Shanks

Shanks won't take Luffy along, saying he's too young, and laughs when the boy eats the Gum-Gum Fruit the crew had stashed. When the bandit Higuma pours a drink over his head in the bar, Shanks laughs it off, and Luffy is furious with his hero. He only loses his cool when Higuma kidnaps Luffy. Higuma escapes by boat with the boy and throws him into the sea, where a Sea King appears. Shanks dives in, saves Luffy and loses his left arm to the monster, which he scares off with a single look.

As he leaves, Luffy says he'll become a pirate and King of the Pirates. Shanks puts the straw hat on his head and asks him to return it once he's a great pirate. Years later, in Orange Town, Buggy the Clown reveals the two were apprentices on the same ship and blames Shanks for making him swallow the Chop-Chop Fruit by accident and lose a treasure.

Ace is hunting Blackbeard, a former Whitebeard pirate who killed a crewmate and ran. Shanks, now one of the Emperors of the Sea, boards Whitebeard's ship with a barrel of sake. His mere presence knocks several crewmen out. He asks Whitebeard to make Ace stop hunting Blackbeard and reveals the scars on his face were Blackbeard's doing.

Whitebeard refuses. Their weapons clash, and the sky seems to split in two.

At Marineford, Ace and Whitebeard are already dead when Admiral Akainu raises his magma fist against young Marine Koby, who begged for the fighting to stop. Shanks arrives right then and blocks the strike with his sword.

With his crew behind him, he runs into Buggy again and announces he came to end the war and that anyone who wants to keep going will have to face him. Fleet Admiral Sengoku agrees, and Shanks asks to take Ace's and Whitebeard's bodies.

At the end of the Wano war, Shanks's crew is at sea near the country when the news arrives: Luffy has been recognized as an Emperor. The crew thinks about visiting him, but Shanks says no, and that it's time they went after the One Piece themselves.

When Admiral Ryokugyu tries to attack Wano after the war, Shanks drives him off with Conqueror's Haki alone, from a distance, without setting foot in the country. Luffy feels that Haki while eating with his friends.

Uta, the world's most famous singer, gives her first live concert on the island of Elegia, and Luffy learns she's his childhood friend and Shanks's adopted daughter. She traps the audience in a dream world and wants to keep them there forever.

The truth about the past comes out: twelve years earlier, Elegia was destroyed by Tot Musica, a demon tied to Uta's voice, and Shanks took the blame to protect her, leaving her on the island in the care of Gordon, Elegia's king. Shanks takes on the Marines to defend his daughter and, together with Luffy, brings the demon down. Uta sings one last time in her father's arms.

Eustass Kid, who fought Kaido in Wano, sails out to take on Shanks. Shanks sees the attack coming before it happens.

Shanks drops Kid's entire crew with Conqueror's Haki alone and finishes Kid with a single sword strike before his rival can attack.

Shanks appears in the manga's very first chapter, published in 1997, and spends most of the story offscreen, which turned each appearance into an event for fans. In the anime, he doesn't debut until episode 4, told as Luffy's memory. Shūichi Ikeda voices him in Japanese and Brandon Potter in Funimation's English dub. In Netflix's live-action series, Shanks is played by Peter Gadiot.