 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we have an interesting topic to explore. I mean, what we talk about here is always interesting, of course, I hope. But today I would like to look at the true bounty of Luffy. Now, what does that mean? Well, one of the many reasons as to why bounty should never ever be used as an accurate judgment of anything, power, or general world infamy is because they take into consideration only what the world government knows about a particular individual. And in the case of Luffy, he has a whole ton of achievements that the world government either remains blissfully unaware of or they did know about and covered up, thus not contributing to his number. Either way, this results in a fairly inaccurate bounty for Luffy throughout the history of the series. And I personally suspect that if everything were taken into account, then Luffy's bounty would be much, much higher. So that's what we're here to find out. But before we get into it, it's time to play a round of bounty guesser, a very simple mini-game, the rules of which are as follows. Basically, I'm going to give you an obscure character and a bounty number. It is then your job to guess whether that character's actual bounty is higher or lower than the number I've stated. And if you are wrong, then your punishment will be subscribing to the ground line review. And if you are right, then good on you, I guess. I hope you feel good about yourself. Now our character here today is going to be Vito of the Fire Tank Pirates. And the number I am assigning him is a bounty of 80 million berries. So please do select whether you think Vito's bounty is higher or lower than 80 million berries. I'll give you some time, not much time. Three, two, one. And the answer is higher. Vito's bounty is actually a pretty hefty 95 million berries, which was revealed to us in the Vivica data book. So if you said lower, then welcome to the Grand Fleet and please do say hi in the comments below if you are indeed a new recruit. All right though, let's begin the interesting stuff. And to start off, we are going to cut all the way to the end of the Arlong Ark where Luffy receives his first bounty of 30 million berries. And nothing really changes here because at this stage, the Marines did have a fairly accurate account of Luffy's achievements, particularly noting the defeat of Buggy, Don Creek, and Arlong. The only key thing we're missing here is Captain Kuro, but it wouldn't have mattered because his bounty was only 16 million berries, so both Creek and Arlong topped that. So 30 million is a fairly accurate start, which fun fact, then Commander Brand new stated that a starting bounty of 30 million berries was unprecedented in East Blue and the average pirate holding bounty or bounty holding pirate, I should say, would be worth around three million berries. But next up, we'll skip to the tail end of our Basta for our next bounty change, which is the infamous 100 million berries. And another fun fact here, this is one of those situations I flagged earlier where the world government tried to cover up Luffy's actions because it would have and did indeed make them look bad. So if it weren't for Smoker refusing to go along with their game, Luffy would not have been awarded a bounty of 100 million berries, I guarantee that. It no doubt would have increased by some amount, but probably something more understated, so as not to draw too much unwarranted attention to the alabaster incident. The question for this video though, is was 100 million enough? And I would again say yes. The only real thing you might wanna take into consideration is all of the Baroque Works agents that Luffy beat, but they're kind of too small fry for that to really factor into things. I mean, for example, Mr. Three's bounty was 24 million berries, so those escapades are quite unlikely to impact things, but that is about to change though because we have a massive development. Skipping over Jaya after punching Bellamy in the face for the first time, we now arrive at Skypeer, where Luffy is responsible for defeating God and El, an event that the world government will likely never know of or care about because they have no concept of El's existence. It was completely isolated, so we need to ask ourselves, if a giant jack falls over in a sky forest and no government officials are around, does it make a sound? And I think you'll find that yes, yes it does. Even with the Devil Fruit counter in mind, this is still a pretty phenomenal achievement from Luffy and we do have a method of scaling this into a tangible bounty. This is due to an SBS segment in volume 43, where Oda was asked how much El would be worth if he came down to the blue sea, and he stated that his bounty would probably go over 500 million berries, considering how troublesome El is, and he went on to say that Luffy kind of lucked out due to being rubber. And as such, there are a couple of ways we can go about this. Bounty increases usually follow certain patterns and by and large, there is usually one of three options, the first of which being to raise the bounty slightly above the opponent defeated, which is what we've seen so far with Luffy. The second option would be to add a stock amount onto a bounty due to major involvement in a prominent event, which sometimes sees bounties just plain double or even triple. And then