Dr. Kureha

Despite a deeply lined face that betrays an age past a century, Kureha dresses as though she were a fraction of her years. Her wardrobe runs to bared midriffs, a navel ring, and low-slung purple trousers paired with a purple jacket, finished with bracelets and rings on her left hand. Small sunglasses ride either over her eyes or pushed up onto her forehead, even when she is already wearing reading glasses. Across the various points of the story her outfits shift in pattern and color, from sakura-printed shirts during the Drum Island events to flame-trimmed jackets after the time skip, but her general youthful styling never changes. After two decades she looks no older than before, and at the Levely her shirt openly nods to Chopper's bounty.

The witch label sticks to Kureha for several reasons, chief among them her brutal bedside manner. She has been known to jab at the very spot a patient is hurting, then have Chopper knock them out in place of anesthetic, and she will not release anyone from her care until they have either fully healed or died. Her reclusiveness, her habit of demanding whatever she likes as payment, and above all her century-plus age round out the reputation. She bristles at any hint of being called old and answers such remarks with a kick or a punch across the room, often pivoting instead to offer the secret of her youth. A bottle of plum sake is rarely far from her hand. Beneath the cold front lies real tenderness: she treats Chopper as a son, grieved deeply when Hiriluk died, and though she chased Chopper off with thrown knives, she wept once he sailed away. Sharp-minded as well, she was the first in the story to speak of the Will of D. and to correctly name the Pirate King as Gol D. Roger.

Counted among the finest physicians alive, Kureha commands medical knowledge that outstrips even the advanced doctors of the Drum Kingdom. She synthesized an antibiotic for the supposedly extinct Kestia tick that infected Nami, and ranks among the few permitted to handle the restricted drug NHC10. After founding a medical academy she trained roughly eighty pupils, growing the Isshi-20 into a hundred-strong body under her command, and she can read a fever simply by tapping a forehead. Her physical gifts match her longevity: she shatters stone walls, hauls and hurls heavy weapons with ease, and shrugs off Drum Island's lethal cold in thin clothing. She floored both Luffy and Sanji when they called her old. Her signature technique, Doctor Stop, sees her physically pin or stomp a patient to prevent them from worsening an injury, a method that looks savage but spares them far graver harm.