Monkey D. Luffy

Who is Monkey D. Luffy?

Luffy grew up in Foosha Village in the East Blue, raised mostly by the mountain bandit Curly Dadan after his grandfather Garp dropped him off there. As a child he idolised the red-haired pirate Shanks, ate a Devil Fruit Shanks's crew was carrying, and was saved from a sea monster by Shanks at the cost of Shanks's left arm. Shanks left him his straw hat with a promise: give it back once you've become a great pirate.

Ten years later, at 17, Luffy sets out alone in a rowing boat. The rest of the series is him gathering a crew, entering the Grand Line, and running into every power in the world, from Warlords and Emperors to the World Government itself.

• Captain of the Straw Hats, the ten-person crew of found family that sails the Thousand Sunny.
• Son of Monkey D. Dragon, grandson of Monkey D. Garp, sworn brother of Portgas D. Ace and Sabo.
• One of the Four Emperors after the Wano arc.
• The user of a Devil Fruit the World Government spent centuries trying to hide.

Personality

Luffy is simple in the ways that don't matter and very deliberate in the ways that do. He eats enormous amounts of meat, falls asleep anywhere, picks his nose in front of royalty and has no interest in lying. He can't swim, which for a pirate with a Devil Fruit is less a joke than a constant risk.

What he does have is a clear moral compass and almost no patience for people who use power to make others miserable. He doesn't think of himself as a hero, and says so: heroes share their food, and he'd rather eat it. But he keeps freeing islands because he can't stand watching a friend cry. When Nami finally asks for help at Arlong Park, he puts his hat on her head and walks off to fight without asking a single question.

He's also a better captain than he looks. He rarely gives orders, but when he does, the crew follows them. He trusts each member to win their own fight, refuses to let anyone else carry his, and decides crew matters with very little discussion, from going to war with the World Government for Robin to turning down an apology from Usopp until Usopp means it.

Luffy's bounty history

A bounty in One Piece measures how dangerous the World Government thinks you are, not how strong you are, which is why Luffy's jumps after every arc that embarrasses them.

Abilities and powers

Luffy fights with three things: a rubber body, Haki, and a willingness to take punishment that would kill anyone else. Almost all his attacks are named "Gum-Gum" something, starting with the Gum-Gum Pistol, a stretched punch.

The Devil Fruit

For most of the series it's the Gum-Gum Fruit, a Paramecia that turns his body to rubber. That makes him immune to blunt force and electricity, which is why Enel, the god of Skypiea, can't touch him. He can stretch his limbs over long distances, inflate himself to bounce cannonballs back and use his body like a slingshot.

In Wano, the story reveals its real name: the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika, a Mythical Zoan tied to a legendary "Sun God" who brought joy and freedom to people in bondage. The World Government had renamed it to hide what it was and spent centuries trying to recover it. Shanks's crew was transporting it when young Luffy ate it.

Haki

Haki is a kind of willpower anyone can train. Luffy uses all three types:

• Conqueror's Haki lets him overwhelm weaker wills, knocking out crowds without touching them. It's rare and marks someone as a potential king. In Wano he learns to coat his attacks with it, a skill only the very strongest have.
• Armament Haki hardens his body, turns his arms black and lets him strike Logia users. He learns advanced forms of it in Wano that hit from inside an opponent.
• Observation Haki senses people and attacks. After his fight with Katakuri he can see a little way into the future.

Luffy's Gears

The Gears are Luffy's own inventions, ways of pushing his rubber body beyond what a normal person could survive. He usually invents one under pressure, after losing to an opponent he can't otherwise beat.

Gear 5 is a strange, deliberate tonal choice: Luffy's strongest form is the silliest one, with bulging eyes and drumbeats, because the fruit's power is defined by how freely he can imagine. Fans debate where it puts him among the top fighters; our power scaling guide covers the arguments.

Luffy's story, saga by saga

East Blue

Luffy recruits Zoro at a Marine base, then Nami, Usopp and Sanji, beating Buggy, Captain Kuro, Don Krieg and finally Arlong along the way. Each island follows the pattern the whole series keeps: someone is trapped, Luffy notices, and the person trapping them gets punched. At Loguetown, the town where Gol D. Roger was executed, a hooded stranger saves him from the Marines. The series later reveals it was his father, Dragon.

