Sandbox / One Piece: Monkey D. Garp

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Main Character Index > World Government > Marines (Marine Admirals | Special Science Group) | Cipher Pol

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(Former) Vice-Admiral Monkey D. Garp "The Fist"

Voiced by: Hiroshi Naka (JP), Brian Mathis (EN, Funi), Eduardo Liñan (Netflix) (Latin American Spanish)

Age: 76 (Pre-Timeskip), 78 (Post-Timeskip)

Debut: Chapter 92 (Manga), Episode 68 (Anime)

"So what if I dropped you off a few cliffs, tossed you into the midnight jungle, and tied you to a balloon and set you to fly away...? It was to make you a stronger man!"

The Marine famed for being the rival of Gold Roger, King of the Pirates. He's also Ace and Luffy's grandfather (adoptive in Ace's case) and, ironically enough, the father of the world's most-wanted criminal, Dragon the Revolutionary. Garp is a cheerful, affable fellow, an old friend of Sengoku, former mentor to Kuzan/"Aokiji", and current mentor to Koby and Helmeppo. While Garp is happy that his grandchildren are making their way in life, he is also sorely disappointed in both of them for becoming pirates instead of Marines, in particular blaming Shanks for influencing Luffy in becoming a pirate. Garp has been offered the promotion to the position of Admiral several times, but rejected all of them, as he believes the responsibilities that come with being an Admiral would severely limit his freedom.

Considered the "Hero of the Navy", Garp displays legendary feats of strength and toughness that made him one of the strongest people alive before the Great Pirate Era. It's said his punches can shatter mountains, and he can toss around cannonballs like he's pitching a soft ball. He's also a master of Haki, allowing him hurt even his grandson's rubber body with his fists.

After the battle at Marineford, he resigns from his position in active fleet service, but stays in the Marines as an instructor while still retaining his rank, training and teaching younger Marines.

His bounty that is given out by Cross Guild is 3 crowns — the equivalent of 3,000,000,000 berries.

