klahador. After spending some time in the house, the crew begins to suspect that not everything is as it seems, and they find themselves being hunted by the group of psychopathic killers working in the mansion. It is eventually revealed that all the staff belong to the long-lost Black Cat Pirates, and that Klahador is actually the cold and calculating Kuro, one of the most wanted pirates in the East Blue, who had been presumed dead for years. 

• The Marines arrive at Syrrup Island, now led by Vice Admiral Garp, who ordered Officer Morgan’s dismissal after he allowed the theft of the Grand Line map to occur. Upon being taken to Kaya’s mansion, they find the Black Cat Pirates detained and left there, with Kaya free and awaiting the officers’ visit. In the bay, Koby reunites with Luffy and his crew, now boarding a large ship with a giant goat serving as a lookout. He explains that the Going Merry was a gift from Kaya, as a thank-you for saving her from Kuro’s clutches; That luxurious ship was built in the past as a gift for Merry, a personal friend of her parents who, after their death, became Kaya’s primary father figure—before being murdered last night by Kuro. The ship had never left the harbor, but now it needed to be displayed throughout the East Blue, and beyond! Luffy invites Usopp to join his crew, but in a moment of sincerity—and fear—he reveals that all the stories he’s told may have been a bit exaggerated, and that he doesn’t have nearly as much experience at sea as his father, the warrior Yasopp. Luffy is shocked to discover that Usopp is the son of Yasopp, a legendary marksman from Shanks’ crew who was one of his childhood heroes, and so he insists that the young man join the crew, knowing that he has the potential to become a warrior as skilled as his father.

• The group finds refuge at the floating restaurant Baratie to restock before continuing their journey to the Grand Line, but their stay there is extended when Luffy ends up racking up an unpayable debt due to his endless orders, and is forced to join the kitchen as a cleaning assistant, 24/7, for a week. Enough time for Nami to contact her crew and plan their escape, and also enough for Vice Admiral Garb to track them down and send one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the world’s greatest swordsman, Mihawk, who, upon finding the crew, is challenged by Zoro to a fair duel so that he may claim the title of the world’s greatest swordsman after defeating him in battle. In the Baratie kitchen, Luffy approaches Sanji, the restaurant’s best chef who is forbidden from cooking because he goes overboard with his dishes, uses too many ingredients to achieve refined results, and offers free food to those who can’t pay. Luffy says he seems like a vigilante and that he should join his crew, but Sanji believes he cannot leave the place, claiming he owes an eternal debt to Chef Zeff.

• Zoro faces Mihawk in a life-or-death battle, but is easily defeated by the privateer, who fights with nothing more than a single dagger. Despite this, Mihawk spares him, giving him a chance to improve and face him again in the future—though he leaves Zoro hanging between life and death. Zoro is carried away and remains unconscious. Sanji uses his culinary skills to treat his wounds as effectively as possible, but the Baratie faces a major problem when Arlong and his fish-men arrive in search of a good meal. The self-proclaimed ruler of the East Blue is a colossal and terrifying man who rules through fear and believes himself to be a social avenger, claiming that by becoming such a harsh and unyielding dictator, he brings pride to his seafaring ancestors who were enslaved and exploited by the people of the surface. The truth is that he only went there to retrieve Nami, one of his personal agents, who had infiltrated the Straw Hats to safely bring the Grand Line map to him. Nami flees with the fish-men without looking back, and Luffy cannot allow that.

•  With his crew depleted and weakened, Luffy begs Sanji to join them and pursue his dream of cooking in All Blue, revolutionizing cuisine and defying Chef Zett’s laws. Reluctantly, he agrees, bidding farewell to his longtime enemy—and also to the father who gave him a home and a reason to live. The crew follows Nami to Conomi Island, where a simple village focused on subsistence farming is financially exploited by Arlong. As they try to understand the history of local oppression, they meet the farmer Nojiko, Nami’s foster sister, who hates her for abandoning her family and her people to gain a little power alongside Arlong. Nojiko states that the fish-man disgusts her, for proclaiming himself the guardian of morality and justice, yet shaming his ancestors by doing the very same things as the aggressors he so often cites. His system of oppression, which he has dubbed “equality,” is nothing more than a fantasy of power for fish-men—provided if they are male, never female, and provided if they are not more powerful than Arlong.

• In the early hours of the morning, Nojiko finds Nami digging up their mother’s grave and confronts her, but Nami insists that Nojiko doesn’t understand her true intentions, and pulls out a chest containing millions of berries that she had been hoarding; However, the two are found by the local Marine officer, whom Nami has known for a long time as one of the corrupt sailors blackmailed by Arlong. He threatens to execute the young women and takes the chest for himself, claiming that the money wasn’t officially registered with the Marine and must therefore be confiscated. Nami fights as if her life depended on it, but is beaten by the Marine agents and shielded by her sister. She then explains to Nojiko that Arlong promised her over a decade ago that she could have her village and her people back, safe and sound, if she bought the place for an exorbitant sum. She had just managed to raise that amount, but was betrayed by her boss, who took that fortune in a dirty and cruel way. Nami returns home and, completely hopeless, asks Luffy for help, who agrees without a second thought, since she is part of his crew.

•  A full-scale war breaks out in Arlong Park, as the Straw Hat Pirates invade Arlong’s territory to destroy everything he has built. While Zoro, Sanji, and Usopp battle the fish-men, Nojiko leads her people in a rebellion to destroy the place, and providing cover for Nami and Luffy to reach Arlong’s Map Room, where the cartographer spent much of her childhood chained, forced to chart complex sea routes for Arlong and the transport of his empire of drugs and hallucinogens across the entire East Blue—an empire he now wished to expand beyond the Grand Line. When the brute arrives on the scene, Luffy realizes that he may not be able to defeat him physically, but that he can make him lose his life’s work. Using his attacks to destroy the hall they are in and set in motion the ruin of Arlong’s entire empire, Luffy emerges victorious, while his enemy lies motionless in the rubble. As he could never forget the past, not even if it meant ruins.

• Upon returning to the village, the villagers celebrate the pirates’ intervention and honor them for their bravery, but the festivities are interrupted by the arrival of the Marines, led by Garp, whom Luffy recognizes as his grandfather. The family reunion ends in a humiliating battle, with Luffy easily beaten by his father figure’s martial arts skills, but when he is finally confronted, he sees in Luffy’s eyes the same desire and the same dream as a figure who haunted his past; thus, he understands on his own that his grandson will never give up on his dream. Garp retreats, allowing Luffy and his crew to escape, while dismantling the local Marine base due to its corrupt ties to one of the region’s most notorious criminals. Koby reunites with Luffy one last time and wishes him a safe journey.

• The crew, now complete, is heading toward the Grand Line—that is, unless Luffy decides to make a quick stop in Longuetown, the town known as the tourist spot where Gol D. Roger died; it goes without saying that he’ll want to stop by there.