Buggy Pirates

The Buggy Pirates (バギー海賊団) are a band of pirates led by Captain Buggy, who is a former member of the late Pirate King's crew. Although they were one of the first opponents to be defeated by the Straw Hat Pirates, they have remained relevant in One Piece. Their current goal is finding Captain John's legendary treasure.

East Blue Saga
The Buggy Pirates are first seen wrecking a small town only to be defeated by Luffy and his crew. While Nami tied up Buggy's main body, Luffy sent his head, hands, and feet flying all the way to another island.

Through a series of adventures, Buggy manages to enter into an alliance with the newly transformed Alvida to further his cause, regroups with his own crew, and recombines with the rest of his body. They follow the Straw Hats to Loguetown, where Buggy manages to trap Luffy onto the execution platform, but before he can lop off his head, a bolt of lightning strikes his swords, destroying the platform and letting Luffy escape. After this event, the Buggy Pirates follow the Straw Hats into the Grand Line, but they take a different path than them.

Skypiea Saga
In the Jaya arc, they were seen meeting by chance with Portgas D. Ace, who decides to help them look for Luffy, apparently unaware of his goal. Buggy is also unaware of Ace being Luffy's brother. It also seems Ace has later left them behind and gone off on his own.

Whitebeard War Saga
Buggy was somehow caught by the Government and sent to Impel Down. As a result, the rest of the crew was forced by Alvida to leave him alone, and departed. However, after a series of events within the great prison, Buggy escaped and recruited many criminals, all of whom are, in truth, more powerful than he is. However, since they are blinded by his status as one of the Pirate King's former apprentices, and that he has been approached by Whitebeard and Shanks, two Yonkou, they are willing to follow him anywhere, thus forming a new crew for the Clown Pirate. Later, Buggy reunites with his old crew, and the two combined, greatly increasing the crew's status and power. Mr. 3 receives a letter from the World Government and delivers it to Buggy, what it contains is unknown as of yet.

Unnamed Pirate
Among the Buggy Pirates is an unnamed dark-skinned, small-sized clown pirate who wears a yellow sleeveless shirt and a yellow and purple striped cone hat. He has a strip over each eye, similar to scars, and thick lips. He is the one who carries Buggy's Buggy Balls to the cannon when it is time to attack.

His significance is in dubbing issues: due to racial references, in the 4Kids dub, his race was changed to Caucasian. He first appears in chapter 10 and episode 5.

Impel Down convicts
After Buggy's escape from Impel Down, many fellow convicts from the prison heard of his past as a member of Gol D. Roger's crew. They missed out that he was a mere apprentice, and potentially the weakest member on board. Consequently, they came to admire him as a powerful pirate. During the course of the Battle of Marineford, Buggy repeatedly shows his cowardice, but the convicts kept mistaking it as courage and bravado, furthering their admiration. By the end of the war, when Buggy reunited with his old crew, the convicts joined the crew, admiring First Mate Mohji and Second Mate Cabaji as well.

In truth, these new recruits are mostly more powerful than Buggy himself, and that they all have high bounties on their heads, but according to Mr. 3, who also joined the crew along with these other convicts and the only one who sees through the facade, their ears are so full of hope that they are half-deaf.

Original Crew
The crew, being one of the first to appear, is initially one of the weakest crews in the world. They were defeated by the Straw Hats pirates in their early days when only Luffy, Nami and Zoro were members and later were defeated in Loguetown by the Straw Hats and the Marines. It is possible, however, that they have grown in strength since then. One hint of this is that in Loguetown, Cabaji unveils a new technique to take out several of the Marines. Another hint that they probably became stronger is that although most average pirate crews simply cannot survive on the Grand Line, they seem to be perfectly capable of operating on it. Also, the fact that their crew has a Devil Fruit user such as Buggy, who not only having the experience of sailing on the Grand Line once before but also being a trainee on board of Gol D. Roger's crew, puts Buggy's crew on par with most other Grand Line crews. At this point, they have made it halfway through the Grand Line, something few pirate crews ever do.

Impel Down Recruits
After the breakout of Impel Down, the marines now considers Buggy as a bigger threat as he was labeled one of the two main instigator of the riot, along with Luffy. Unintentionally, his involvement made the Marines research him and rediscover that he had had a brotherly-like bond with Shanks and was in Gol. D. Roger's Pirate Crew, which they, and the Impel Down escapees, mistake to mean that he is powerful and influential.

