Nico Robin/Abilities and Powers

Overview
At a young age, Robin acquired a bounty of 79,000,000 for having the ability to read Poneglyphs, which told of the Void Century. She was branded as being considerably powerful, and supposedly sinking six Buster Call warships with her Devil Fruit powers. This was all a lie fabricated by the government. Those ships were actually destroyed by Jaguar D. Saul after helping Robin escape during the destruction of Ohara.

Vast Knowledge and Archaeological Skills
Robin is also a skilled archaeologist, with a vast knowledge of history and cultures. As a child prodigy, she passed her archaeological exams at the age of 8 to become a certified scholar. She is also the only person alive who can read the language written on poneglyph tablets, which contain records of ancient history; this was the true reason why her first bounty was so high, despite being issued when she was only 8 years old.

It is revealed that Robin taught herself most of these skills through researching in the library of Ohara, which she had done without the aid of her senior colleagues. This shows great aptitude in academics and research.

Outside of historic knowledge, Robin also possesses considerable knowledge of most of the major figures in the world, and has at least heard of such individuals and groups as Red-Haired Shanks, Dragon, Gekko Moriah, and the Vinsmoke Family. She is even aware of top-secret organizations, including the World Government's various Cipher Pol units (such as 9 and 0). For this reason, she is the main person Luffy turns to when he wants an explanation of new information.

A Master of Escape
Robin's life on the run since the tender age of 8 has taught her the ways of survival and self-preservation, and has earned herself notoriety for being able to evade inescapable situations. Even Admiral Aokiji commented that she could have escaped from CP9 had she felt like it (she only abided by their rules and conditions in order to keep them from unleashing the Buster Call upon her crewmates).

Physical Abilities
While not at the same superhuman level as Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji, Robin has exceptional physical prowess, due to spending her entire childhood to her young adult life constantly on the run from various enemies, such the Marines and the World Government. Because of her harsh experiences, Robin became physically strong and extremely agile.

Her body has incredible tenacity as she was seen being able to take on direct hits from both Yama's drop kicks and punches (with the latter sending her flying through a wall, destroying it) and was still able to effectively retaliate after maneuvering the latter away from the ruins of Skypiea, and was able to restrain a powerful zombie like Jigoro (albeit briefly). She was also able to survive being impaled through the chest by Crocodile and remain alive without medical attention from a doctor, until the wound healed on its own. She is agile enough to quickly maneuver (while maintaining her arms' "X" formation) her way through a group of Marine captains and commanders before using her powers in retaliation.

Her powers make her particularly well suited to taking on large numbers of foes, and in fact the other members of the crew have grouped her in with the "Monster Trio" in terms of strength due to how dangerous her abilities are, as demonstrated when Nami put her in the group forbidden to blow Gan Fall's whistle and call for help along with the other strongest crew members, and in two hostile encounters with the crew in which she had no problem disarming all the Straw Hats at once.

During the Thriller Bark Arc, it is worth noting that before Nightmare Luffy arrived, she was the only one of the Straw Hats who was able to actually fight directly against the Shichibukai, Moriah while he was inside Oars.

And after two years of extensive training, Robin's physical strength has significantly improved. She demonstrates being able to use her Devil Fruit powers to create a partial clone used in conjunction with her own body to overpower a large fishman by maneuvering around and expertly subjecting the latter into a submission move.

Her reactions also became much faster with extremely sharp reflexes. Not only was she able to catch a dwarf using her powers, but she easily restrained Hakuba while the latter was attempting a sneak attack on her. This is an incredible feat, as the serial killer was so fast that fighters of the caliber of the Corrida Colosseum competitors and even Dellinger could not follow him with their eyes.