the third option would be adding a helpers fee due to being present for a major event, but not being the primary instigator. And that last one is irrelevant for Luffy in this particular case. But given the situation here, I think option two would be the best way to go. I mean, yes, we could increase Luffy's bounty to just over 500 million berries with option one. However, it would be a disingenuous representation of threat to do so. But we do still need to recognize this grand achievement and a middle ground approach of tripling Luffy's bounty to 300 million probably seems like the way to go. It's the happy medium between 100 and 500 million. So 300 it is. So we've reached that 300 million mark much quicker than Luffy did in reality. And that puts us in a unique situation for our next bounty increase, which is going to be after any slobby. There's nothing much missing to take into account here. The world government is well aware of what happened on water seven and on the judicial island. And long ring, long land is well as per usual irrelevant. But then Luffy goes ahead invading and effectively destroying any slobby, which in the actual series led to the increase to 300 million. However, because the any slobby incident is an event rather than an opponent, we can't just let it remain at 300 million. Because as a result of this Luffy's threat level to the world government has increased. And I think that slapping a clean 100 million on top of this is appropriate. Adding 200 million like in the series was a pretty drastic measure designed to indicate that Luffy was a much greater threat than previously thought. But in this world, we already know that to a degree due to registering the defeat of Enel. So at the end of the water seven saga, Luffy is carrying a 400 million very bounty. And then we step into Thriller Bark where Luffy and the straw hats go on to defeat another warlord of the sea being Gecko Moria. And here we have an example of a world government coverup because they actually anticipated Luffy defeating Moria so much so that they sent Bartholome Kuma to Thriller Bark to make sure that he eliminated any witnesses of Moria's defeat. And while Kuma certainly did fail to do that for complex moral and cyborg related reasons, Luffy's triumph over Moria was still kept from the general public. So it was not to cause outcry over the very idea that Luffy had now taken down two warlords of the sea. And well, we can't afford to think like that here. And for the purpose of this video, news of Moria's downfall will spread. Our Luffy currently has a bounty of 400 million. And whilst that is much higher than Gecko Moria's frozen bounty of 320 million, Luffy is still going to get a change because his threat to the world government has very publicly once again increased. And I'm going to slap another 100 million on top of it, not just because of Moria, but because Moria is the latest in a long string of collapsing dominoes for the world government. At this point, Luffy has now beaten two warlords and completely destroyed their judicial island. In terms of threat accuracy, he is now a 500 million very man quite easily. I mean, physically, no, he may not stand up to the power of other people within that bounty range, like say, podcasties, but bounties do not measure power. As he is right here right now, Luffy is just as much for threat to the world government without being some sort of commander level being. In fact, given that commanders are directly under the control of emperors, and Luffy is more or less an unhinged force of anarchy, it's arguable that he is even more dangerous. But now we get to some really crazy cool stuff, the paramount war saga. So in the series, this whole thing leads to a rather underwhelming bounty increase, which sees Luffy move from 300 million to 400 million. However, we are starting this saga at 500 million, and there is a lot here that Luffy either does not get enough credit for, or he gets too much credit for. As an example of the former Luffy's involvement during Impel Down is completely overshadowed, both by Blackbeard simultaneous invasion of the prison, as well as prominent figures alongside Luffy, like Jinbei, even Kov, Crocodile, and even Buggy. Yes, that's right, I said Buggy. And Luffy amongst all of this was never quite properly acknowledged for just how instrumental he was in Impel Down. But then when it comes to Marineford, he probably gets a bit too much credit for pulling off feats like say Punching Garp, the hero in the face, to the viewing public that is a huge, huge shock to the system, but it would not be accurate to use that sort of stuff here. What is relevant is that the paramount war saw the revelation of Luffy being the son of Dragon, as well as demonstrating that he has conqueror's hockey, very, very potent conqueror's hockey. Along with his association with Silver's Rayleigh, which was revealed to the public after the war, this is what gave Luffy a 100 million increase canonically. Purely an event and infamy related increase, which is something that we can't ignore here. And furthermore, we also can't ignore Luffy's main role in Impel Down like the world government more or less did. So we are going to take that canonical 100 million and add another 100 million on top of that, landing Luffy at 700 million berries. And my logic is that the destruction of any