Archive · Reference document
The One Piece bounty system, as One Piece Wanted presents it
Taken one at a time, bounties are nothing complicated: a name, a face, a sum. What is complicated is trying to represent the whole system. That is what One Piece Wanted does, and the work's own limits show up at once — amounts the story does not give and may never give, states it never spells out, existences neither confirmed nor ruled out.
Those gaps, and many more details of the same kind, called for a decision: what to display, what to assert, where to stop so as to invent nothing. This page gathers those decisions and explains them. Each section reads twice — first what the work establishes, then what One Piece Wanted makes of it.
01Who issues a bounty
What the work says
The historical issuer is the World Government, acting through the Marines: a dedicated department at headquarters sets the amount, based on the threat the institution credits the target with. A bounty is only worth anything once circulated — its whole purpose is to open the hunt to as many people as possible, so the poster goes out the moment it is issued, carried by the News Coos that also deliver the newspaper. That is often how a character finds out about his own bounty: it lands in his hands.
A second issuer appears at the very end of Wano, in chapter 1058. Cross Guild, founded by Buggy, Crocodile and Dracule Mihawk, puts a price on Marines. The inversion is complete: a criminal organisation publishes notices on the soldiers meant to arrest it, and pays for their elimination as readily as for their capture.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
One Piece Wanted carries over both issuers from the work: the Marines on behalf of the World Government, who account for the vast majority of the notices, and Cross Guild for the ones aimed at Marines.
A third label exists on this site alone: OPW, that is, One Piece Wanted itself. It carries the characters who can be shown to be hunted by nobody. Rather than leave them out, One Piece Wanted grants them a page like any other, with a poster built on the WANTED template where everything that presupposes a bounty is struck through: the word WANTED, the DEAD OR ALIVE clause, the space for the amount. There is no issuer here, because there is no bounty — the signature belongs to the site, not to any institution of the work. Why these characters get a page is set out further down.
02Cross Guild: symbols, and what they are worth
What the work says
A Cross Guild notice carries no sum. It carries symbols, and the official sources give their scale: a crown is worth one billion berries, a star is worth one hundred million.
The important point lies elsewhere: the rate is set by rank, not by the man. Cross Guild does not assess an officer's individual danger, it applies a tariff attached to a function. With one reservation the sources state themselves: an exceptional reputation can be worth more than the rank, and Garp, a vice admiral, is priced at an admiral's rate.
- One crown — 1,000,000,000 berries
- One star — 100,000,000 berries
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
One Piece Wanted displays the amount alongside the symbols: the scale converts it exactly, and it reads faster than a row of crowns and stars. It is an addition by the site, not a piece of data from the poster.
Two other situations sit under the same Cross Guild label, and the poster tells them apart: heads their rank cannot price, explained right after, and those outside the Marines.
The latter belong to the World Government without being Marines. The official rule revealed by Oda names the Marines; it does not say whether Cross Guild targets only those who can come after it, or the government apparatus the Marines stand for. Nothing includes them, nothing rules them out: their existence is marked as uncertain rather than settled, and the poster's heading becomes “REWARD?”.
03Cross Guild: when the rank does not set the price
What the work says
Cross Guild prices a head by its rank in the Marines, from fleet admiral down to the lowest foot soldier. That takes holding one of the ranks the scale provides for.
Yet some figures move around the Marines without holding one: a chief placed above them, a veteran of their ranks still in their service, the jailers of a prison with its own stripes. Cross Guild has every reason to target them, but the official sources do not say what their heads would be worth.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
One Piece Wanted assumes their notice exists, without making up a price for it. Nor does it borrow one from the closest rank: a place outside the Marine ranks has no equivalent.
On the poster, question marks stand in for the crowns and stars, and “???” for the sum. Like every bounty with an unknown amount, they stay out of the site's rankings and totals.
04Dead or alive, the poster's clause
What the work says
Under the portrait, a wanted poster usually reads "DEAD OR ALIVE": the person loses the protection of the Marines, and both capture and confirmed death earn the reward. The two are not quite equal: turned in dead, a head can lose up to 30% of its bounty, according to Baroque Works' Mr. 8, who has every member of Luffy's crew kept alive at Whisky Peak.