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A-K

• Abusive Parents: Played for Laughs. Garp subjects his grandchildren, Ace, Luffy and Sabo, extreme training and corporal punishment when they fail his training or misbehave, at least what he sees as "misbehaving".
• Accidental Hero: Garp earned the title of "The Hero" after he and Roger wound up teaming up with each other against the dreaded pirate Rocks D. Xebec during the God Valley Incident, in the process protecting the World Nobles that Rocks was apparently targeting from the dangerous pirate's violence. However, Garp actually knew in advance Rocks would be starting a war with the World Nobles, as, against his warnings, they had taken a "treasure" from Fullalead that was apparently valuable enough to instigate such open conflict. Garp had zero intentions of protecting the World Nobles from their own hubris: it was hearing that Roger was also heading to the Island and a chance to catch his rival that spurred him into action, with their subsequent team-up being apparently born out of necessity in the chaotic melee. Garp is ashamed of it for the reason why the World Nobles had descended from Marijoa in the first place, and the slaughter they had already inflicted on an innocent population before he arrived and reluctantly defended them because of his duty.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: His hair is white in the manga but grey in the anime.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • Played with. The rank of Vice-Admiral is no "Janitor", but one would figure the man who rivaled the Pirate King Gold Roger would be at the top of the chain. Garp, however, is perfectly content with his current rank and has refused numerous promotions to Admiral. Sengoku explains that accepting the position would make him essentially a pawn of the World Government and the Celestial Dragons, which Garp despises.
  • After the Time Skip, Garp gives up his Vice-Admiral status and becomes a Marine instructor. He's still important and strong enough to be assigned as an escort to the Reverie, a post worthy of an Admiral.
• Awesomeness Is a Force: During the assault at Pirate Island, Garp shows that he's not just a Conqueror's Haki user, but an immensely skilled and powerful one, capable of infusing it into his attacks, something that Kaido notes "only a handful" of the best Conqueror's Haki users are capable of.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: It became clear during the Paramount War that despite the absolute fear Luffy has for his grandfather, he does love him, and doesn't have it in him to act or wish harm onto Garp. As Luffy was mere feet away from Ace, Garp stood in his way out of duty, stating that if Luffy wanted to get to Ace, he would have to kill him. Ultimately, Luffy told him he didn't want do it, but Garp forced his hand — and then he falters, allowing Luffy to punch him and clear the way to Ace, showing that his love for his grandchildren outweighed his duty. In fact, the anime provides Garp's reasoning for his harsh training in a flashback, with this line:
  "You probably hate me for being so strict. But the reason I give you such hard training, and want you to become a Marine, is because I don't want you to go down the wrong path. That is my wish."
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Wears the exact same suit as Sengoku back when Roger was still around. Makes sense, as they kicked ass as a team.
• Badass Normal: Garp, the only Marine able to ever fight against the Pirate King Roger, does not have a Devil Fruit, and yet he's still one of the strongest characters in the series. His strength does not come from just his use of Haki, but rather from an absurd training regimen that he adhered to for years. It's revealed that he used armored Battleships as punching bags for decades, and it was one of his rules that no Haki or other sort of power was to be used. In the current day, the Battleship he used has a massive gaping dent from where Garp punched it for years.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Similarly to his grandson, Garp fights mainly with his fists.
• Benevolent Boss: When he orders his men to fix a wall he broke and they tell him they'll only do it if he helps instead of pulling rank on them he agrees and in the next scene he's shown doing exactly that.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He's as loud and brash as he's powerful.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The crap he was able to get away with, including arguing with the Fleet Admiral (both 20 years prior and recently, the former when he's being offered a promotion) and going wherever he wants to without his superior's permission, is balanced by his amazing service and legendary status among the Marines as "Garp the Hero", who alongside Sengoku, in Kong's words, "carried the Marines on their backs". He is considered one of the legendary figures during the era of Roger, having been the only one to corner him and battle as his equal. So that would give him a little lee-way amongst their ranks which he still holds even after retirement. In addition, whenever he's shown to be not on active duty he spend his days annoying the crap out of his fellow Marines officers by doing things like forcing them to come along and have snacks with him or just lounging around the Marine Headquarters bragging about his grandson.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Garp can easily punch through rock and metal, throw cannonballs with his bare hands at speeds higher than if they were fired from a cannon, carry and lift an iron flail that is several times larger than a battleship and, according to himself, pulverize eight mountains by using them as sandbags in preparation for his fight against Don Chinjao. His monstrous strength is finally displayed in full during the raid on Fullalead that SWORD conducts to rescue Koby, pulling off feats such as obliterating an entire town square with a single Haki imbued punch, tossing around a former Admiral, and throwing the monstrously huge San Juan Wolf into the sea without even trying. Part of his training regime is using battleships as punching bags, where the use of Haki or Devil Fruit powers (the latter he doesn't have) is prohibited, and he passes this method on to his students.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Appears (relatively) early in the series as an officer who takes Koby and Helmeppo under his wing, though his face and importance are not revealed until hundreds of episodes later.
• The Coats Are Off: Does this sometimes during his Let's Get Dangerous! moments, such as chasing the Straw Hats, or fighting alongside Sengoku against Shiki. His taunt action in the Pirate Warriors series of video games is actually him removing his Marine coat. See above to see the type of wear he had.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: He's a legend of the Marines, while his son is "The World's Most Wanted Man" and his grandsons are powerful pirates.
• Cold Equation: Garp lectures to young Marine students that they should not sacrifice their lives in order to save elderly citizens because the old are halfway to the grave already, whereas the young still have their best days ahead of them. Garp practices what he preaches, ordering his younger subordinates to retreat and leave him behind into uncertain demise.
