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Like many shonen anime and manga, One Piece is a series whose fans are often prone to powerscaling. The action-packed nature of the story has people constantly debating which characters are the strongest, and even when there are definitive hierarchies, they’ll still look for ways to upscale or downplay certain characters all for the sake of pushing a specific agenda.
Powerscaling in One Piece is something that will never truly go away, and besides individual characters, entire groups are also victims of it. Because of how One Piece’s story is structured, each arc tends to revolve around the fights between specific groups of people instead of one-on-one fights, and as such, powerscaling in One Piece often involves trying to figure out how entire groups of characters compare to one another. At least with pirate crews, it’s easy enough to figure out how the strongest stand against one another, and that’s plenty worth looking into.
10 The Heart Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 498; Episode 392
The Heart Pirates are the pirate crew headed by Trafalgar Law, one of the original members of the Worst Generation and a former member of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. The Heart Pirates allied with the Straw Hat Pirates to defeat Kaido, which started as a ruse before becoming legitimate, and following Kaido’s defeat, they’ve since returned to being adversaries.
The Heart Pirates, as a whole, have never had a lot of time in the spotlight, but not only did Law defeat Big Mom with help from Kid, unlike the Kid Pirates, the Heart Pirates just barely survived a one-on-one fight with an Emperor’s crew i.e. the Blackbeard Pirates in the Egghead arc, although they were still all but destroyed in the end. The Heart Pirates might not be the strongest of the top-tier pirate crews, but their power can’t be underestimated, regardless.
9 Cross Guild
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 1056; Episode 1083
Cross Guild is a bounty hunter organization that specializes in assigning bounties to Marines, an idea that’s filled the world with an uncontrollable amount of chaos. While Cross Guild was primarily Crocodile and Mihawk’s idea, a variety of circumstances led to Buggy getting the credit for everything, resulting in Buggy being recognized as an Emperor following Kaido and Big Mom’s defeat, despite him just being a figurehead Crocodile and Mihawk abuse daily.
Cross Guild is incredibly powerful just from having Crocodile and Mihawk as members, but a lot of their military force comes from Buggy’s mercenary group Buggy’s Delivery, which had just recently taken a hit when Harjudin and his fellow giants, Buggy’s strongest employees, left to join the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. As such, even with them being recognized as an Emperor’s crew, it would be premature to rank Cross Guild too highly among pirate crews.
8 The Straw Hat Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 5; Episode 3
The Straw Hat Pirates are the main pirate crew of One Piece and, as such, are captained by series protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. The group has gradually grown in power and notoriety over the years, and following the defeat of Kaido and Big Mom, Luffy was declared an Emperor, making the Straw Hat Pirates one of the most notorious pirate crews in the world.
The individual members of the Straw Hat Pirates are all incredibly powerful fighters, but due to their small numbers and how hard it is to gauge the power of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, the Straw Hat Pirates fall below many other pirate crews as an organization, despite the strength of their individual members. Defeating Kaido and Big Mom, for example, would have been impossible on their own, so it’s hard to rank them too highly, despite being the main characters.
7 The Red-Haired Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 1; Episode 4
The Red-Haired Pirates are the first pirate crew introduced in One Piece and captained by “Red-Haired” Shanks, Luffy’s idol and Roger’s apprentice. In the time since Luffy first met them, Shanks has risen to become one of the Four Emperors, and as such, the Red-Haired Pirates are seen as one of the strongest pirate crews in all of One Piece.
The core group of the Red-Haired Pirates is continually shown as being incredibly powerful, with them having such notable feats as Beckman forcing Kizaru to take pause and Shanks singlehandedly destroying the Kid Pirates. However, they’re also known to ally with blatantly weak pirate crews just because Shanks is friends with them, making them solely reliant on the power of the core group. The power of the Red-Haired Pirates is brought down by their lack of strong allies, and as such, they don’t rank too highly against the other Emperors.
6 The Blackbeard Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 234; Episode 151
The Blackbeard Pirates are the pirate crew of Marshall D. Teach i.e. the eponymous Blackbeard. Blackbeard used his position as a Warlord to infiltrate Impel Down and recruit some of the deadliest prisoners, and after killing Whitebeard and gaining his Tremor-Tremor Fruit alongside his Dark-Dark Fruit, Blackbeard rapidly built up power until he took Whitebeard’s place as an Emperor.
Despite how new the Blackbeard Pirates are, the immense power and size of their crew still leaves them a force to be reckoned with, especially with how the Blackbeard Pirates have added Kuzan i.e. Admiral Aokiji, someone who can hold his own against Garp, into their ranks. It’s still hard to judge their power thanks to how little they’ve done in recent years, but with how Blackbeard is set up to be one of the final villains of the series, that’s poised to change very soon.