Only one known poster reads "ONLY ALIVE": Sanji's 177 million one, his father having used his influence to get him back alive. His later bounties returned to the rule. And some notices, issued by authorities other than the Marines, carry no clause at all: Vander Decken IX's "DANGER" poster in the Ryugu Kingdom, or Kyros's in Dressrosa, which shows no amount either.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
The site's WANTED posters print the clause of the series: "DEAD OR ALIVE" on all of them, except Sanji's 177 million bounty, on an "ONLY ALIVE" template made for it. For a character without a bounty, the clause is struck out along with the WANTED. REWARD posters, on the Cross Guild template, carry none.
The amount shown is the one the notice promises: the deduction for a dead delivery does not change it.
Did you know?
Anime · 4Kids
10. A dub erased "DEAD OR ALIVE" from the posters
1/3The 4Kids American version, known for its censorship, touched up the posters too: in its episode 39, Buggy's, Don Krieg's and Arlong's appear without "DEAD OR ALIVE". At times it even erased the "WANTED". The Japanese version keeps the manga's clause.
- Uncover this fact
Ch. 107
11. Turned in dead, a pirate is worth up to 30% less
"DEAD OR ALIVE" does not mean dead and alive are worth the same. At Whisky Peak, Mr. 8 has the sleeping crew tied up and orders every one of them kept alive: a criminal turned in dead can lose up to 30% of their bounty. On a bounty like Crocodile's, the boss of these bounty hunters, the deduction would come to 24.3 million out of 81.
- And 61 more fun bounty factsAll bounty facts
05The face on the poster
What the work says
On a wanted poster, the face is usually a photo taken by Marine photographers, often without the target knowing. Sometimes a target happily poses for a shot they believe is meant for something else entirely. And when no photo will do, the Marines can fall back on a sketch, as with Sanji's first poster.
A photo can also last a long time. The Marines replace it when a face truly changes, with age or an injury, but they often keep the same one from one bounty to the next: many of Luffy's posters show the same face. No surprise there: a poster is first of all meant to identify its target. The choice still matters, so much so that the World Government once tried to have a photo changed at the last minute.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
One Piece Wanted rebuilds every poster on its own templates and picks its photo. It is not always the series' own, and that is on purpose: where the series keeps the same face from one bounty to the next, the site looks, whenever it can, for an image a fan would tie to that bounty. Luffy at 100 million wears his Alabasta desert cloak, at 300 million the Gear Second of Enies Lobby, at 500 million the Gear Fourth of Dressrosa: two bounties of the same character stand apart at a glance.
Sometimes the photo is simply clearer, so the character is recognised straight away. And when the gap with the series' poster is worth a closer look, other pages of the site explain it, with the series' poster alongside.
Did you know?
Ch. 435
24. Nami posed for her own poster without knowing it
The photo on Nami's first poster was taken willingly, by a pool, by a photographer who claimed to be a Water Seven reporter. Yet she is the only crew member who ever complained about having a bounty. In Cocoyasi, Genzo keeps an enlarged copy of the poster, and it is mostly the pose that worries him.
- Uncover this fact
Ch. 435
25. Sanji's sketch ruined a stranger's life
Lacking a photo, the Marines print a crude sketch of Sanji. The drawing is a perfect match for Duval, a man who had nothing to do with it: hunted by Marines and bounty hunters alike, he had to wear an iron mask. Sanji eventually rearranged his face with a few kicks, and Duval was delighted.
- And 61 more fun bounty factsAll bounty facts
06The amount the public was never given
What the work says
When a bounty shows no amount, what is missing is in the narrative, not in the world of One Piece. A bounty without a figure would not hold up: the poster circulates, bounty hunters work from it. The amount therefore exists; it simply was never disclosed to the public.
That silence is in no way final. What gets shown later depends on how the work unfolds and on decisions that belong to its author alone.
There is a variant: sometimes the work gives a floor instead of an exact amount. We know the bounty exceeds a given sum, without knowing by how much.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
One Piece Wanted distinguishes two forms of this silence.
Some bounties have an established existence and an amount the official sources have not revealed yet. The poster then carries “???” where the sum belongs: no estimate, no range. In most cases the work confirms the bounty exists; in a few, its existence is inferred depending on the character — a division commander under an Emperor who fought at Marineford, for instance — without any official source mentioning it.
Others carry an amount followed by a plus sign. The sign is not a rounding: it says the work gave a minimum, not an exact value.