• Cool Mask: Eiichiro Oda used the same design for Garp as he used for Luffy's unnamed grandfather in the Romance Dawn pilot stories but didn't want readers to realize this too quickly. So he gave Garp a bulldog mask in his initial appearances. He wasn't revealed as Luffy's grandfather until Chapter 431 of the manga and Episode 313 of the anime.
• Cool Old Guy: He doesn't like his grandson being a pirate, but he isn't exactly in a hurry to arrest him either. He also took Koby and Helmeppo under his wing and turned them into badasses.
• Control Freak: Zig-Zagged: Garp constantly hitting his grandkids for wanting to be pirates, putting them through Training from Hell much to their discontent and angst, and forcing his expectations onto them and telling them how he wants them to live certainly implies this. Yet he leaves them behind to be raised by mountain bandits to become marines.
• Declining Promotion: He has been offered the promotion to the rank of Admiral multiple times, and rejected all of them, claiming that the rank would only keep him from having the freedom he already has. Part of the reason is because he doesn’t want to be a pawn of the Celestial Dragons, which he despises.
• Didn't Think This Through: Not only did he think that leaving his grandkids in the care of mountain bandits would turn them into navy soldiers, but Garp thought that making Luffy and Ace, both of whom are the children of notorious criminals, into marines would automatically keep them safe from the World Government, which wouldn't be guaranteed regarding their absolute justice and their tendency to annihilate anyone just for being related or connected to criminals in any way, as Ace points out to Garp at Impel Down, though Garp doesn't seem to take note on this.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He blames Shanks for "corrupting" Luffy into wanting to become a pirate, even though his Training from Hell meant to turn Luffy into a marine has repeatedly endangered his life and made him miserable and completely terrified of his grandfather, essentially making him resent the idea of joining the navy. It's implied that Luffy was inspired by Shanks because of the freedom and adventure that comes with piracy, and that Luffy wanted to choose his own path, make his own decisions and take control of his life by living it the way he wants to live, as opposed to how Garp wants him to live and get as far away from his grandpa as possible.
• The Dreaded: He was this to pirates, and with good reason, as he is remarked to have cornered the Pirate King several times. However, this is deconstructed with Dadan's mountain bandits and his own family, as he would force them into compliance through intimidation and imprisonment whenever they try to speak up, question or object to his parental methods about dumping Luffy and Ace on them, having no idea how to train them into marines even if they wanted to. It also made his grandchildren fear him more than anything due to the Training from Hell he subjected them to during their Hilariously Abusive Childhood, giving them something of a distant and tense relationship with him when they reached adulthood.
  Sanji: Luffy, is your grandfather really...?
  Luffy: He is. Don't try to fight him!
• Enemy Mine: He had to team up with Gol D. Roger of all people, in order to take on the Rocks Pirates on God Valley 40 years ago.
• Entitled Bastard: Downplayed: While he is proud of his grandkids and loves them dearly, he still demands respect from them even after attacking them for not complying with his wishes, punching Luffy for defending Shanks' honor, and again when he felt Luffy's farewell to him was too casual, saying he wants his grandson to love him. In fairness it's kind of hard for your relatives to love you when you keep hitting them all the time, as Luffy pointed out.
• Epic Flail: It's the size of a Goddamn battleship!
• Everyone Has Standards: Even he has disdain for the World Nobles, refusing to serve them and openly calling them shitbags in public despite the possible repercussions. Being forced to defend them during the God Valley Incident put quite the sour taste in his mouth, and it's one of the reasons why he doesn't speak about that battle at all.
  (After Stelly asks Garp to make him a Celestial Dragon): "You want to become scumbags like them?"
• Failure Knight:
  • He's one of the greatest Marines in history and hailed as a hero who vanquished dangerous pirates on the seas, but his son is "The World's Most Wanted Man" plotting to overthrow the system Garp upholds, something he's implied to consider a great failure despite his pride in his family.
  • Despite (or because of) his rather backwards efforts to cause otherwise, his grandsons become powerful pirates due to his training to make them great Marines and he's forced to hunt them down.
  • He fails to protect his grandsons during the Battle of Marineford which ends in Ace's death, and Luffy being gravely injured and traumatized before Garp's eyes. Ace's death means he also fails to fulfill his promise to Roger and Rouge to protect him from harm.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Grandfather, but still applicable. Luffy and Ace wanted to be pirates as children, and he angrily chides them for even mentioning it. It's justified with the revelation about their fathers, who are notorious criminals (one being his son, Monkey D. Dragon), and he wants them to become Marines. Unfortunately for him, Luffy and Ace became powerful pirates on their own, which was something he didn't want happen.
• A Father to His Men: Garp is very protective towards his proteges, because he has full hope in the future generation of marines that he's raising. During Marineford, Garp is horrified at seeing Koby put himself in danger during his speech to every combatant there and, during the Final Saga, he's completely throws protocol out of the window and leads an attack on Fullalead in order to save his protégé, outright stating that they should have thought twice about kidnapping Koby - not only does he call Koby the future of the Marines, but also "irreplaceable". In turn, his men loved Garp dearly, enough that Grus, Koby and Helmeppo all shed tears when realizing he willingly let himself be left behind rather than retreating with the rest of SWORD.
• Feeling Their Age: It's implied by a few that despite the awe-inspiring strength he still shows, being in his seventies has rendered Garp not quite as powerful as he used to be. He admits this himself in a Played for Laughs moment on Hachinosu where he ravages an entire city square with a single Conqueror's Haki-infused punch, surveys the damage... and then scoffs to himself.
  Garp: Just look at this mess... Hmph... After all these years... I'm losing my edge!!!
  Pirates: Oh, shut up!!! You can't possibly do more damage than this!!!
