Summary
- Zoro's sword-fighting skills surpass Luffy's, making him vital in battles against sword-wielding enemies.
- Zoro spent years honing his combat skills without relying on Devil Fruit powers like Luffy does.
- Zoro's stoic demeanor has helped Luffy learn to be strict with the crew, making them a stronger and more reliable team.
Monkey D. Luffy, the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates, and Roronoa Zoro, the crew’s combatant and second-in-command, have one of the most endearing and interesting relationships, not only in One Piece, but in the entire action shonen genre. They have impeccable chemistry, they unconditionally trust each other, and they are both working together to achieve their ambitious dreams.
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However, regardless of how close they are, they are also very different people, which ends up working quite well because they perfectly complement each other in ways that help them create a better and stronger pirate crew. As a result, there are many things that Luffy can’t do, but that Zoro can, and these are some of the most notorious examples.
7 Wielding Swords
Zoro’s Signature Fighting Style Is Too Much For Luffy
Roronoa Zoro is famous for being a skilled swordfighter. He is actually working towards his dream of becoming the greatest swordsman in the world. This would be quite a monumental achievement, because One Piece is filled to the brim with characters that fight by wielding swords, katanas, or any type of bladed weapon. Nevertheless, Zoro’s strict discipline, constant training, and signature Three Sword Style have already helped him become one of the strongest sword fighters in the series.
On the other hand, Luffy has never been good at wielding weapons in combat, let alone something as precise as a sword. He thinks they are cool, but he can’t use them effectively at all, as was seen when he temporarily tried (and failed) to wield the Nidai Kitetsu during the Wano Country arc. Instead, he prefers to fight with his bare fists and his Devil Fruit powers, and he can always trust Zoro to take care of any enemy sword fighters they may encounter along their way.
6 Fighting Without A Devil Fruit Or Haki
Zoro Spent Years Fighting Enemies Without A Power-Up
Both Luffy and Zoro are powerful combatants with many victories to their names, but their fighting styles have always been very different. Since he ate the Gomu Gomu no Mi at a very young age, Luffy spent many years training his rubber-based abilities and now relies a lot on them to fight. Of course, he was able to master the three forms of Haki after the time skip, which means that now he can perform powerful attacks without needing to stretch his body at all.
However, Zoro is completely different because he spent most of his childhood training at Isshin Dojo and learning how to fight with three swords at the same time. By the time he met Luffy and joined his crew, the infamous Pirate Hunter could fight and defeat all of his enemies by performing all sorts of impressive techniques with his swords, without needing any Devil Fruit powers or Haki to boost his abilities. Despite his strength and skill, Zoro still needed to learn the three forms of Haki during the time skip; otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to go to the New World with his crew.
5 Swimming
Luffy’s Biggest Weakness Is One Of Zoro’s Biggest Strengths
In the world of One Piece, Devil Fruits come with a big cost: anybody who eats one will immediately lose their ability to swim and will lose all their energy the moment they touch seawater. Luffy is no exception, and he has displayed his weakness towards seawater at multiple points throughout the story. Saving their captain from drowning has always been one of his crew’s responsibilities.
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Of course, Zoro has rescued his captain on many occasions, not to mention that he has also saved the other Straw Hats with Devil Fruit abilities, like Chopper or Brook. He is a very proficient swimmer thanks to his incredible strength and speed, but he is not necessarily the best swimmer in the entire crew; that title obviously belongs to Jinbe.
4 Using An Illusion To “Grow” Seven More Body Parts
Asura Is One Of Zoro’s Weirdest Techniques
Thanks to his versatile Devil Fruit powers, Luffy can modify his own body in incredible ways and pull off some truly unique attacks. His arsenal received a major upgrade when he learned how to use Haki, but Gear 5 unlocked a whole new level of over-the-top transformations that are only limited by his childlike imagination. However, there’s one specific thing that Luffy can’t do, but Zoro can.
In the Enies Lobby arc, Zoro revealed his Nine Sword Style technique, which allows him to grow four extra arms and two extra heads in order to perform a devastating final attack named Asura. In reality, he’s not growing actual body parts, but creating an illusion that makes him look like a three-headed demon with nine arms and nine swords. For a long time, it was never really explained how he was able to do this. That is, until the Wano Country arc, when Kaido mentioned that he was using his Supreme King Haki to create this bizarre illusion. This is definitely one of the most distinctive techniques in the entire series, and there’s nothing in Luffy’s arsenal that remotely resembles it.
3 Drinking A Lot Of Alcohol
Luffy’s Not Too Fond Of Zoro’s Favorite Beverage
Like any good pirate, Luffy can occasionally be seen drinking alcohol, mainly when he’s toasting and celebrating with the rest of his crew after an important battle. However, in the Dressrosa arc he confessed that he doesn’t actually like the taste of alcohol, and it has been implied that he has very little resistance to its effects.
However, Zoro is on a completely different level. He and Nami are the quintessential drinkers of the Straw Hat Pirates. He loves drinking alcohol in the same way that Luffy loves eating food, and has been repeatedly shown to have an incredible level of tolerance to it. Zoro may drink thousands of liters of alcohol in almost every arc, but he is never visibly drunk at any point in the series.
2 Keeping Calm Whenever Necessary
Zoro’s Stoic Personality Has Helped The Crew On Many Occasions
Despite being the captain of a famous pirate crew, Luffy is still a young boy with a lot of enthusiasm who can’t always hide his emotions. This makes him an endearing character, but there are several situations in which he really needs to calm down, and this is something that Zoro has been trying to teach him for years. Of course, Zoro's stoic personality can occasionally make him come off as rude or uncaring, but he’s actually quite patient and strategic.
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For example, when the entire crew was crying over leaving Vivi in Arabasta, Zoro calmed them down by reminding them that staying behind was her choice. Over the years, Luffy has matured and grown a lot as a pirate captain, so whenever he coldly confronts an enemy (like he did with Kaido and Big Mom in Onigashima), it’s immediately evident that he has been influenced by Zoro, even though he still has a lot to learn from his friend.
1 Being Strict With The Crew
The Most Important Lesson Luffy Has Learned From Zoro
Luffy clearly sees his crew as his family, which means he’s always nice and friendly with all of them. That’s perfectly fine, and one of the many things that makes him such a lovable main character, but being in a leadership position sometimes means giving orders to his crewmates and reprimanding them whenever they’re out of line. While Luffy is not very good at that, he always has Zoro by his side, who has been instructing him to be strict whenever it's necessary.
This side of Zoro’s personality has been shown on multiple occasions, like when he ordered Chopper to stop crying during the Davy Back Fight or when he told Luffy to be stricter with Usopp in Water 7 and not to accept him back into the crew until he apologized for his actions. As harsh as Zoro may seem at times, this attitude has been essential in making the Straw Hat Pirates into a stronger, more effective, and more trustworthy crew, and Luffy is very lucky to have such a strong right-hand man by his side.
- Release Date
- October 20, 1999
- Network
- Fuji TV
- Directors
- 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 Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
Cast
-
Mayumi TanakaMonkey D. Luffy (voice) -
Kazuya NakaiRoronoa Zoro (voice)
WHERE TO WATCH
- Writers
- 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
- Franchise(s)
- One Piece
- Creator(s)
- Eiichiro Oda
- Seasons
- 21
- Studio
- Toei Animation
- Number of Episodes
- 1122