Alabasta

The crew enters the Grand Line, picks up Chopper and sails Princess Vivi home to a country being torn apart by Crocodile, a Warlord secretly behind the civil war. Luffy loses to Crocodile twice before beating him on the third try with water and then his own blood. Vivi stays behind to rule, and Nico Robin, who had been Crocodile's partner, asks to join.

Skypiea, Water 7 and Enies Lobby

On a sky island, Luffy's rubber body makes him the one person immune to Enel's lightning. Back on the sea, the Going Merry is dying, Usopp fights Luffy over it and leaves, and Robin is taken by the government agency CP9. The crew storms Enies Lobby, the judicial island, after Luffy has Usopp shoot the World Government flag. He debuts Gears 2 and 3 to defeat Rob Lucci. Franky joins as shipwright and builds them the Thousand Sunny.

Thriller Bark to Marineford

Brook joins after the crew defeats the Warlord Gecko Moria. At the Sabaody Archipelago, Luffy punches a Celestial Dragon, and the crew is scattered across the world. When he learns Ace is to be executed, Luffy breaks into the underwater prison Impel Down and then fights his way into the war at Marineford. Ace dies there protecting him from Admiral Akainu. It's the worst moment of Luffy's life. Jinbe and the Amazon Lily empress Boa Hancock help him through it, and Rayleigh, Roger's old first mate, trains him in Haki for two years.

The New World

After the timeskip the crew reunites and heads into the New World. Luffy forms an alliance with Trafalgar Law and brings down Doflamingo in Dressrosa, where he learns Sabo is alive. On Whole Cake Island he rescues Sanji from an arranged marriage into Big Mom's family and wins a long, respectful duel with Katakuri.

Wano

Wano is the arc everything had been building to. Luffy loses badly to Kaido, is thrown in prison, trains his Haki and returns to lead the raid on Onigashima with the samurai of Wano and his allies. In the last fight his fruit awakens into Gear 5, and he defeats Kaido and frees the country. The world names him an Emperor.

Egghead and after

The next arcs push the story toward its endgame, with Luffy facing the highest levels of the World Government, more about Joy Boy and the Void Century, and the long-expected question of what the One Piece actually is. Because the manga is still running, we're leaving the details out. The main One Piece guide covers the major players.

Relationships

Luffy also has close allies like Trafalgar Law, who insists they're only temporary partners, and a long list of people who owe him their freedom, from Vivi and Boa Hancock to the Grand Fleet of pirates who pledged themselves to him after Dressrosa.

Trivia

• The scars. The scar under his left eye is self-inflicted: as a child he stabbed himself to prove to Shanks he was tough. The X-shaped scar on his chest comes from Akainu at Marineford.
• Children's Day. His May 5 birthday falls on Japan's Children's Day, a fitting date for the most childlike captain on the sea.
• The hat. The straw hat originally belonged to Gol D. Roger, who passed it to Shanks, who passed it to Luffy.
• Shared voice. Mayumi Tanaka, his Japanese voice, also voices Krillin in Dragon Ball. Fans often compare Luffy with Goku, another cheerful, food-obsessed fighter; Oda has been open about how much Akira Toriyama's work influenced him.
• The "D." The initial in his name, the "Will of D.", links him to Roger, Ace, Garp, Dragon and Blackbeard. Its meaning is one of the series' longest-running mysteries.
• Shonen siblings. He's often grouped with Naruto Uzumaki as one of the two defining Jump heroes of the 2000s.

Why Luffy matters to the story

Luffy is a protagonist who barely changes as a person. What changes is how much the world has to deal with him. He starts as a boy with a dream nobody takes seriously and becomes someone the World Government fears more than any army, without ever becoming more polite, more strategic or more interested in ruling anything.

That's the point. One Piece is a story about freedom, and Luffy is its clearest expression. He'd rather lose everything than live under someone else's rules, and he can't watch anyone else do it either. The crew's growth, the islands' liberations and the slow unpicking of 800 years of hidden history all come back to a kid who wanted to be the freest person on the sea.