One Piece: Are Luffy and Koby Friends? Relationship Explained!

There are numerous stories about various types of relationships in One Piece, and this article is going to be one of those stories, as we are going to talk about two popular characters from the series and explain the very nature of their relationship. The characters in question are going to be Monkey D. Luffy, the protagonist of the series, and Koby, the young boy whom he saved from Alvida and who later became a Marine. In this article, you are going to find out whether Luffy and Koby are friends.

Although they are on opposite sides of the law, Luffy and Koby can be considered friends. Luffy has, actually, directly helped Koby join the Marines, even though Luffy had always wanted to become a pirate, so he was aware that Koby would ultimately become his enemy; regardless of that, Luffy still considers Koby his friend, and Koby does the same. Namely, Koby is very grateful to Luffy because he saved him from the tyrannical Alvida, motivated him, and gave him the courage to join the Marines, which Koby had been afraid of doing himself. This is why Koby respects Luffy, and the two of them can be considered friends.

The rest of this article will explore Monkey D. Luffy’s relationship with Koby while focusing, in particular, on the nature of their relationship and whether they are friends in the series or not, which is also the main and principal question of this article. If you’re not fully up-to-date with the events of One Piece, this article might contain some important spoilers, but we have to state that no new information will be presented here, as we will focus on old and well-known facts about the two of them.

Luffy and Koby are friends even though they’re on opposite sides of the law

To, of course, give you a proper answer to the question of the nature of the relationship between Koby and Luffy, we first have to tell you their shared story, of course.

When Luffy first sets sail for the Grand Line, his boat sinks, and he is forced to lock himself in a barrel to survive because he has lost his ability to swim due to taking the Gomu Gomu no Mi. The Alvida Pirates eventually pick up the barrel, and one night, Luffy opens it to frighten Koby, a young boy who was cleaning the storage room. While Koby tries to stop him, Luffy introduces himself and steals Alvida’s meals there.

Koby is afraid that Luffy will get them both into trouble and decides to help him escape from the ship, but Alvida catches them, and both of them end up in trouble. Still, Luffy, using his Gomu Gomu no Mi abilities, Luffy manages to defeat Alvida, scaring her crewmembers so much that they refuse to fight him. He then uses the situation and leaves with Koby.

During this encounter, Koby informed Luffy that he hated pirates (because of the horrible experience he had serving on Alvida’s ship) and that he wanted to become a Marine so he could help people; when Luffy told him he was a pirate, Koby did not believe him because Luffy was so nice to him.

In fact, Luffy was not only nice to him, he actually encouraged him to join the Marines, even though the Marines were enemies of pirates and they hated each other. Luffy valued other people’s dreams, and when he was certain that Koby’s dream was sincere, he encouraged him to do so, which influenced Koby greatly; so much, in fact, that he actually did enroll at the Marine Academy.

Because Koby was traveling with Luffy for a while, he was suspected of being in liaison with Luffy, which would have been a problem for the young boy in the Marines. Although Luffy did consider him a friend, seeing Koby’s conflicted loyalties (as the boy was torn between wanting to become a Marine and his friendship with Luffy), Luffy even hit him in front of witnesses, stating that he was not his friend.

This was, of course, just a ruse so that the other Marines could see that Koby was loyal to them and that he was not in cahoots with Luffy. Thus, Luffy risked their friendship for Koby, showing how much he valued and respected him. And the rest is history.

So, what about their relationship? What can be said about it? As we have established, Koby was one of the first people Luffy met during his journey. With the latter, he also traveled a short distance at sea, temporarily acting as navigator after the pirate had helped him escape from Alvida. The two then met again at Water 7 and were both very happy to see each other again.

Despite the admiration and friendship that binds him to Luffy, however, Koby is well aware of his role and his position, so much so that he declares, albeit amicably, that in the New World, he would have no problem capturing both Luffy and his crew. During the war for supremacy, Koby chooses to fight Luffy as a marine but is easily defeated by the pirate. After the time skip, Koby continues to admire his friend’s strength while remaining secretly happy to learn of his exploits.

And that is, more or less, the gist of it, really. Luffy and Koby are friends, which cannot be denied, but they are on opposite sides of the law, which puts a small strain on their relationship, but nothing major, to be frank. They respect each other greatly, and they are friends, regardless of what happened to them, as they share a bond that transcends their loyalties.

Does Koby love Luffy?

Now that we’ve explained everything, we can also answer one additional question that we have encountered online, and that is – does Koby love Luffy? We actually think that this question is the result of the changes made to Koby’s character in the live-action series, where Koby was portrayed as being somewhat feminine in appearance, as well as insecure and shy, so people thought that his behavior towards Luffy might be a sign of him having romantic feelings towards him.

But, in the original series, Koby was just a scared boy and wasn’t really feminine. He was scared of Alvida, he was scared of Luffy, he was scared of pirates, he was scared of the Marines… he was, basically, scared of everyone, so that was his general personality trait.

Once he got around to trusting Luffy, their relationship changed significantly, and when the two of them met much later, they greeted each other as old friends. So no, Koby does not love Luffy, and there is no romance between them in the series, despite the implications made by the live-action series.