Most Overrated Crews In One Piece

There are various measures in One Piece by which one can appraise a pirate crew. The most obvious example of this is a bounty, the agreed-upon price for which the World Government will pay in exchange for custody of a criminal. Yet bounties are not an objective measure of strength, merely an appraisal of how dangerous certain pirates are, one which may not necessarily operate off correct information.

Other similar and related metrics, such as a crew’s general reputation, can similarly be fudged by way of faulty information. This means certain pirate crews are categorically overrated. These crews, in one way or another, fall short of their purported power.

Cross Guild

Weak Captain

• Captain: Buggy (Figurehead), Crocodile, and Dracule Mihawk (co-leaders)

The infamous Cross Guild is a marine-hunting organization, formed as an offshoot of Buggy’s Delivery, a government-sanctioned mercenary guild. It was absorbed into its current incarnation after Crocodile demanded Buggy pay him back the money he used to seed Buggy’s Delivery. Buggy attempted to pay off the debt by advertising the Cross Guild, but miscommunications led to him becoming the leader instead. The organization’s direct targeting of marines has caused Buggy to ascend to Yonko status, now being one of the top four pirates the government deems an existential threat, alongside Luffy, Shanks, and Blackbeard.

The only problem? Buggy himself is arguably the most overrated pirate in the series. Due to his past as a member of the Roger Pirates, which led to his friendship with the now-infamous Shanks, people think Buggy is a pirate of comparative strength and renown. During his alliance with the likes of Luffy and Crocodile, engineered for the sake of escaping Impel Down, this reputation caused many hardened criminals to join his crew, and even led to the government recruiting him as a Shichibukai after the Summit War.

That said, Buggy himself is weak, having been defeated by one of the earliest incarnations of the Straw Hat Pirates. His true nature is an open secret among his longtime and high-profile crewmates. He is notably bullied by the likes of Crocodile and Mihawk behind the scenes. That being said, his false reputation has spread well among both his followers and the government, who wrongly assess the pirate himself as a serious threat. Yet while Buggy’s own reputation is unearned, it may attract even more renowned pirates to his cause, in addition to the already threatening leadership of the Cross Guild.

Thriller Bark Pirates

Carried by a Devil Fruit

The Thriller Bark Pirates are a crew formed by Gecko Moria, a pirate captain who became disillusioned with the effort he put towards his goal of becoming pirate king, after losing his previous crew, the Gecko Pirates, to Kaido. As a result, his current crew is mostly built around zombies he has no sentimental attachment to. Robbing graves and shadows of the living, Moria can create zombies with his Devil Fruit, the Kage Kage no Mi. He also has the ability to swap himself with his shadow, and effectively kill most individuals by stealing their shadows and exposing them to sunlight, which vaporizes the shadowless.

However, the primary issue the crew has is that without the Kage Kage no Mi, most of the crew, as it is, cease to be. Dr. Hogback, one of the few living members, serves as a surgeon and has no real combat ability. Absalom, able to become invisible with his Suke Suke no Mi, was killed for his Devil Fruit power. Perona, the sole remaining combatant, is fairly competent, but also has most of her own abilities contingent on the Horo Horo no Mi, her own Devil Fruit of choice. Since his initial defeat, Moria has devolved into a weakling, whose daunting abilities are largely concentrated in his Devil Fruit powers rather than any personal ability he has.

Gecko Moria’s weak fundamentals caused him to be dismissed from the Shichibukai for incompetence. Since his dismissal, he has been held hostage by the Blackbeard Pirates after refusing to join the crew, but subsequently escaped. It is unclear if he plans any course correction for the weaknesses of his crew or, more importantly, himself.

Bonney Pirates

Unearned Infamy

The Bonney Pirates are a South Blue crew from Sorbet Kingdom. They were led by Jewelry Bonney, a young child, and the majority of their known crewmates were mere fishermen. That said, Bonney herself managed to earn the status of Supernova, a distinction for rookie pirates who earned 9-digit bounties, who were added to the Worst Generation, alongside Marshall D. Teach.