Did you know?
Ch. 432
22. The world's most wanted man has no known amount
Monkey D Dragon is introduced as the most wanted criminal in the world, and yet no figure has ever been shown. Even his Vivre Card, the official character encyclopedia, gives his bounty as unknown.
- Uncover this fact
Ch. 526
34. Ivankov's bounty can be read from his cell
No figure was ever printed for Emporio Ivankov. But Level 5 of Impel Down is reserved for criminals with bounties over 100 million, and Ivankov was held there: his bounty is therefore at least 100 million. The same goes for Inazuma, his right-hand man.
- And 61 more fun bounty factsAll bounty facts
07Why some characters have no bounty
What the work says
Considerable characters have no bounty at all, and it is not an oversight. The system does not cover everyone: it draws a map of what the World Government took into account, and of what it judged threatening enough to price.
The most structuring rule comes down to the position held. In a criminal organisation, it is generally the leaders and the figureheads who are priced; subordinates mostly get a bounty only in the notable crews, those of the Emperors and the large fleets. A rank-and-file member without a bounty is therefore not a hole in the map, it is the rule.
Then comes jurisdiction, and it takes us back to the principle of the first section: a bounty answers a threat to the issuer. Wano stayed closed for centuries, the sky islands sit outside the blue sea, Fish-Man Island lies beneath it — what happens there is beyond the World Government, which has no reason to see a threat to itself in it. Other cases are simply a matter of status: a villager nothing ever marked as a threat has no reason to be priced at all.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
These characters get a page like any other, and it is deliberately a page rather than a blank. “Does Hody Jones have a bounty?”, “is Kinemon wanted?” are questions people actually ask, and answering no, with the reason, is content in its own right.
The groupings stand out: the protagonists of Wano, the antagonists of the sky islands, the Fish-Men — whole territories outside the World Government's jurisdiction, plus a handful of individual cases.
It is a deliberate editorial choice, and it follows from one of the site's aims: rediscovering One Piece through its bounties. A character without a bounty can matter as much as one who carries a price, and leaving them out of the catalogue would simply make them impossible to find here. The same reason keeps the undisclosed amounts and the existences the work never settled: they are nuanced cases, and they too can interest someone who already knows the story.
08When the bounty's existence is unsettled
What the work says
There is a third case, distinct from the previous two, and it is the least comfortable. For some characters a bounty would make sense — their record would justify one — but the work has neither shown it nor ruled it out. The question stays open, and nothing lets us close it.
The profile recurs: a character whose stature the work established without ever developing his file. A fighter from a major crew, whose crewmates carry bounties and whose danger is in no doubt, may simply never have had a poster on screen. To which are added the ambiguous institutional positions, where the status itself prevents any ruling.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
This is where One Piece Wanted takes its most visible liberty: it draws a poster the work never published.
The poster says so itself. The word WANTED becomes “WANTED?”, the amount shrinks to a slash, and the page states it in plain words: the existence is plausible, it is not confirmed. It is a proposed reading, not a source. If the work ever settles the question, the bounty changes category.
09What ends a bounty
What the work says
A bounty does not expire. As long as death is not confirmed the notice stands, even after decades without news — which is what lets a bounty hunter turn up holding a century-old poster.
Two events end one. A higher bounty issued on the same person supersedes the previous notice: that is the ordinary mechanism of progression. And confirmed death ends the hunt. Other particular situations can suspend a notice or extinguish it, without the work making a rule of them.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
A bounty that has come to an end keeps its page, and the state shown says which of the two endings applies: superseded, when a higher amount has been issued since; inactive, when nothing keeps it running.
One person therefore occupies several pages, one per amount.
A bounty still to come has no page until the story issues it. The site does take a shot at some characters' next bounties, a range and an amount each: these are predictions, presented as such on the page that gathers them. They are kept out of the bounties, the rankings and every figure on the site. Their posters show it with one detail: the amount ends with an asterisk instead of the dash, like the "+" of a floor amount.
Did you know?
Ch. 26
5. Kuro had a double executed to erase his bounty
Tired of being hunted, Captain Kuro slaughters Marine Morgan's unit, then hands him a double, hypnotized by Jango into believing he was Kuro. The double is executed, the Marines declare Kuro dead, and his 16 million bounty with him. It has since been reactivated, according to the Eternal Log exhibition catalogue. The amount itself depends on the source: 16 million in the official books, 14 in the anime, 15 in the film Stampede.
