I think there's a misunderstanding about luffy in op fandom (maybe exacerbated by the live action). and it's that luffy intuits a person's goodness based on 'vibes' and 'gut feelings' and chooses to trust or help people because of some innate goodness that he can sense in them because of his special luffyness. and that's not true!! zoro has the exact same ability to clock whether or not someone is trustworthy, he knew nami didn't truly betray them in arlong park and bet his life on it. they look at another person's ACTIONS to draw their conclusions, they never simply draw a conclusion based on vibes. luffy decides he likes zoro because he saw him being kind to rika, he chooses to trust nami because she put out that fuse on the buggy ball cannon with her bare hands rather than let it shoot him, he allowed robin onto his ship because he saw her save people and undermine crocodile every time she had an opportunity.
luffy's not judging people based on something innate and unique to only him-- he just uses what he can observe of a person's actions to make his mind up about them. and that should be really encouraging, because it means you don't have to be luffy to figure out who you can trust. you just have to look at someone's actions, regardless of what they say, and draw your conclusions based on that.
this theme pops up repeatedly in fishman island, so it's kind of sad to see luffy's intuition being chalked up to some mystical force that he can use the first time he meets someone. his first impulse is to take people in good faith and unless he's given a reason to dislike someone, he usually will! whether or not that person continues to prove themselves deserving of that good faith is up to them.
The thing is, Intuition and Gut Feeling is what we call it when we have become so quick at observing someone's behaviour that we can't exactly explain our process for coming to the conclusion, but that doesn't mean the process isn't happening.
So Luffy, who has barely any education, would call it My Gut and Intuition and I Just Know, because when would he have been taught how to explain observation and deductive reasoning and all this stuff we're using to describe his process with all this technical jargon?
The regular word for it is Intuition though.
Some people think it's a magical mystic force, sure; people think that in real life too! But that doesn't mean it IS.
it looks like your canon basis here is the live action, which is exactly the misinterpretation this post is taking about. there's a lot that's condensed or cut from the opla mainly to time constraints and one of them is the many times a character does something that ultimately decides whether or not luffy chooses to trust someone.
it's actually a pretty slow process, and at no point does luffy ever explain himself (for example, he never says 'I know this person is good, I just feel it'-- that's a frankly kind of annoying thing they put in the live action. he helps vivi because nami decides that they're helping vivi and he trusts nami). luffy's 'intuition' actually kind of sucks because he WILL believe evil people who give him food, and he WILL suspect and dislike secretly nice people who are dicks to him regardless of their motivations if that's the only exposure he has to their behavior. he has a strong emotional intelligence that lets him look beyond someone's words to catch their true intent, but only when he knows them well.
when he chooses to help or trust a stranger despite their first impressions, that's a deliberate and conscious choice based on observable evidence that he would be able to cite if he were the type to explain himself. the only character in the first two seasons of opla with a special intuition is nami, and it's about how in tune she is to the weather. incidentally when luffy makes a judgment about someone, the crew doesn't go along with it because of his special luffy gut feeling-- it's because he's the captain and what he says, goes.
opla luffy is a different luffy from the manga, who is the subject of this post. I really recommend checking out the manga! it's a much deeper and more complex world than the opla has the opportunity to depict (although they do a very good job with the time they're given), and manga!luffy is a ton of fun.
I appreciate the expansion of your point. I stand by that clinical jargon and self-awareness and education on psychology is something any version of Luffy probably wouldn't have, and that the "Regular Words" for observing people's behaviour and making decisions about whether to trust them are "intuition" and "gut feeling" and often not something a person is automatically meta-aware of. This conclusion can be incorrect--gut feeling is where bigotry lives, and it's good practise to question why you feel how you do about someone--but stopping and questioning is a skill that many are not taught, and that isn't necessarily a cultural norm.
For how-my-brain-works reasons I don't get into with strangers, I will never be reading the manga or seeing the anime; the fact that the live-action exists is what's making me capable of experiencing this story at all.