• Fling a Light into the Future: After saving Koby and realizing he can't win against the majority of Blackbeard's crew combined, Garp uses all his strength to let the younger marines escape. After being defeated, Garp is still smiling, confident that the newer generations will win against Blackbeard.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Garp wanted Luffy and Ace to become Marines, and the Training from Hell he subjected them to was to prepare his grandsons for life in the Navy. He actually succeeded in getting Dragon to join the Marines, but Dragon quit after failing to find any true justice in the Navy.
• Generation Xerox:
  • He looked just like Luffy in his youth, and it gradually becomes clear that despite being on opposite sides of the law, Luffy takes a lot after Garp, even more so than Shanks or Roger (something Aokiji noted when he first met Luffy). They share similar personalities and quirks, similar fighting styles, and even similar senses of morality, as they both hate the World Nobles. This is only reinforced when Oda released drawings of an older Luffy at ages forty and sixty, revealing that (in an ideal future) Luffy will grow up to be a dead ringer for Garp.
  • Aside from his similarities with Luffy, Smoker's relationship with Luffy is extremely similar to the relationship Garp had with Roger. While Smoker chases after Luffy because he was the first pirate to ever escape him, it becomes clear that Smoker can't find it in himself to hate Luffy — an issue that also plagued Garp, as he was never able to hate Roger. In fact, by the time of the Pirate King's execution, the two had pretty much become Fire-Forged Friends (even if Garp would never admit it), so much so that Roger entrusted Ace's safety to him.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Garp has thrown cannonballs like baseballs and a seriously massive flail for long range, but when it's up close and personal, he starts swinging with his bare knuckles. He earned his epithet, "The Fist", when his punch won out in an all-or-nothing duel against the continent-splitting headbutt of Chinjao.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has a scar over his left eye.
• Go Out with a Smile: While it's unclear if he's dead, he's laughing cheerfully as his former apprentice Kuzan freezes him solid, content in the knowledge that everyone else has escaped to safety.
• Ground Punch: His attack Galaxy Punch causes a whole town square on Fullalead to explode with one strike.
• Heavy Sleeper: Garp often falls asleep spontaneously and without warning, which is where his grandchildren get it.
• Hero Antagonist: Garp is an heroic character but, as a marine, he's on the other side of justice compared to Luffy, who is a pirate, and is a minor threat at the end of the Water 7 Saga.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Garp willingly lets himself be left behind on Fullalead after successfully rescuing Koby, his last scene being him surrounded by the Blackbeard Pirates as Kuzan freezes his whole body while Garp himself laughs heartily.
• Hypocrite: He hates pirates and considers Shanks a bad influence on Luffy, yet he sends his grandchildren away to be raised by mountain bandits. The mountain bandits themselves actually lampshade the irony and hypocrisy of this.
  • Despite claiming he has no sympathy for criminals, he treats Dadan like an old friend. Through in an intimidating and opposing kind of way.
  • He is also dedicated to the marines, which is the military of the world government, which is ruled by the Celestial Dragons, whom he hates.
  • There's his promise to Gold Roger to raise his son Ace after he died, only to irresponsibly hand him off to mountain bandit Dadan to look after him. To be fair, he couldn't exactly take Ace with him on his Marine duties...
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: The stress of having to oppose one grandson trying to rescue the other one while also fighting between his loyalty to family versus duty basically broke him when he tried to Take a Third Option by doing both and failing miserably. Even though he puts on a cheery facade, deep down he feels guilty about not doing enough to save Ace and refused to defend himself when Dadan beat him up for being a fence-sitter.
• I Let You Win: During the Paramount War, Garp loses to Luffy in one punch, despite being the only person in the series who has ever genuinely scared Luffy, because he let him win intentionally with the hope he could save Ace. Sengoku realizes it.
• Innocently Insensitive: Possibly regarding his parenting style. He takes his grandson Luffy to be raised by mountain bandits in order to keep him away from "bad influences" like pirates, even though Luffy hates mountain bandits because one tried to kill him before being saved by Shanks. Luffy even voiced how Shanks saved his life and how he loathes mountain bandits, only for Garp to double down on his belief that Shanks "corrupted" Luffy, and his grandson is "spouting nonsense".
• Insane Troll Logic: His idea of turning his pirate-loving grandsons into good, strong Marines? Have mountain bandits raise them. Even the bandits are aghast at his thought process.
• Irony:
  • The very incident that earned him the epithet "The Hero", is the one he dislikes talking about the most. This is because he had to team up with a pirate — Gol D. Roger, no less, to stop the Rocks Pirates. He also was forced to save the Celestial Dragons, who he despises.
  • Since he is loyal to the Navy, the World Governments military, this technically means that he works for the Celestial Dragons, the one group of people he hates even more than pirates. It’s even more ironic considering his own son is named Dragon.
• I Warned You: In the past, he warned the government not to mess with Fullalead, knowing the pirates there would get back at them if they did. Which is what happened. When Kong asks him to go defend the Celestial Dragons at God Valley he outright refuses, pointing out that he did warn them and they brought it on themselves. He ends up going anyway though when he hears Roger is there as well.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He looked remarkably hunky as a young Marine◊, very much resembling a mixture of Ace and Luffy.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's crude, strict, and a lousy parent all things considered. But behind all of his prestige as Hero of the Navy, he's a man that deeply loves his family and proteges, and his Conflicting Loyalty during the War on Marineford tears him apart on the inside.
• Ki Manipulation:
  • He is a master of Armament Haki. He's so masterful with it that when he clashes with Don Chinjao in the past, Garp with his Haki fist and Chinjao with his Haki continent-splitter drill head, Garp not only won, he flattened Chinjao's drill head. Also, his usage of Armament is so extensive it reaches the point of instinct: If he wants to hit (and hurt) something or someone, he'll damn well will hit it. It’s implied that he’s capable of using Observation Haki as not only is it stated that anyone who’s at least a Vice-Admiral is capable of using the standard versions, but also Koby is recommended to ask Garp to teach him how to use it.
  • Chapter 1080 also shows that he's an incredibly skilled user of Conqueror's Haki, able to infuse it into his attacks like Kaido and Luffy, something that "only a handful" of the most skilled Conqueror's Haki users can do.

