Buggy

Buggy "The Clown"

Buggy (バギー, Bagī), alias Buggy the Clown (道化のバギー,
Dōke no Bagī) is the captain of the Buggy Pirates as well as the co-leader of the Buggy Pirate Alliance, and a former apprentice of the Roger Pirates. He starts as an antagonist to Monkey D. Luffy, but allies with him to break free from Impel Down. He is the main antagonist of the Buggy the Clown Arc and has since become a highly-recurring character in the series. His bounty is 15,000,000 berries.

Appearance

Voice Actor: Mike McFarland (English), Shigeru Chiba (Japanese)

Buggy is a slim, yet muscular blue-haired man with an appearance resembling that of a clown, as to mirror his epithet. The big, red nose on his face is, in fact, his real nose. His birthday is August 8th.

Buggy's face is always covered with make up, just like a clown, and the motifs change from time to time: in his first appearance he had crossbones going down his face forming an X; he also had two blue lines near both of his eyes, red lipstick and his jolly roger on his hat. However, in later episodes after the Loguetown arc his look changes. First, a green star appears in the middle of the forehead, two half circles appear beneath the eyes, and there is a straight line on the middle of his chin. After that (when his crew meets Ace), he has two green dots on both sides of his head and four big green dots on the rim of his hat, which still has the jolly roger on it, and blue tassels coming from the sides of Buggy's hat which is his actual hair in the shape of two ponytails. While in the confines of Impel Down, Buggy's long hair is tied into just one ponytail. He also has green eyeliner and green lipstick, with a curvy line going down both sides of his face. In the Impel Down saga, he has crossbones again going down his forehead to below his eyes, two pink lines pointing up, and red lipstick

In his pirate captain attire with a much more bright color scheme, he dons a striped white and red shirt with short sleeves, white gloves reminiscent of the ones worn by clowns, a green sash around his waist like many other pirates, and a pair of loose light-green pants reaching to his calves, just above a pair of striped socks and pointy shoes. He also has a purple scarf around his neck. Hanging from his shoulders there is an orange, fur-lined captain's coat with green epaulets. On his head he has an orange hat with his jolly roger on it, over a bandanna with the same pattern of his shirt.

During the Whitebeard War Saga, after escaping from Impel Down, Buggy modified his striped prisoner's outfit with salvaged Navy uniform pieces to recreate the effects of a pirate captain: a coat and a tricorn that had the symbols crossed out.

Personality

Buggy will often feign intelligence, only to have his true incompetence revealed. Although he is not "stupid" in the traditional sense, he is prone to gross misjudgments that cost him; usually this is due to his overconfidence. In the original Japanese version of Fairy One Piece Tail, he inserts "hade ni" (派手に, hade ni, literally meaning "flashy"), into almost every sentence he speaks. Also in Japanese version, Like other characters, Buggy has a distinct laugh, "gyahahahahaha!"

His big red nose is something he is very touchy about, going so far as to destroy an entire town when a couple of kids made fun of his nose. Occasionally, he will mishear what others say as an insult about him or his nose, possibly due to paranoia.

He has a number of running gags in the series, including a delayed reaction towards things, he will at first act casually then when it sinks in he will act completely the opposite (for example, when Ace appeared on his ship, Buggy first greets him politely. Then, when he realizes he is on his ship, he blurts out "Hey, you freakin' moron! Who are you?"). Sometimes he will even do the opposite of this and overact the part then become calm having thought the situation through more deeply after the initial reaction. He also has what some might consider "dumb luck"; no matter what happens to him he is lucky enough to survive somehow (including being struck by lightning at Rougetown, being chased by Chaser, being frozen alive by Admiral Aokiji, or inadvertently slashed by Dracule Mihawk).

Buggy is one of the few villains to become reformed after facing Luffy, though only slightly. He also begins to accept people's kindness, though he can still be cruel to anyone who isn't a member of his crew or is aiding him in his goals. He also is fun loving and displays a huge fondness for parties, admiring those who are equally fun loving (strangely, he shares this trait with Tiger and Shanks). He takes great joy in riding on the beliefs of others and took a great advantage of the cheering crowds of prisoners from Impel Down upon his escape, who were impressed with his history on Roger's crew, as well as his connections with Shanks.

He also has a strong love of treasure. Unfortunately for him, his obsession with treasure led to him leaving himself open in his first encounter with Luffy to attack Nami (who was attempting to take off with said treasure) and was just the small window the superior Luffy needed to defeat him. Buggy fails to understand how anything but gold, silver or jewels can be considered "treasure"; an opinion which apparently hasn't changed in over 22 years even though so far it has led to constant failure.

His primary goal is to get revenge against Luffy, for defeating him, and Tiger, for ruining his dreams during his youth. His dream is to become King of the Pirates and own all the treasures in the world. After the escape from Impel Down, with the encouragement of his followers, he put his sights on defeating Whitebeard and conquering the "top". Many of those he has known previously such as Luffy and Whitebeard see him as little threat.

Another strange trait of Buggy's is his overconfidence and complete lack of fear toward swordsmen, no matter how powerful they may be, in contrast to his cowardice against other people stronger than him. This can be seen in such instances as his fight against Roronoa Zolo and Mihawk. This most likely is a trait he developed because of his Cursed Fruit-based immunity to cutting attacks.