5 The Big Mom Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 651; Episode 570
The Big Mom Pirates is the pirate crew of former Emperor Big Mom and is comprised mostly of Big Mom’s children, the Charlotte Family. Big Mom was a notable member of the infamous Rocks Pirates, and after their disbandment, she became one of the biggest names in the New World and held that position for decades until she was defeated by Law and Kid in the Wano arc.
As a former Emperor’s crew, the Big Mom Pirates have been a force to be reckoned with since their debut; not only was Katakuri one of Luffy’s toughest opponents in One Piece, but Big Mom was so powerful that Law and Kid just barely defeated her by working together. The Big Mom Pirates’ current status after Big Mom’s defeat is up in the air, but they remain one of the biggest pirate crews to ever appear in One Piece, regardless.
4 The Beast Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 595; Episode 513
The Beast Pirates, also known as the Animal Kingdom Pirates in some translations, is the pirate crew of former Emperor Kaido, once known worldwide as the world’s strongest creature. After the disbandment of the Rocks Pirates, Kaido slowly built up power until he became recognized as an Emperor, and he had the highest bounty of all the Emperors after Whitebeard’s death, as well.
Not only are Kaido and his main fighters masters of Haki and powerful Zoan Devil Fruits, but the Beast Pirates are also armed with powerful artificial Devil Fruits called SMILEs courtesy of Donquixote Doflamingo, one of the most Warlords who was also in Kaido’s employ. The raw power of the Beast Pirates surpassed any other pirate crew in One Piece ’s post-timeskip era, and if Luffy didn’t have the specific allies that he did, it would have been impossible for them to have been defeated at Onigashima.
3 The Whitebeard Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 154; Episode 91
The Whitebeard Pirates were the crew of the late Emperor Whitebeard, Roger’s biggest rival who was once regarded as the world’s strongest man. After Whitebeard and Ace’s deaths in the Paramount War, the surviving members of the Whitebeard Pirates were defeated by the Blackbeard Pirates in another battle called the Payback War, and that loss has left the crew defunct ever since.
While the Whitebeard Pirates have disbanded, back in their heyday, they were easily the strongest of the Emperor crews thanks to their size and overall power, something further emphasized by Whitebeard being one of the few who could match Roger in his prime and Marco having a bevy of impressive feats against King and Queen in the Wano arc. The entirety of the Marines’ forces were almost destroyed by just the Whitebeard Pirates in the Paramount War, and overall, there should be no greater testament to their power.
2 The Roger Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 19; Episode 8
The Roger Pirates were the pirate crew of Gol D. Roger, the legendary King of the Pirates who left behind the mythical treasure known as the One Piece with his death. After Roger’s execution and the beginning of the Great Age of Piracy, the Roger Pirates disbanded and went their separate ways, although many of them have become heavily involved in current events, most notably Shanks, Buggy, and Rayleigh.
Not much is known about the Roger Pirates’ activities, but what little has been shown of the Roger has always depicted them as a nigh-unstoppable force in One Piece, with feats like Roger’s explicit superiority to Whitebeard, Oden’s defeat of Kaido, and the Roger Pirates being the ones to discover Laugh Tale perfectly representing their power. No modern-day pirate crew has surpassed Roger and the Roger Pirates, and overall, it’s easy to see why.
1 The Rocks Pirates
First Appearance: One Piece Chapter 957; Episode 958
The Rocks Pirates were a legendary pirate crew commanded by Rocks D. Xebec, an enigmatic figure who sought to be the king of the world. Very little is known about the Rocks Pirates not just because of how recently they were introduced, but because they were so dangerous that the World Government tried to erase all trace of their existence after they were defeated in the God Valley incident decades before the story.
Not only were the Rocks Pirates composed of some of the strongest characters in all of One Piece like Whitebeard, Big Mom, and Kaido, but the Rocks Pirates were so powerful that Roger and Garp had to work together to defeat them. Any enemy that would force Roger and Garp to work together is hard to even imagine, but that fact easily makes the Rocks Pirates the strongest pirate crew in all of One Piece.
One Piece
Created by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece is a multimedia franchise that began as a manga series and follows the adventures of the Straw Hat Pirates as led by Monkey D. Luffy. Luffy, an enthusiastic pirate with a thirst for adventure, is afflicted by a mysterious curse that gives him various powers he uses to protect himself and his friends. The manga eventually gave way to the anime series, with the two being some of history's longest-running anime and manga series. Along with over fifty video games made over the years, the series entered the live-action world with Netflix's 2023 adaptation.
Created by Eiichiro Oda
First Film One Piece: The Movie
Cast Kazuya Nakai , Akemi Okamura , Kappei Yamaguchi , Hiroaki Hirata , Ikue Ôtani , Yuriko Yamaguchi
English (US) ·