The next jump we see for Luffy’s bounty comes in Enies Lobby/ Water 7 after the Straw Hats take Robin back and defeat CP9. This is a point where all of the Straw Hats receive bounties and marks a clear turning point for the group. To focus on Luffy specifically, we are given an enemy that has no bounty to reference but are given a different metric to use, as CP9 acts as a direct arm of the World Government, defeating them has larger implications on the threat one would pose to the world nobles as opposed to defeating some of the stronger pirate crews.
As a result of the Enies Lobby incident, Luffy’s bounty shot upwards 300% of his previous bounty putting him at 300M berries which represents his second largest numerical berry increase and his second largest percentage increase of all his bounties. Narratively this makes sense, the Straw Hats declared war on the World Government, freed Nico Robin who is the key to discovering the history of the void century, and defeated CP9. These are enormous accomplishments, but moreover makes the Straw Hats once again are an overt threat to the World Government.
The next bounty increase we see for Luffy occurs after several incidents: Thriller Bark, Impel Down, and Marineford. Now this bounty increase is a bit tricky as Luffy’s bounty only jumps 100M or 133% from Enies Lobby putting him at 400M, but Luffy had done some incredible things which probably warranted a higher bounty from the readers perspective. I want to first start by looking at Thriller Bark were Luffy faces Gecko Moria who’s bounty was frozen at 320M after he became a warlord.
While Moria’s bounty is not astronomically higher than Luffy’s, we see that after Marineford and the preceding build up arcs, Luffy’s bounty of 400M at the end of Marineford is 125% of Gecko Moria’s bounty – this continues the trend of Luffy surpassing his adversaries bounties each time he defeats someone notable in combat. However diving into Impel Down and Marineford, I do want to focus on the stories narrative and point out that Marineford, for all intents and purposes, is a loss for Luffy. For the first time in the story we see Luffy fail to accomplish his goal in saving Ace.
From the perspective of a story, in which a bounty is the tangible result of the World Government recognizing Luffy’s success and the threat he poses to the established world order, it wouldn’t make sense for Luffy’s bounty to double or triple like it does in Enies Lobby or Alabasta. Rather Luffy’s feats are overshadowed (no pun intended) by Blackbeard’s plot. Not only did both Luffy and Blackbeard participate in both the raid of Impel Down and the Paramount War, but arguably Blackbeard was more influential in both cases.
Blackbeard was responsible for freeing the level 6 prisoners and killing Whitebeard for the Gura Gura no Mi. While it is also important to note that the Impel Down incident was covered up by the World Government (which is what led to Sengoku’s retirement) narratively, the larger purpose behind Marineford was to show how large of a looming threat Blackbeard presents and to show Luffy at his lowest point which corresponds with the relatively low bounty increase we see from before and after Marineford.