slobby brought him 100 million. So the first mass breakout of Impel Down should do exactly the same as a threat indicator. And the other 100 million, well, the reasoning for that is established in the series. And yeah, look, 700 million might seem way, way, way too massive for a pre-timeskip Luffy. However, pre-timeskip Luffy's threat level was severely underestimated. Once again, no, he doesn't have the raw power yet. But by this point, he's done more to directly harm the world government than any emperor of the sea has. So that takes us to the post-timeskip era. And starting with Fishman Island, you might think that we can overlook this arc, but we absolutely cannot. I mean, we can and should overlook Hody Jones in general, not just for this video. But the important part of this arc is that Luffy became friends with a literal ancient weapon. And for all intents and purposes, Luffy has command over the ancient weapon Poseidon after this arc due to developing a bond with Princess Shirahoshi. And if the world government knew that Luffy had access to an ancient weapon, then they're probably not just going to sit around and do nothing about that. And as such, it is here that I issued Luffy with a flat bounty of one billion berries. Although I think a solid argument could be made for much more than that, because ancient weapons are not to be underestimated and Poseidon has been said to be able to sink entire islands with ease. And that seems pretty damn threatening, but I think one billion is the solid conservative number. This does make things a bit underwhelming during Dressrosa though, because we now have a fairly tanky Luffy coming into play, causing Dolflamingo to promptly crap himself and ultimately lose as per the series. Now Dolflamingo's bounty was 340 million berries prior to being frozen, but that doesn't matter. Luffy is still getting hit with a 100 million increase because it's not about the opponent. It's not about the power. It's about the event and the threat. The fall of Dolflamingo represents the third warlord that Luffy has taken out, meaning that he has defeated, you know, roughly half of the world government's most powerful pirate squad. And we can't just leave Luffy be if he continues to become more and more of a threat because that's what bounties are meant to indicate. And so we're going to race into Holcake Island with Luffy being worth 1.1 billion berries, which is only slightly more than Kartakuri. And I find that pretty amazing actually, because when you consider their fight, even if you do like using bounties as power system, this is pretty damn accurate. This logic places Luffy and Kartakuri on an even-ish playing field with an expected outcome of Luffy's victory, which went on to happen. So I'm actually pretty amazed that we landed so close to the sweet commander's numbers, but Holcake Island is about much, much more than that. Yes, Kartakuri's defeat played a part in it, but the bigger issue is Luffy's invasion of an emperor's territory. That and a wide array of other factors, such as the emergence of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. This is what led to the world government just up and tripling Luffy's bounty to 1.5 billion berries in the series. However, we have got to go further than that, much further. Because at this stage, we have a man worth 1.1 billion, proving to the world government that he can handle a direct conflict with the Emperor of the Sea, which no does not mean a one-on-one fight, don't get those ideas conflated. But what Holcake Island achieved was Luffy standing up and saying, I am equal or greater than you. And if that had happened whilst he'd had a bounty of 1.1 billion berries, I highly doubt that the world government simply would have gone, I don't know, should we add a couple of hundred million more? No, they would need to signify that Luffy has become a much larger threat, which he has. So I'm actually going to do exactly what they did and triple his bounty to 3.3 billion berries, which in the end, I think makes perfect sense because he was later announced as the Fifth Emperor, but it still places him at a significantly lower value than his other Emperor contemporaries, thus distinguishing him as a lesser but still very prominent threat. And that's where we find ourselves today. I can't go any further with this idea until the end of Wano, but the concept of 3.3 billion doesn't seem insane at all to me. For the vast majority of Luffy's pirating career, his threat level has been wildly underestimated. In fact, to think that he walked into the Holcake Island arc with a mere 500 million on his head is absurd in retrospect. Luffy has proven time after time that he should be taken far more seriously than he is. And a number like 3.3 billion would be the result of that. And really, when you look back on One Piece, the world government always seems to be a step or two behind when it comes to Luffy. His bounty numbers suffer a huge degree of lag, which is why if you think that Luffy is only worth 1.5 billion berries as of right now, then I think that you are absolutely mad. His true worth is much, much more. And laying out all of his achievements on the table, very much goes to show that. So all hail the 3.3 billion berryman. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious One Piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.