L-Z

• Let's Get Dangerous!: For most of his appearances, Garp is perpetually holding back in some fashion, be it due to his not taking the situation seriously, or his emotional conflicts during the battle at Marineford leading to him being unwilling to fight his grandson. It's only towards the end of the series when he joins SWORD in rescuing Koby from the Blackbeard Pirates that he shows his full strength.
• Lightning Bruiser: As one of the strongest fighters of the world without any Devil Fruit, Garp is as insanely fast as he's powerful, being able to casually Speed Blitz Kuzan while chiding him for "growing soft" and appearing as a mere blur of speed as he attacks Avalo Pizarro. The reaction every Blackbeard Pirate has to his incredible speed is utter fear.
• Like a Son to Me: Ace is the son of Gol D. Roger, Garp's greatest rival, but the latter has come to genuinely love the boy as his own surrogate grandson, to the point he remains conflicted between his marine-side and fatherly-side during the entirety of the Summit War.
• Like Father, Like Son: Grandson in this case, as both he and Luffy both share gluttony, narcolepsy and a tendency to say secrets without knowing the consequences of saying them until after it’s done.
• Living Legend: To the people of the One Piece world he is THE Marine, even decades after his heyday. Of course he's done several legendary things, like fighting Roger several times, but what he's most famous for is saving the world from the Rocks Pirates that came one generation before Roger.
• Loved by All: Garp's reputation as both a war hero and a mentor to new generations of Marines is big enough to outweigh his continual resistance to any orders given to him in favor of his own judgement, up and to including continually refusing promotions just so he doesn't end up becoming one of the pawns used to protect the Celestial Dragons.
• Made of Iron: Being stabbed in a sneak attack doesn't stop Garp from quickly counterattacking with a punch, and barely moments after he eats a punch square to the face from Kuzan while delivering one of his own which sent both combatants flying. And even when both attacks start to visibly take their toll on him, Garp still manages to bowl over Kuzan with a punch, then unleashed a massive attack that severely injures Avalo Pizarro by cracking Fullalead's skeleton rock nearly in half.

