One PieceThe World Government commands the planet's most powerful fighting force of all: the Navy. This is the military arm of Imu's tyrannical rule, a vast organization populated with everything from grunting marines with rifles to officers with Devil Fruits and the power of each ship's cannons. Over time, One Piece has fleshed out the Navy's organizational chart and introduced viewers to many powerful and notable members of the chain of command.
An exhaustive list of all Devil Fruits and officers would be long, so instead, One Piece newcomers are better served by a brief overview of how the Navy works and how the chain of command works. This includes the ranks, Devil Fruits, hardware, and strategies that the Navy uses when fighting its enemies, such as the Revolutionary Army – or when it wipes out innocent islands like God Valley or Ohara.
The navy has large fleets and two different headquarters
These ships can perform a Buster call anytime, anywhere
All fighting forces in One Piece the world has vehicles or weapons to absorb, and the Navy has everyone beat in that regard. The Revolutionary Army has plenty of ships and a stockpile of weapons, and the Straw Hat Grand Fleet includes many ships from various pirate crews, but nothing compares to the Navy. The World Government military has more ships than any other organization, and only a few legendary pirate ships, such as Good Ericare larger or more powerful in battle. Navy ships are quite large and have a heavy arsenal of cannons for traditional ship-to-ship combat with any pirate fleet.
16 One Piece characters who can destroy the admirals in one fight
The admirals are strong, but they would be destroyed by these One Piece characters.
If conventional naval warfare is not enough to win the day or convince a rogue island to surrender, the military arm of the world government will resort to an even more drastic measure: the dreaded Buster Call. This is when an officer calls for the total destruction of an island or similar place, with ten ships and five vice admirals present to carry out such an attack. This is an apocalypse of concentrated cannon fire, with as much firepower as the entire military of a typical island. Such an assault is usually done to teach the rest of the world a lesson about dissent or to wipe out someone or something that poses a unique threat to Imu's rule. Nico Robin would know, as she only narrowly survived the Buster Call on Ohara that punished the locals for doing research in the Void Century.
Apart from its huge fleets, the Navy also has impressive hardware in the form of its past and present headquarters. The former HQ was Marineford, which was little more than a crescent-shaped fortress island full of defensive cannons, ships, and of course the Devil Fruit power of all the officers there. Marineford was an almost impregnable bastion of naval authority, with invaders only able to access it through the Gates of Justice before being met by overwhelming defensive firepower. After the Battle of Marineford, that base is now designated G-1, with New Marineford now serving as the Navy's headquarters.
The navy is populated with powerful officers and countless marines
Some of the world's strongest Devil Fruits are found in the chain of command
The ships and defense walls help the navy survive, but it is the officers and marines who actually do the military function of the world government. The Navy has many ranks for someone like Koby to climb, from seaman recruits and petty officers among the infantry and seaman divisions all the way to captains and vice admirals among the commissioned naval officers. The Navy also includes support staff, such as janitors and cooks, although such roles receive very little screen time. It is often the common marines who make up the bulk of navy ship crews, and many scenes in One Piece depicted platoons of rifle-wielding Marines acting as the Navy's first line of defense against many of the world's most powerful pirates.
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A number of vice admirals have appeared to help give the navy some structure and contribute to its firepower, such as Tsuru and even Monkey D. Garp, and the three admirals act as the face of the high authority of the navy. The Navy has three admirals at once, and they usually carry some of the most formidable Devil Fruits of all. This means that the admirals can both command fleets and get their own hands dirty when a battle starts, with the Battle of Marineford being a great example of this. Admirals Aokiji, Kizaru, and Akainu all took to the battlefield, with Akainu being the one to kill Portgas D. Ace with his Lava Fist. Above the three admirals is the fleet admiral, with this role previously held by Sengoku until Akainu/Sakazuki recently claimed it.
For the most part, it's the Admirals who command the fleets and make the Navy work, but there is still another rank above them: the Five Elders themselves. These five men enjoy undisputed authority in the Navy, or so it seems from the outside. The Imu commands the Elders, but aside from that, the Elders are the highest authority of the Navy. They are an expanded version of the Admirals, who are a small elite group that wield great authority and combat power. While Admirals tend to have Logia or Paramecia Devil Fruits, the Five Elders have all eaten and awakened mythical Zoan Devil Fruits, as seen in the clash on Egghead Island.
The Navy once commanded reformed pirates as warlords of the sea
The warlords are no longer trusted and replaced
For years, the World Government's military arm has had an unusual group that operated largely independent of the chain of command. These were the Seven Warlords of the Sea, pirates partially reformed as Navy attack dogs. It's an example of the Navy being resourceful and relatively forgiving, using a pirate's vast skills rather than just executing that high seas villain. Warlords helped add some variety to the navy's pool of Devil Fruits and fighting styles, from Gecko Moria's zombie army to Blackbeard's unique ability to nullify Devil Fruits or Trafalgar Law's healing ability with his Op-Op Fruit. Fans may recall how the Warlords were called to Marineford to aid in its defense against Whitebeard's assault, though more than one of the Warlords went rogue during that time.
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Since then, the Warlords have disbanded, with the Navy's most elite officers no longer trusting them as the ongoing struggle for world supremacy reaches new heights. What's more, Dr. Vegapunk created the Seraphim as docile, lab-grown replacements for the original Warlords. Although only the size of children, the successors to the likes of Boa Hancock and Dracule Mihawk are quite formidable and are much less prone to go rogue like their predecessors sometimes did. Now the former warlords are on their own, with Mihawk and Crocodile forming the Cross Guild to turn the Navy's bounty system against it with their own version.
One Piece
- Release date
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October 20, 1999
- Network
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Fuji TV
- Directors
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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 Ma Shihi Endo, Toshihiro Ma Shihi Endo, Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
- Author
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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)
