Buggy Pirates

The Buggy Pirates (バギー海賊団, Bagī Kaizokudan) are a band of pirates in the One Piece world, led by Captain Buggy the Clown. Their captain Buggy the Clown is a former crewmate of Red-Haired Shanks and has met Whitebeard. He and his crew are currently in the Grand Line seeking revenge against Luffy.

Part in Story
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 recruit a transformed Alvida to his cause, regroups with his 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 are taking a different path than them.

They were last seen meeting up 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 now left them behind and gone off on his own.

Crew Strength
The crew, being one of the first to appear, is initially one of the weaker crews in the One Piece 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 currently consists of not one, but two Devil Fruit users, Buggy and Alvida, with the former of the two not only having the experience of sailing on the Grand Line once before but also being a trainee on board of Gold Roger's crew, puts Buggy's Band of Pirates on par with most other Grand Line crews.

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 Color Walk 01 also depicts Eichiro 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 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. Another famous example by 4Kids was Jynx from pokemon, who was eventaully changed to purple skin for the same reason.

Also See

 * Red-Haired Shanks
 * Portgas D. Ace
 * Whitebeard
 * Buggy the Clown arc