• Mentor Occupational Hazard: He's the mentor to Koby, Helmeppo and Kuzan, and fittingly he disappears after rescuing the first from the last by facing down a full half of the entire Blackbeard Pirates alone.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Garp raids Fullalead in a rescue attempt to save Koby from Blackbeard. Garp is fully prepared to die to save his apprentice, having likely wanted to ensure he saves Koby whereas he did nothing when Ace died two years prior and wanting to atone for his inability to save his grandson.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: The D in his name, shared with his son and grandson, is part of the Will of D, a mysterious legacy that somehow connects them all to the World Government and the Celestial Dragons.
• Never My Fault: He blamed Shanks for corrupting Luffy into wanting to be a pirate and scolded Dadan and her mountain bandit family for failing to train him and Ace into becoming Marines, even though the bandits, who as criminals have no experience in obeying the law, wouldn't know how to train the boys as such even if they wanted to. Not to mention, Garp's Training from Hell made him a horrible Parental Substitute for Luffy, who became terrified for his life whenever in the presence of his grandfather and wanted nothing to do with Garp or enlisting in the Navy because of that. Which is what led to him being inspired by Shanks due to the romanticism of piracy and adventuring in the first place. Apparently Garp never thought that he himself was the reason why his grandchildren turned out the way they did, due to his poor insight and misguided attempts to put them on the "right" path through Tough Love.
• No Listening Skills: Some people he knows view him as having this, since fleet admirals Sengoku and earlier Kong regularly gets livid by his constant Refuge in Audacity and can't do anything because of Garp's reputation, and his grandsons and the Dadan family because of his disgust in the former's pirating dreams and their own desires and the latter being intimidated by him whenever they speak against him. Luffy even told him that he continuously voiced his refusal and disinterest to be a marine and that it was Garp's fault for ignoring him and disregarding what he wanted.
• No-Sell: Garp breaks out of Kuzan Ice Ball with no difficulty since his haki is powerful enough to counter most powers of Devil Fruits.
• Not Afraid to Die: Just like his grandsons and all the other carriers of "Will of D."^note except Blackbeard, he is in no way afraid of his own death.
• Oblivious to His Own Description:
  • He calls Luffy an idiot for saying goodbye to him so casually, stating that he wants his grandson to love him, even though Garp himself is an idiot for thinking that endangering and subsequently traumatizing Luffy his entire childhood would instill a desire to become a marine. Garp also thought that his boss would let him get away with letting Luffy go for being his grandson.
  • After Sengoku reveals Luffy's relation to Dragon, Garp comments how it wouldn't change anything since Luffy's reputation is already "ruined" and calls him and Ace "damn fools" for becoming pirates. This is coming from the guy who regularly endangered them through near lethal experiences their entire childhood, beats them up whenever they speak out against or stand up to him, and left them alone to be raised by mountain bandits, all for the sake of making them marines, which might not even guarantee their safety even if they do try to enlist. It makes you wonder who the bigger fool is.
• One-Man Army: During the raid on Fullalead Garp mowed down countless pirates, ran over through Blackbeard's Titanic Captains without issue, fend off Kuzan and inflicted massive property destruction backed up by only three other Marines.
• The Only Believer: Downplayed; Garp is not the only one, but he believes in the ideals underpinning the very concept of the Marines, maintaining peace and protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Unfortunately, the organization is mired in red tape, answers to an absolute tyrant who cares little for civilians, and his contemporaries and apprentices bog down the mission through a mixture of personal stubbornness over their own views on "justice" and pragmatic compromises with outright criminals.
• Opt Out: He wishes to step down from his position in the Marines, after all that's happened in the Whitebeard War. He doesn't exactly go out, instead becoming a Veteran Instructor.
• Papa Wolf:
  • He's about to confront Akainu for killing Ace until Sengoku stops him. Garp isn’t just pissed at Akainu over killing Ace, he’s livid at Akainu for trying to take another one of his grandsons, since Luffy was his next target.
    "You better keep holding me down, Sengoku! Cause if you don't, I'm gonna murder that Sakazuki!"
  • Garp completely willing to take on the entire Blackbeard Pirates roster to protect Koby, his protege, and demonstrates that he isn't playing by reducing an entire town to rubble in one punch.
• Parental Hypocrisy: Garp is about to beat on Luffy when they both fall asleep. When Garp wakes up later, he then wails on Luffy for falling asleep despite having done so himself.
• Parental Neglect: Although Garp was Luffy and Ace's guardian, he wasn't their primary caretaker. It's implied that a combination of Makino, Mayor Woop Slap, and the various townspeople of Windmill Village were in charge of the actual work of raising Luffy up until he was seven, whereupon his care was passed onto Dadan, who had already been raising Ace since he was a baby. Garp, meanwhile, spent upwards to several months at sea to fulfill his duties as a Marine and could only visit his grandsons a few times a year, if that. This is one of the reasons why Luffy was so susceptible to Shanks's influence and why both boys were eventually motivated to become pirates; Garp wasn't around nearly enough to influence them, and when he was, it was in such a way that it only made them more determined to follow their dreams despite his protests.