One of her most impressive aspects is her will power as she managed to recover in mere minutes after having her shadow stolen by Gekko Moriah (when it usually takes a few days for most humans). It seems that she also has an incredible recovery rate. One example of her recovery ability is when she, Zoro, Gan Fall, and Wiper were all knocked out by Enel's Devil Fruit ability, Robin was the first person to wake up. Even with a severe injury, she still had enough strength to use her Devil Fruit ability to carry them to safety and had fully recovered without the aid of Chopper. She was also able to pick herself up rather quickly, after being stabbed in the shoulder by one of Monet's giant ice picks while claiming it was a simple flesh wound, before protecting Nami and Chopper by easily smashing her snow form. Her stamina is also high, as proven by her ability to engage in battle with giant nutcracker dolls, a Donquixote Family Executive and run up a cliff using legs created by her Devil Fruit much like the steps of a stair (a feat that also demanded considerable agility and strength, as she felt the individual strain of each leg) without pause or breaking a sweat. Robin is also highly knowledgeable in grappling techniques, having applied it into her devil fruit powers to create multiple arms on the enemies that could skillfully restrain their bodies into submission and break their bones easily. She could also use the arms to disarm enemies of their weapons such as firearms and swords, as shown when Robin was able to disarm Tashigi, a skilled swordswoman.

Devil Fruit
Robin ate a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit called the Hana Hana no Mi at a very young age as she is seen using its powers at the age of eight. Even at this age, she was proficient enough to be able to spy on the research that Professor Clover and the rest of her former colleagues from Ohara were conducting under the radar of the World Government. She can produce her body parts on any surface including her own body, other bodies, and other objects, allowing her to create copies of them. However, her replicated parts are considered an extension of her own body, and if they are hurt, she feels the pain on her actual body. Similarly, Devil fruit abilities that require contact with a person's body will take effect when used on her extended limbs as evidenced by Sugar turning Robin into a toy by touching Robin's replicated arms. Usually, when she uses her powers she crosses her arms and makes an "X" shape across her chest, though it's shown that she does not necessarily need to do so to use her abilities.

Robin is intelligent enough to know how to use her powers in the most effective and efficient way, and her attacks hinder the enemy, stopping all movement with the ever multiplying hands. Although she is very powerful, her sprouted body parts can be hit and stretched, causing damage to her real body, which is her weak point. Her powers are also very useful in dangerous situations. She can carry her friends by using feet and hands, but also tends to use her ability to place her foes in painful submission holds and to break their bones almost effortlessly.

Her most common attacks are "Seis Fleur: Twist" (Robin twists the foe's upper body around) and "Ocho Fleur: Flip" (Robin uses a pair of arms that knock over the foe backwards, forms a pair of arms on the ground below them, and when the foe lands on it, two more pairs appear at their legs and head and pull them to the ground) and Clutch (her hands grow out of her opponents back, these hands clasp the targets chin simultaneously pulling the head back and breaking the targets neck, for stronger opponents, she uses more hands and has been seen breaking a person in half). Even when she performs "Cuerpo Fleur : Doble Clutch" she adds 4 more arms to herself and 4 for her clone, making a total of 12 arms with 6 arms for each body.

She also can use her ability for a number of support functions such as forming a net to catch falling comrades or form a large number of arms and shape wings, giving her the ability to fly or a few seconds (though after the timeskip its shown she can do so for an extended period of time). She can also transport objects either by growing feet on the object or growing a row of arms with each arm or pair of arms passing the object to the next.

Her extra limbs also helps her in maneuvering about and reaching far off places such as sprouting multiple arms holding onto each other to use as a makeshift 'vine' in order to swing across a valley, and using her own limbs as 'steps' to scale a high wall. She also uses eyes and ears for knowledge acquisition, e.g. espionage. In one instance when Usopp was falling through the White Sea she sprouted eyes on Luffy's stretched arm to find Usopp and rescue him by growing a lasso of arms from Luffy's arm. The primary advantage of her powers is the ability to directly sprout her limbs from a person's body, making it extremely effective in restraining people and killing them. This also reduces the reaction time required to catch someone since the limbs directly appear on their body. Robin has said more than once that strength and speed mean nothing to her and has demonstrated that twice, once on Pell before the timeskip, and again after the timeskip on someone as strong and fast as Hakuba. After the timeskip, Robin is remarkably able to temporarily defy the power draining effects of the sea, to protect her crew from smashing into a large sea mountain, using her "Gigantesco Mano".

