Monkey D. Luffy

Luffy is a slim but muscular young man, his shaggy black hair topped by a faint widow's peak and his round dark eyes set in a face that recalls a younger Garp. The yellow straw hat with its red band is his trademark, handed to him in childhood by Red-Haired Shanks, who had earlier received it from Roger himself. Before the timeskip he wore a red vest with denim shorts and sandals, swapping the vest afterward for an open red cardigan cinched by a yellow sash. A scar held by two stitches sits under his left eye, a wound he gave himself to prove his grit, and a broad X-shaped mark from Akainu spreads across his chest. The Gomu Gomu no Mi made his body rubber, and he bends that gift through his Gear forms: blood and steam surge through him in Gear 2, his limbs swell to giant scale in Gear 3, his whole shape distorts beneath crimson-edged Haki in Gear 4, and his hair and clothes turn white as he steps into the awakened Gear 5.

For Luffy, the title of Pirate King simply means holding more freedom than anyone else, and that single belief steers everything he does. Notoriously heedless of danger, he has an uncanny knack for gathering friends and allies wherever his journey takes him, having personally drawn in every crewmate and earned the gratitude of whole nations, of rival pirates, of the Revolutionary Army, and of more than a few Marines.

A son of Dawn Island and a member of the Clan of D., Luffy descends from the revolutionary Dragon as his son and from the Marine hero Garp as his grandson. Garp and Curly Dadan steered much of his childhood, the years in which he exchanged sake cups with Ace and Sabo to become sworn brothers, while the pirate Shanks remained his greatest inspiration. Shanks, without meaning to, allowed him to swallow the Gomu Gomu no Mi, surrendered an arm to spare his life, and left him the straw hat as a vow that they would reunite once Luffy had grown into a great pirate. Out on the water, he set himself against power after power, from East Blue captains onward to the Marine forces, then the Seven Warlords, Cipher Pol, the World Nobles, the Five Elders, and at last the Emperors who command the New World. He played a part in bringing down Enies Lobby, broke free of Impel Down, tilted the Marineford war, and in head-on battle bested a trio of Warlords along with one of the Emperors. With Kaidou beaten at Onigashima, he joined the ranks of the Four Emperors at a bounty of three billion Berries, and the awakening of his fruit marked him as the returned Joy Boy and the living form of the Sun God, Nika.