• Parental Substitute: Garp tried to be a father-figure for both Luffy and Ace. But considering that he just handed them off to mountain bandits to train them as Marines, only visited to give them Training from Hell, assaulted them for their pirate dreams and endangered them by subjecting them to a Hilariously Abusive Childhood, he failed. Epically. To the point that not only did they go on to have strained relationships with him, but they also became pirates instead, just to get away from him. What did he expect would happen?
• Parents as People: He loves Ace, Luffy, and Sabo - but he also put them through Training from Hell during their Hilariously Abusive Childhood to make them strong Marines, and that was when he was around at all. But in turn, that was because of his fear that due to who Ace and Luffy's fathers were, they would be hunted down by said Marines like dogs if they weren't on their side, (though there is also the likelihood that they'd be killed anyway even if they did join). However, because of this he constantly disregarded what they wanted or how they felt in the process of forcing the lives that he wanted them to have, as it was shown when he dragged Luffy to be raised by Dadan without either of their consent and just leaving them to deal with it. He kept forcing his expectations onto them and deciding their lives and futures for them instead of letting them become their own people, make their own choices, and accepting them for who they are and what they want to be. If anything, this might've enforced their desire to be pirates even more to achieve freedom and to get away from him.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Garp's Galaxy Impact attack shows that he is fully capable of matching Devil Fruit users with only his physical strength and Haki prowess in this department.
• The Power of Love: He claims that he can punch through Luffy's rubber defenses because he uses a "Fist of Love!"
• Punny Name: When his name is translated into Japanese, garp means koi. Koi is a decorative fish, but in other context with different kanji it means love. Garp's signature attack Fist of Love (Ai yaru Kobushi) is a hidden reference to his name as it uses another word for love instead of koi.
• Red Baron: He has two: Garp the Fist and the Legendary Marine Hero. The first was earned because his punch blunted the invincible drill cranium of Don Chinjao, and the second was earned when he (alongside Gol D. Roger) defeated the captain of the dreaded Rocks Pirates thirty-eight years ago.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: With Sengoku; Garp is the red oni, being Hot-Blooded and a Rebellious Spirit within the Marine ranks. Sengoku is the blue oni, being calculated and serious. The dynamic is upset somewhat when Sengoku gets impatient with Garp's family, yet Garp always brushes him off with a laugh... the one exception being Luffy invading Marineford.
  Sengoku: "Hey Garp! Your family's messing things up again!!"
  Garp: "LUFFY, NOOOOO!!!"
• Refuge in Audacity: Can brag about the achievements of his criminal grandson in front of Sengoku, and the only punishment he gets is Sengoku stealing and eating his crackers.
  • A subverted example occurs at the end of the Water 7 arc. He made an official report that he let Luffy go because he's his grandson. Predictably, Sengoku pulled rank and sent him back to do the job properly.
• Sacrificial Lion: His Heroic Sacrfice allowing Koby and the rest of SWORD to escape Fullalead solidifies just how big a threat the Blackbeard Pirates are in the face of the final arc.
• Sink or Swim Mentor:
  • He seems to feel that throwing a child into a bottomless ravine, among other things, was an appropriate way to train him to be a strong Marine. Luffy's endless will to live has been attributed to this training, though.
  • He then realized that his endless amount of time away from home was not working towards his goal of making Luffy a Marine, so he left him with a friend and her underlings to raise into being a Marine alongside Ace. Said friend was a mountain bandit. He was asking for it, really.
• Sins of Our Fathers: An often-overlooked downside of his famous reputation is that Garp has a number of enemies from his heyday that would love nothing more than to get back at him through his descendants. Don Chinjao straight up admitted during his fight with Luffy that if he had known Dragon was Garp's son, he wouldn't have lived long enough to have Luffy in the first place. The only reason this isn't more of a problem is because Garp is seen as a hero by the public, and the fact that he had any descendants at all wasn't well-known until recently. Garp also points out that it’s pointless to punish an old man like himself over his son and grandsons’ long list of crimes.
• Slasher Smile: He frequently gives a devious toothy grin when entering combat, as seen when he prepares to rain absolute cannonball hell on the Thousand Sunny and when he decimates Fullalead's pirate defenders.
• So Proud of You: Spends the final part of the Fullalead raid beaming in pride about how much Koby has grown and he's the only person who does not in any way underestimate Koby in any way, even bursting into gleeful booming laughter as he sees Koby truly unleash his might.
• Taking the Bullet: Invoked. When Shiryu is about to stab Koby, Garp jumps between them and gets stabbed instead. Shiyu comments that this was exactly what he hoped for.
• The Slow Walk: In the anime, once Akainu kills Ace he is seen walking towards the Admiral with an incredibly brutal snarl on his face, all too willing to rip Akainu apart. He would gladly have done so as well, but Sengoku stopped him.
• There Was a Door: Invoked Trope. He reveals himself to the Straw Hats on Water 7 by punching through a wall explicitly because it looked cool. He was nice enough to repair it afterward, though.