Bonney is both the youngest member, being only 12 years old at present, and the only female member. While she is formidable as a pirate, her reputation, especially in the earlier stages of her career, comes with a minor caveat. Bonney and her crew were noted for targeting both children and the elderly. While a bounty itself is not exclusively centered around the ruthlessness of a pirate, it does appear to inform it to a certain extent. The most notable example of this, in the context of the Worst Generation, comes from the Kid Pirates. Upon their collective introduction, Kid had the highest bounty of the Supernovas, and Killer, one of two non-captains with the distinction, had a high enough bounty to qualify for the Worst Generation. This appears to be due to the crew’s proven willingness to attack civilians.

But in the context of the Bonney Pirates, their reputation for targeting children and the elderly is a misconception. The Toshi Toshi no Mi, Bonney’s Devil Fruit, has the ability to manipulate the age of people. Bonney regularly applied this to herself, often posing as a twentysomething, with her actual age in the narrative only being revealed recently. Similarly, she commonly transformed foes into physically weaker states, meaning a good number of her targets were likely between the purported ages she is said to have singled out. While Bonney’s own tenacity, as well as her history with the World Government, would likely have made her a notable pirate regardless, the reputation that appeared to inform her bounty is somewhat misleading.

Krieg Pirates

No Strength In Numbers

The Krieg Pirates were the penultimate crew the Straw Hat Pirates faced off against in the East Blue Saga. Don Krieg used a strategy of recruiting as many members as possible to boost his strength, having roughly five thousand at their peak. However, the vast majority of his armada was felled by Dracule Mihawk, who deemed them unworthy of killing time. Unlike most overrated pirate crews, who tend to be dragged down by key members who are assessed incorrectly, the stars of the Krieg Pirates seem properly appraised. Don Krieg and Gin appeared to have bounties proportional to their skills. However, aside from them and Pearl, most of the crew appear to be significantly weaker than even the likes of Patty and Carne, who are merely a pair of violent cooks working at Baratie.

It is unclear if any crew members of the 4,900 Mihawk are said to have killed were of any merit, but overall, it appears as though the number of crew members is a misleading stat, used to falsely foster the impression of the Krieg Pirates having significantly more power than they actually do. In more recent times, the crew appears to have settled in Hachinosu, the primary territory of the Blackbeard Pirates. This implies the crew grew strong enough to have traversed the Grand Line since their loss at Baratie.

Fake Straw Hat Crew

Unmitigated Frauds

With the Straw Hat Pirates having effectively disbanded over a two-year period (in reality, each one was honing their skills to better themselves as a crew), a small ragtag group of impostors attempted to take their place. Despite acting nothing like their supposed counterparts, and only barely resembling them superficially, they managed to fool a variety of people, including Tony Tony Chopper, an actual member of the Straw Hat Pirates, whose own fake counterpart was a non-anthropomorphic stray fox.

The fake crew is shown to have no real skills of note, with its most noteworthy member being the leader, Demalo Black (fake Luffy), who had a mere 8-digit bounty prior to capture, narrowly surpassing Arlong. Nonetheless, their impersonation successfully convinced at least three pirate crews that they were the real deal. However, the strongest known crew to join the alliance, the Caribou Pirates, actually wished to secretly infiltrate the crew for the sake of killing them.

The crew mostly dissolved not long after it began, with Cocoa (fake Robin) and Nora Gitsune (fake Chopper) being apprehended by unknown men in black suits, and the majority of fake Straw Hats supposedly being buried alive by the Caribou Pirates (albeit some of said members were later seen incarcerated, implying they somehow survived the ordeal.) Except for “Gashed” Albion, the known pirates attempting to join the crew in earnest ended up arrested alongside them for their troubles.

Overall, this unqualified group of amateur pirates was objectively, at least for a moment, the most overrated pirate crew in One Piece, as they intended to impersonate the far superior Straw Hat Pirates, and were briefly successful in doing so. After being held in the G-4 prison, four members were shown impersonating the Kid Pirates, another pirate crew thought to have disappeared. They look no more like the Kid Pirates than they did the Straw Hat Pirates.

One Piece

Release Date

October 20, 1999

Network

Fuji TV

Directors

Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou

Writers

Jin Tanaka, Akiko Inoue, Junki Takegami, Shinzo Fujita, Shouji Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suga, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hirohiko Uesaka, Michiru Shimada, Isao Murayama, Takuya Masumoto, Yoichi Takahashi, Momoka Toyoda

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  Mayumi Tanaka

  Monkey D. Luffy (voice)

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  Kazuya Nakai

  Roronoa Zoro (voice)