Monkey D. "Straw Hat" Luffy is a fictional character and the protagonist of the One Piece franchise created by Eiichiro Oda.
He is first introduced in the manga chapter "Romance Dawn", first published in Japan's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine on July 19, 1997, as a young boy whose body gains the properties of rubber after he inadvertently eats a supernatural fruit called the Gum-Gum Fruit, one of many Devil Fruits that can be found in the One Piece world.