• Tough Love: Garp is the way he is because of this concept. No matter how harsh he was on Luffy and Ace with their Training from Hell as he desperately attempted to impose the lives of Marine soldiers onto them, he only wanted to protect them from a world that would only ever want to see them dead. The trade-off was that he made a poor Parental Substitute, leaving them in the care of mountain bandits to become marines and barely spending quality time to bond with them and get to know them better, and even when he was around his insane training regimens regularly endangered the kids and made them completely terrified of him. If anything, his poor and unorthodox parenting methods made them want to become pirates even more to get away from him. Admittedly, while the brothers do recognize that their grandfather loved them, and they do love him in return to a degree, it ultimately isn't enough to sway them from pursuing the lives they wanted or even want anything to do with him, since they don't have a problem knowing that, as pirates, they'll have marine hero Garp as their enemy.
• Training from Hell: He inflicted harsh training to anyone under his tutelage, his own grandsons included. His own training exercises involves punching battleships with his bare hands without Haki and smashing apart mountains in preparation to face Don Chinjao.
• Turn Out Like His Father:
  • He tries so very hard to make his grandson, Luffy, a Marine like himself. However, he fails and Luffy becomes a highly wanted pirate, much like his own father, who is the leader of a revolutionary army and the most wanted man in the world. Ironically, in the Water Seven Arc, Luffy and his crew proclaim war against the world government, much like his father did. This is ultimately averted, however, in that Garp loves both his son and his grandson and is in fact quite proud of them. He just didn't want Luffy to be a pirate because it meant, as a Marine, he'd have to oppose his own grandson.
  • The same goes for preventing Ace from ending up like his father, Gol D. Roger.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Garp in his younger days looked very much similar to his grandson, Luffy. In an SBS, Oda's drawing of an older Luffy also shows that a 60-year old Luffy would resemble his grandfather. This is especially uncanny, since Dragon has no Strong Family Resemblance to either men despite being a generation between the two.
• Uncertain Doom: After being seen laughing cheerfully and full of life in spite of being impaled and in the process of being frozen, commanding his subordinates to leave him behind, the narrator declares him as "missing" leaving his survival uncertain.
• Veteran Instructor: Not long before the Time Skip, he resigned from active service and became an instructor for teaching young Marines. Even before that, he also turned cabin boys Koby and Helmeppo into hardened Marine officers.
• Vetinari Job Security: His son is the most dangerous man in the world, his grandson is an infamous pirate and his adoptive grandson was a member of the Whitebeard Pirates and the son of Gold Roger but despite this, and despite being able to brag about these facts to his boss (albeit who is also his best friend), he retained his position as Vice-Admiral, even turning down several promotions, because he's a legendary Marine hero who cornered Gold Roger numerous times and defeated the Rocks Pirates.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Him (acts like an older version of Luffy) and his son, Dragon (who is always shown as serious).
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Played straight and subverted. He laments the choices his grandsons made in life, having wished they would become strong Marines. However, this is not out of disappointment, but because he never wanted to be put in the position of having to arrest and potentially execute them. Regardless of their behavior, he has always been proud of them, and expresses this sentiment aloud — in front of Sengoku, no less.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: This is more or less his reaction when Luffy and Ace expressed their desire to be a pirate or talk back to him about what they want or thought. He also said that Luffy owed him an apology after Garp hit him.
• World's Strongest Man: During his younger days he was a contender for the title of strongest person in the world, personally cornering Roger on many occasions. In fact, Garp and Roger teamed up to defeat Rocks, a very powerful pirate in his own right. So powerful that three of the original Emperors trace their origins to him. Even in his old age, Garp is still one of the physically strongest people in the entire narrative.
• Worthy Opponent: He was considered a worthy opponent to Gold Roger, being the only marine able to go toe-to-toe with the former King of Pirates. Knowing he would soon die, Roger entrusted Garp with the life of his unborn child, Ace.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Most of his attacks boils down to punching his enemies really really hard, but at times he'll also grab, smash and toss them around, as his Blue Hole attack demonstrates.
• You Never Asked: Sengoku gives this as the reason why so few have heard the reason why Garp became the hero of the Marines. He's not the kind of person to lie about what happened battle at God's Valley if asked to tell the story but because he is ashamed of the event he will never bring it up on his own.
• Your Size May Vary: Goes from roughly a head above Helmeppo (which is tall but not excessively so) in his introductory mini-arc to almost twice Luffy's size at Marineford.
• Zero-Effort Boss: At Marineford, to Luffy, because of an I Let You Win scenario: Garp didn't want to fight his grandson, especially when said grandson was trying to save his other, older, adoptive grandson from execution.

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