Despite only having a small number of members, the Straw Hats are a very powerful crew. Their captain has continuously defeated people who are renowned for their incredible strength such as Crocodile and Gekko Moriah of the Shichibukai, the highly feared tyrant Enel from Skypiea, the infamous Rob Lucci of the CP9 and the legendary Shiki the "Gold Lion". The crew itself has done things which most would think impossible and completely insane like defeating an entire organization (such as Baroque Works and CP9) and punching a World Noble and breaking in and out of the Judicial Island, Enies Lobby. In fact, after the incident that occurred at Enies Lobby, the World Government has labeled them as a very dangerous crew.
All of them have at least one talent at which they are virtually perfect at and each member is, more or less, a formidable if not downright fearsome fighter in their own right. While most of them have amazing strength in one way or another, three of them, the captain, the swordsman, and the chef, have such astonishingly inhuman strength that the rest of the crew have dubbed them the "Monster Trio".
Each member in the beginning has some fairly high fighting abilities, but as they progress, each member has had to become stronger due to each opponent they encounter either being significantly stronger than the last or has required them to develop new skills or techniques to combat new opponents.
Overall, their most unique strength is the fact that the Straw Hat crew, on many occasions, are extremely lucky, being able to achieve many things that would be considered impossible feats. One of their more legendary feats was to openly punch a world noble to the full glare of the world.
While each member can hold their own by themselves, what makes the Straw Hats truly strong is their teamwork, which has become more important as the series has progressed. When one of them is incapable of doing a task, another can help out in their place instead. This helps the crew very much in facing odds that may be too much for them if they work separately.
When at sea, the Straw Hats tend to be relaxed, playing with each other, training, reading or whatever else they may do to occupy themselves. They can maintain this attitude even in the unstable waters of Paradise, or even in their descent down to Fishman Island. However, whenever a crisis pops up, like storms, tidal waves, large sea life or falling ships, the crew instantly snap out of their relaxed stupor and swing into action. They all seem to know their place and will do what they should in the circumstances. Most of the time though, they tend to sail at a casual pace, without rushing.
After the two year timeskip, even though they have been dormant for some time, the Straw Hats are talked amongst pirates on a legendary level. Even Sentomaru casually comments that pirates are not like what they used to be. He calls the impostors of Straw Hats a wasteful trash when the fake Luffy boasts of his lineage in front of him, prompting Sentomaru to take him down with a blow of his axe. The crew have gained legendary status since they first set sail, on par with all the other major crews of the world. They are currently the only known pirate crew to openly wage war against the world government and have practically gotten away with it. It still stands that they are the only pirate crew to have escape from every branch of law enforcement that the government could throw at them; The Shichibukai, Cipher Pol, Impel Down, and Marineford have all failed in their attempts to hold down the crew (with the captain penetrating and escaping from the latter two by himself). Perhaps as a testament to their strength, they are the only known crew where every single member has a bounty on their head.
When news of them resurfaced, the entire Marine organization was thrown into a frenzy to stamp on their revival whilst the rest of the pirates cheered on. It is possible that their fame had led many to join the ranks of piracy, for when the fake Straw Hats started recruiting pirates, many flocked to join up, and were also greatly shocked when the "Monster Trio" gave a show of a small fraction of their power. Sentomaru goes as far as to award the fake Luffy a tough blow when he tried to boast of his lineage, saying that the real one would never have done so.
By the end of their two-year long training, it could be presumed that the Straw Hats have grown exponentially in individual power, as some of them took their self-imposed training under the tutelage of prominent figures of the sea like Silvers Rayleigh, Dracule Mihawk, Emporio Ivankov, and Monkey D. Dragon. Each member of the Monster Trio (Luffy, Zoro and Sanji) have shown to be able to defeat a Pacifista in a single attack, whereas it took the combined efforts of the entire crew to barely beat one before. Luffy easily destroyed a Pacifista with a single Haki-embedded Jet Pistol, and Zoro and Sanji, the latter possibly using his Diable Jambe, both dealt crippling blows to a Pacifista with raw strength. Zoro and Sanji each used attacks that likely would have been sufficient to destroy the Pacifista on their own, had they not been trying to outdo each other. Another example of the Monster Trio's strength is that they were able to defeat a sea monster such as the Kraken (a creature several hundred times larger than the Thousand Sunny itself) without much of an effort underwater, where all their strength is greatly decreased. Afterwards Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Brook defeat all the troops stationed in the Ryuugu Palace with ease. The crew also easily took out the 100,000 lower members of the New Fishman Pirates which consisted of about 70,000 fishmen and 30,000 humans with Luffy alone taking out about 50,000 people with a single burst of Haoshoku Haki.
It seems that during their two-year absence, the Marines have remained ever-vigilant in case they return, despite the major belief they all mysteriously died off, as when a group of impostors appeared in Sabaody Archipelago, the Marines immediately mobilized to stop them.
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