Abilities and Powers

While not as powerful as other former Roger pirates, Buggy is a fairly capable fighter who was strong enough to survive all the battles with Whitebeard's crew and the extreme dangers of the Grand Line. His arrogance and greed usually gets the best of him, preventing him from fighting at his fullest.

While he was a considerable opponent at the beginning of the series, he became a lesser threat as more powerful enemies showed up. Finally, in the Impel Down arc, the Baroque Works members commented how weak or how much of a coward Buggy actually is. However, he is still able to survive the ordeals that even the more powerful people can (albeit with their help).

Buggy has very high endurance and resilience, since he survived an explosion from a redirected Muggy Ball, with hardly any resulting injuries (though his Cursed Fruit might have helped him somewhat), while a similar Muggy Ball severely injured Minotauros, one of the Demon Guards in Impel Down. He also possesses quite a great deal of physical strength, as he was able to lift and choke one of his underlings with just one hand, lifting a Blugori easily and slamming it into the floor (although it got up again with minimal injuries) and managed to sustain the weight of both Luffy and Jinbe while floating with the upper part of his body (though this may be attributed to his Cursed Fruit abilities).

One of the factors that assist Buggy in his exploits at least during the escape and the Battle of Marineford, would be his extraordinary luck. His uncanny ability to read the mood, as well as his love of theatrics and saying lines at a precise moment to strengthen the morale of his "crew" helped him secure their loyalty in furthering his plans. In addition, due to their misconceptions of his selfish actions, ie: running away out of fear as something to do with the death of Whitebeard and their short term partnership, as well as catching Jinbe by accident but they believed that was his plan all along, many pirates become extremely loyal to him. Most of the times they were in tears from his "heroics."

If anything, Buggy can at least be seen as a formidable chemist. This was seen when he was able to create a cannon ball with enough power to destroy a town, as well as making it as small as a mothball but just as destructive.

Cursed Fruit

Chop-Chop Fruit in action

Main article: Chop-Chop Fruit

Buggy accidentally consumed the Chop-Chop Fruit, a Paramythia type Cursed Fruit which allows him to separate his body parts and control them independent of each other, but robbed him of the ability to swim, which, according to Tiger (back when he,Tiger and Shanks were still cabin boys at Roger's ship) he was excellent at. The abilities gained from this fruit also make Buggy immune to slashing, cutting and cleaving attack; any such attack just separates him into his component parts.

In addition, most of his body is capable of flying through the air, with enough force to send a man flying through a wall - with the crucial exception of his feet. Even though the parts are separate, Buggy can still feel what the part feels; e.g. when Buggy pursed Nami while fighting against Luffy, he separated his torso from his waist, only to find that Luffy was aiming for the crotch (needless to say, this left him with a rather painful result).

Also, when Buggy used Chop-Chop Festival in an attempt to take down Nami, Luffy took one of the feet and tickled it, causing Buggy to break down in laughter. No matter how much of his body he separates, something also seems to act normal; e.g., his feet walking as normal while Buggy sends the rest of his body flying. Though Buggy is a strong fighter and his Cursed Fruit power makes him almost invincible, he was constantly leaving himself open in the latter half of his match for Luffy due to distractions, resulting in many careless mistakes.

A weakness of his fruit is that if a component part is restrained, he can't use the component part, shown by Nami when she restrained a part of his body in their first fight with him. Because he is invulnerable to cutting attacks, he could be considered the natural enemy to even the most powerful swordsmen, as seen when he easily survived Mihawk's extremely powerful slashing ability.

The major flaw of his Cursed Fruit's ability is his feet. They cannot leave the floor like the rest of his body. Buggy may also, despite feeling them at all times, lose pieces of his body, without direct eye sight to guide them back to him, it is impossible, though once he can see them he can easily guide them back.

Weapons

Blades

Buggy holding knives.

Buggy seems to prefer bladed weapons, though he most favors the use of knives. He tends to hold one single knife at a time or three between the fingers of his hands, and can apparently perform small feats of sleigh-of-hand to both store and draw them whenever necessary. Buggy seems to carry an impressive amount of these types of weapons on his person at all times; some of which he prefers to keep hidden under his gloves, or in his shoes (he throws both his legs spinning in an attempt to cut his opponent).

He was also seen using a sword in a (failed) attempt to cut Luffy's head off at Loguetown. Within Impel Down he initially wielded a battle-axe taken from one of the Blugori but after losing it armed himself with four katana-like weapons and a gun used by one of the prison staff.

Buggy Balls and Muggy Balls

Main article: Buggy Balls

Outside of blades, he also can be seen using (or threatening to use) his Buggy Balls, which are highly explosive cannonballs carrying his Jolly Roger on them and which are fired from a cannon. The Buggy Balls are able to clear entire streets consisting of buildings. In fact, he is one of the few pirates who actively uses cannons.

In addition, he had hidden "Muggy Balls", hand grenade-like weapons derived from his Buggy Balls on himself, with decreased size, but retaining the mighty explosive powers. Until now, he has only used three of them: first against the Minotaurus prison guard, a second one on Hannyabal's subordinates, and a third one on Dracule Mihawk, who redirected it towards Buggy. Due to these weapons' small size, Buggy was able to keep them to himself while being in Impel Down without the guards discovering and confiscating them.