- Uncover this fact
Ch. 118
12. A century-old bounty, caught up by inflation
1/2Dorry and Brogy's 100 million dates back about a hundred years, and it is still valid: bounties do not expire. It was eventually revised, and not by a little: 1.8 billion each, the Government bringing a century-old amount up to date. It is one of the rare proofs that bounties also follow the value of money, not only the threat.
- And 61 more fun bounty factsAll bounty facts
10Bounties grouped by organization
What the work says
A bounty targets a person. The poster carries a portrait, a common name and an amount, never a crew name: the system never puts a price on a group.
Affiliation still weighs on the amount, sometimes more than the deeds themselves. After Dressrosa, several members and allies of Luffy's crew saw their bounty rise by the same amount, 50,000,000 berries, whether or not they had been at the heart of the fight.
Finally, nobody belongs to one organization once and for all: people switch crews, or leave an institution for the organization fighting it. Every bounty is issued at a precise moment of that path, and the poster does not say which: it carries neither a date nor an affiliation.
What One Piece Wanted makes of it
One Piece Wanted gives a page to each organization in the catalogue, sorted by type: pirate crews, criminal organizations, bandits, bounty hunters, revolutionaries, the World Government, and a few groups that fit none of those boxes.
A bounty remains a personal matter, but every character belongs to organizations, and that affiliation affects what they are worth. The site therefore ties each bounty to the organization the character belonged to when it was issued. That link is what an organization page's posters and figures show: the bounties carried while part of it.
Each member appears there through a single poster: the highest bounty they carried while belonging to that organization. The choice follows from what the work provides: for most crews it only shows part of each member's bounties, not their progression from one end of the story to the other.
The Straw Hat Pirates are the exception. As the story's main crew, they are the only one whose bounties the work follows from start to finish, and they get pages of their own instead of a single one: the latest bounties, each member's first bounty in the crew, an arc-by-arc timeline, and the bounties before and after the timeskip.
Posters are arranged in tiers, as in a display case, following the organization's hierarchy: the leader on top, then the second, commanders, officers, lieutenants and members. Within a tier, they run from the highest amount to the lowest; bounties whose amount was never disclosed come at the end of the tier, and characters with no established rank form the last one. Under each poster, a plate gives its share of the total bounty, its place in the bounty ranking and the state of the bounty.
That rank is often unofficial. Some organizations have a hierarchy set down in black and white; for the others, the rank used is a reading of the place the character holds. Among the Straw Hats, only the captain holds a title: the rest of the hierarchy settles itself.
A character who passed through two organizations therefore appears on both pages, each time with the bounty they carried while part of it.
When a member carried several posters under that flag, the earlier ones form a stack behind the latest, which opens up — except for the Straw Hats, whose own pages already show them. Further down come the posters members carried under other colors, before joining or after leaving: Shanks and Buggy, cabin boys on Roger's ship, or Arlong with the Sun Pirates. Those are sorted by flag and count neither toward the header figures nor the organization ranking. Only clear-cut membership counts: an alliance, forced enlistment or a brief stint does not make a character a member.
The page's figures only cover what can be counted:
- Wanted members — those whose bounty is established, whether or not its amount was disclosed. Those whose bounty is not even established as existing are counted separately, as "unconfirmed".
- Total bounty — the sum of disclosed amounts only, painted on the organization's sail.
- Share — an amount's part of the total bounty, over disclosed amounts only; those never disclosed stay out of the count.
- Highest bounty — the highest disclosed bounty, with the name of the person carrying it. One exception: a leader whose amount was never disclosed is taken as the highest bounty, since the organization exposes them the most.
- Active bounties — among wanted members, those whose reward can still be claimed; the other bounties are inactive (a faded poster stamped "Case closed"), or superseded since by a higher amount, sometimes carried under another flag.
- Rank — organizations ranked on their total bounty, among crews for a crew, among all organizations for the other types, too few for a ranking of their own; it can only rank those that have a total bounty. At the bottom of the page, the closest neighbors in the ranking and the gap between them.
- An organization nobody is hunting does not show a total bounty of zero, but its status: "non-wanted".