The new recruits of this crew are all powerful criminals, all of whom have a higher bounty than Buggy, and are presumably more powerful than he is (though they don't know the latter, being blinded by Buggy's famous past). His new "crew" from Impel Down should be mainly from Level 2 (hence above Buggy in bounty but below 50,000,000) and given that one would assume there are more small time pirates caught than the greater known ones, he does however have at least one level 5 criminal with him. Buggy's group could be half of the escapees.

During the war against the Whitebeard Pirates, Buggy and his new crew wanted to take Whitebeard's head to make fame for themselves, but instead formed an alliance with him to take down the Marines first, with Buggy dreaming of being king of the world. He and his crew later stole a Visual Den Den Mushi to broadcast a commercial about Buggy's fame of being a member of the Pirate King's crew, but were eventually caught by Fleet Admiral Sengoku, who ordered Admiral Aokiji to freeze them and cease any further broadcast, though not before revealing to the world that Squardo stabbed Whitebeard as part of Sengoku's plot, which led the world to mistakenly believe that Whitebeard would sacrifice his allies to save his own crew, and that Squardo did so in revenge. However they have just been unfrozen by one of Akainu's attacks directed at Whitebeard that also hit them, reviving the broadcast.

When Buggy fled after the Blackbeard Pirates killed Whitebeard, his crew thought that he was respectful of Whitebeard and refused to desecrate the late Yonkou's corpse any further, they continued to follow him in more admiration than ever, even though he was in truth fleeing in fear. Even more, when Buggy got angry at Shanks for using him and acting as though they are still friends, the crew showed even more admiration, not knowing that Buggy's only reason for not fearing Shanks is due to their past relationship.

Reunion and Unification of Crews
After the war, Buggy is reunited with his original crew, and they lie, stating they never gave up looking for him, and tearfully welcome him back; Alvida speaks up about them abandoning Buggy, but is ignored. Buggy welcomes them back, Cabaji and Mohji introduce themselves to the Impel Down crewmates, who instantly worship them as well. Mr. 3 is also amongst the crew, as he has stayed with Buggy. As such, the Buggy Pirates have since then gained vast amounts of power and status.

Big Top
The Big Top is the Buggy Pirates' main ship. It carried them all the way through East Blue and into the Grand Line. After Buggy's imprisonment in Impel Down, Alvida took over the ship, and proclaimed herself captain of it, with Mohji and Cabaji's protests ignored. After Buggy escaped and participated in the Battle of Marineford, he managed to relocate his ship and reclaim his captaincy.

Super Flashy Raft
The Super Flashy Raft is a raft built by Buggy. It was first used by Buggy to leave an unknown island. After making its first trip, it was destroyed by cannibal fish. After the events in Gaimon Island, Gaimon managed to repair it. After he left Gaimon's Island he used this raft in search of the rest of his body but it was destroyed by a giant crab who tried to have Buggy as his dinner, but he survived and was rescued by Alvida who shared a common goal; to get revenge on Luffy. The name "Super Flashy Raft" comes only from the English dub of the anime, and does not appear anywhere else in the manga or original Japanese version of the anime.

Early One Piece
Oda's plans for Buggy's crew were for an animal tamer and a strange swordsman to be part of the crew. When they were first designed, none of the members of Buggy's crew had names. There was also another unnamed member of Buggy's crew who was dropped in later versions. Buggy himself was originally called Boogie.

In another rethink of their design, Zoro was added as a bodyguard of Buggy, but that was scrapped. In this version there was also a Carrier pigeon planned called Hachi who was a Opo bird and he came from the Grand Line. Hachi was later scrapped from the final version of the crew. At this point in the design, Buggy remained unchanged.

One Piece Colorwalk 1 also depicts Eiichiro Oda's concept designs for other possible crewmembers, who didn't make the cut, so to speak. These include a fat, checkerboard-skinned man, apparently named "Big Top", and a mime-like character, apparently named "Pantomime".

Translation and Dub Issues
In the 4Kids version, the black member of Buggy's crew was also changed to white. However this was common practice for 4Kids to change "Black Face" characters to another colour to avoid the black face stereotype, which remains to date a sensitive and political issue.

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