At the center of One Piece is the pirate dream, venturing out to the sea with one's very own crew and going on a series of dream chasing adventures. While some of this means the fun-loving adventures people have come to know about the central Straw Hat crew, most of the pirating dream has come to mean murder, pillaging, and the conquering of various countries.
As such, the Marines are out on patrol, aiming to dictate and enforce law and order across the world, protecting citizens and arresting pirates. However, there are a few quirks and caveats that go with this that may make trusting the Marines as a policing force a little difficult. This list will be looking at those faults, as it runs down the 10 things about One Piece's Marines that just make no sense.
10 Buster Calls
A buster call is essentially the Marine's blind call to attack that summons five vice admirals and the nearest ten ships to come and just destroy an island until it no longer exists. The general idea being that if any of the few authorities who can initiate a Buster Call deem a certain location too dangerous, it is up to the nearest Marine forces to do away with it without question but with extreme prejudice.
However, the actual implementation of this is messy to say the least such as when one was once used to attack the World Government's own judiciary island when it was summoned by accident. This is easy to do since Buster Calls are literally just determined by the press of an unprotected button. If it wasn't for the fact they're committing genocide, one would think more thought would be put into this.
9 Following the Celestial Dragons
By the citizens of One Piece or, at least, those under the governing body of the World Government, the Marines are supposed to be the main enforcers of the law and the protectors of the people against external threats. However, as the series has gone on, it would be much more accurate to say that the Marines just enforce the law during their spare time until a Celestial Dragon, the world's most elite class, comes along.
Essentially, the Celestial Dragons are treated as the highest priority for the Marines, as they are not only meant to protect them above anyone else but also turn a blind eye if not outright help whenever they do less than legal things.
8 Weapons That Can "Eat" Devil Fruits
Being the central policing force to the World Government, it would make sense that the Marines would be equipped with some of the most state of the art technology, a la James Bond. And this has come to mean a variety of cool gadgets, like transponder snails and Pacifistas.
However, one of the hardest to understand, logistical and intent wise, is their creation and use of weapons that have "eaten" Devil Fruits. They really don't explain how this works and just expect people to understand that a sword could eat a Devil Fruit to turn into an elephant, rather than just have an elephant eat a Devil Fruit. It's a complex novelty that doesn't really accomplish much more than regular weapons.
7 Being Central to All Policing Forces
Within the real world and even a few fictional ones, Marine and Naval forces are only a branch of a ruling body's policing force. However, in the world of One Piece, the Marines are literally the only central one in charge of watching over the entire world.
While a country can have their own soldiers and knights, it is the Marines who take precedence over all law enforcement which is odd, considering that Marines literally spend most of their time on the sea and not, you know, land, where military is probably needed more often.
6 Not Going After the One Piece
The Marines have access to ships outfitted with motors and sea prism bottoms that allow them to traverse both the harshest and calmest waters of the sea. They also have access to vast quantities of world information and all intel associated with the variety of pirates they have captured.
This begs the question, why aren't any of the Marines going after the One Piece? If it's a secret, then they might as well keep track of it, instead of just letting anyone lucky enough to sail the sea to just stumble upon it. Wouldn't that make their jobs a lot easier, directly taking claim and watching over the very thing causing pirates to go wild.
5 Depending Too Much on Enies Lobby and Impel Down
This isn't to say that Enies Lobby or Impel Down are flawed systems. They certainly appear like credible courthouses and a very dependable prison. What's weird though is the fact that they appear to not only be the central buildings to the penal system but also the only ones.
The series has never really explored other courts in the world, and every arrested pirate, even small-time ones like Buggy, are directly sent to Impel Down. One would think it would be better to have multiple of these so as to have backups in the case that one or both of these facilities may happen to fail or, in a scenario that has definitely never happened before in the series, get destroyed.
4 Trusting the Warlords
The Seven Warlords, when they were introduced, seemed like the sketchiest idea to try and topple overwhelming pirate forces. And it was. Not only were most of them uncooperative but quite a few them conspired to take over the world, like the villains they publicly are.
The Marines here would have to turn a blind eye and even facilitate these criminal duties in exchange for the Warlords, potentially one day, assisting against Emperor threats, which they did a so-so job doing when they were actually needed.
Now that the Warlords have been disbanded, they are pretty much just another enemy stacked on top of already growing Emperor threats, with the Marines having gained nothing from the experience.
3 Giving Bounties
Bounties are something that would seem like a pretty neat idea at first. They encourage public involvement and allow bounty hunters to attempt to clean up the edges of the world that the Marines are either unoccupied with or unable to deal with in their entirety.
However, what they have essentially amounted to in the series is not only a badge of honor to pirates but a major red flag that advertises how scary and discouraging they are.
The people with the highest bounties in the series are not exactly flooded with bounty hunters or Marines coming after them. In fact, they are the least sought after, with bounty hunters becoming few and far between, as Luffy gets more infamous.
2 Hunting Any "Pirate"
The Marines know that one of their biggest obligations is to intercept pirate threats, but they don't really have a clear definition of that, simply going on the offensive whenever someone claims to be a pirate, ignoring the fact that there are quite a few peaceful pirates who just adventure and that they literally have documents on hand to identify who actually has a criminal history.
Brook's old pirate crew, the Rumbar Pirates, were literally dedicated to creating music that could make crying children laugh. Yet, all it takes is someone to slap on the name "pirate" to their label, and now they're hunted like wild animals.
1 Rank Dependent on Strength
While it thematically and aesthetically serves a purpose, there does seem to be major issue with promoting people solely based on strength. Fujitora, while a wise figure, was brought to Admiral status in less than two years despite having conflicting views on the Warlord system and even pirates as a whole. Was there not an interview process here?
And as Admirals of the Marines, shouldn't the defining quality be experience and leadership skills and not just who punches harder? Yet, that is exactly how they picked out their Fleet Admiral, when they had two of their toughest guys fight it out, leaving one to leave in disgrace, a consequence that inherently weakens rather than strengthens them.