Her attacks are a combination of the Spanish, French, and English languages. Ex. "Cinco Fleur". "Cinco" (Five in Spanish) refers to the number of arms she blossoms, and "Fleur" is the French word for "Flower". Some attacks are followed by an English word that further describes the attack's purpose, an example of that pattern is "Treinta Fleur: Strangle". In the 4Kids English dub, the attacks are mostly English, using the word "Floret" instead of "Fleur", such as "Eight Floret" or "One Hundred Floret".

No limit has been given for Robin's powers, but the author, Oda, has jokingly stated that she can only sprout limbs a distance of "200 Hana Hanas" away. Fans often misinterpret this as meaning she can only sprout 200 limbs, but this is false, since after the timeskip, she can sprout at least a thousand arms. However, she of course needs to be aware of the position of another object or person to attack it.

After the timeskip, she is able to take her fruit powers to a totally different level by making clones of herself, increasing the number of limbs she's able to produce and in addition to that, she is now capable of producing giant limbs in a new style of using her Devil Fruit powers she calls "Mil Fleur: Gigantesco Mano". She has also demonstrated the ability to better restrict stronger opponents using a combination of giant and normal limbs as well as using them to destroy many enemies at once by crushing them with giant legs or smashing them with giant hands.

Weapons
She carried a dagger at her belt, but did not use it in combat, as she fights unarmed using only her powers. She only used it once in an attempt to kill Crocodile in self defense.

When Robin teamed up with CP9 during their raid on Iceburg's mansion, she carried several flintlock pistols as well, wielding all of them at the same time with her Hana Hana no Mi powers.

Master Tactician
Robin is a brilliant strategist due to her genius intellect, she is extremely skilled in using cunning deception and trickery to gain a strategic advantage over enemies who are more powerful than herself. In Thriller Bark, she is able to exploit the zombies's complete obedience to their masters as shown when she tricked Hogback into giving orders to the two zombies with Zoro and Sanji's shadows into jumping off the Thriller Bark mansion, effectively lure them away from Hogback without using physical force. Due to her spending years escaping from Marines and World Government, Robin is also tactically cautious with a strong perception for danger, as shown during Operation SOP, Robin is able to fully understand Trebol's combat capabilities from her sharp observation of a fly Trebol killed and thus chose to restrain Leo as it will be too dangerous to go close to Sugar while she is under Trebol's protection. She is also able to pose as a surbordinate member of the Donquixote Pirates to lure Trebol away from Sugar considerably far for the Tontatta dwarves to ambush Sugar, though they failed due to Sugar's combat abilities.

Miscellaneous Skills
Another thing about Robin is that she is not afraid to use violence as a solution to a problem or for defense and often incapacitates her enemies by breaking their necks or backs (even when they cry out for mercy), even going as far as to squeeze Franky's scrotum, though only one time, in order to make him join the crew.

Spying
She also has the habit of spying on others (i.e. listening in on conversations, reading body language and facial expressions); this is shown when she spies on Sanji's conversation with the Risky Brothers at Thriller Bark, and reading the Straw Hats expressions when she first wanted to join the crew. At Water 7, she admits to Chopper that these habits are from her childhood. Her Devil Fruit ability allows her to spy extremely effectively by sprouting her eyes or ears from walls at distant locations. She has also claimed that she was an assassin when Usopp interviewed her upon her entry into the Straw Hat crew, but her targets and reasons have yet to be revealed.

Sailing


She appears to have some skill with piloting the Mini Merry II, as she was seen controlling it on a Milky Road while on the way to Punk Hazard. She was also controlling the wheel with her Devil Fruit powers while she sat in the back seat of the vehicle.

Artistic Skill
She has some skill as an artist as she can draw a decent picture of the Flying Dutchman and the Kraken.

Hairdressing
Robin has also some skill with haircutting since her and Usopp act as the crew's hairdressers.

Other Skill
Though she has not yet displayed the ability to use Haki, Robin is fully aware of the power as she commented on Luffy knocking out half of Hody's men. She also has great knowledge about Haki, such as explaining the principles of Busoshoku Haki to Franky when Luffy fought Caesar Clown.

Site Navigation
Nico_Robin/Aptitudes_et_Compétences