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While One Piece’s Straw Hats are an incredibly tight-knit and close outfit, their functionality as a group can sometimes leave something to be desired. While they each always achieve the overall group objective via their own efforts and victories, One Piece’s iconic group often sees its members deviate from a set plan.
Despite their successes, there are certainly other anime teams that embody the essence of teamwork better than One Piece’s Straw Hat Crew. The main advantage other anime teams have over One Piece’s group is their ability to stick to an established plan.
Similarly, there are anime teams that follow their plans to perfection, yet are undoubtedly worse than One Piece’s Straw Hat crew. Here are five anime teams that function better than One Piece’s iconic group, and five more who can never catch up.
Naruto’s Team 7 and four others follow plans better than One Piece’s Straw Hat pirates
1) Z-Fighters
Dragon Ball’s Z-Fighters are one of the most iconic anime teams to ever exist, and also one of the most efficient. Very rarely do they ever fail at any of their objectives, and while the few plans they have are usually made at the last minute, they’re typically followed extremely well.
While not every member of the Z-Fighters is still relevant in combat in the contemporary franchise, they all still have respective and important roles to play. Their teamwork and ability to stick to a plan solidifies them as a better team than One Piece’s Straw Hat pirates.
2) Karasuno Volleyball Team
Nearly every sports team requires trust, coordination, and acute following of directions from every single one of its players. Volleyball is no different, and Haikyu!!’s Karasuno volleyball team is no exception. The group of men are incredibly tight-knit and capable of following game plans to a T as well as adjusting on the fly when needed.
Their faith in every other member of the team to know and play their role and follow the plan is what allows them to function as well as a single unit. There’s little doubt that these men are a much more cohesive and better-functioning team than One Piece’s Straw Hat crew.
3) Team 7
Like the Z-Fighters, Naruto’s Team 7 is one of the most famous and recognizable anime teams within the medium. The team has six members, no more than four of which are called Team 7 at one time.
No matter the combination, however, the group is incredibly effective in combat, able to instinctually work with one another and carefully follow a plan. Their ability to work in high-stress, life-or-death situations as one unit is the main highlight of their superiority relative to One Piece’s protagonistic group.
4) Phantom Troupe
The first antagonistic group to appear on the list, Hunter x Hunter’s Phantom Troupe is an incredibly close team of crooks and criminals from around the world. The ranks rarely change, meaning the vast majority of the team has worked together since its inception.
The main highlight of their ability to work as a team is when they terrorize Yorknew City in vengeance for their comrade’s death. The bloodshed and destruction they cause are synchronized to a shocking capacity, despite their distance from one another. There’s little doubt they function better as a cohesive unit than One Piece’s central crew.
5) Ichigo’s Team
Finally, Ichigo’s Team from Bleach is undoubtedly better functioning than One Piece’s Straw Hat crew. No matter the task in front of them, Ichigo’s Team has been shown to be able to work together and achieve the impossible under any circumstances, even from the very beginning of the series.
While their actual companionship with one another may be a little rough around the edges, they nevertheless function incredibly well as a team. All of them are combat capable and innovative as well.
Pokemon’s Team Rocket and four others will never be a better team than One Piece’s Straw Hat crew
1) Akatsuki
One of the main reasons Naruto’s Akatsuki will never be a better functioning team than One Piece’s Straw Hat crew is their distance from one another. While the group does have a common goal it works towards, the camaraderie seems to stop there, with no overall group unification present.
Various pairings and teams within the organization have a sense of friendship and unity, but even most of them seem shallow and circumstantial. Despite their ability to complete objectives, the group never really functions as one cohesive, all-together unit.
2) The Survey Corps
Attack on Titan’s Survey Corps is one of the most expansive groups on this list, with the faction typically having roughly 300 members. With such a large unit, the cohesion needed to function well as one team overall simply isn’t there, and the results corroborate this assessment.
Another deficit when compared to One Piece’s Straw Hat pirates is the Survey Corp’s lack of skill from top-to-bottom. Much of their strength is consolidated by a dozen members, whereas no one in the Straw Hats is truly, utterly useless or weak.
This all combines to solidify the faction as one which will never eclipse the Straw Hats in terms of how well they function.
3) Team Rocket
Pokemon’s Team Rocket is an interesting team to evaluate relative to One Piece’s Straw Hat crew. Despite being a much smaller group of three members (excluding their non-sentient Pokemon) and always following plans to a T, they never seem to have any success in their endeavours.
The Straw Hats, meanwhile, are a much larger group of ten members and never follow a plan, yet always seem to come out on top. Given these facts, there’s little argument to be made against Team Rocket clearly being an inferior team to the Straw Hats.
4) The Homunculi
Like Naruto’s Akatsuki, Fullmetal Alchemist’s Homunculi seem to lack the unity of other groups present in this article. Despite having a common goal to work towards, the group relationship and unity seem absent, much like Naruto’s Akatsuki.
Specific relationships can be pointed towards, but these exist as separate sects rather than subcategories within the unified group. Even with their plans often being successful, the infighting and different personal objectives seen by its members solidify them as being a worse team than One Piece’s Straw Hat Pirates.
5) The Espada
Finally, as is a running theme within these antagonistic groups, Bleach’s Espada lacks the unity and relationship to be superior to One Piece’s Straw Hat Pirates.
While other groups here have a common goal to unify for, the Espada is only linked by their loyalty to Sosuke Aizen, making for an even shakier alliance.
The group has clear infighting as well, with specific pairs of members clearly feeling at odds with one another. Such bickering isn’t indicative of a well-functioning unit and would seem to imply that One Piece’s Straw Hat pirates are a much better-functioning team than Bleach’s Espada.
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This article was modified on Monday, July 10, at 2:30 am.
