There are many transliterations of the currency: Berry, Beli, Berri. Which one is the official one?
The Navy just give large bounties for pirates, Buggy has a 15 million bounty and Luffy has a 30 million. Would Luffy's bounty be an equivalent to 30 million Yen?
What would be the real world value of the currency used in One Piece?
In the original, it's called Beli in English. However, if the Japanese word is translated correctly, it's Beri - it's a feature of the Japanese language (look at SingerOfTheFalls answer). However, it differs in different languages: for example in Germany, it's Berry.
To compare the prices:
Regarding Luffy's bounty would be an equivalent to 30 million Yen,
30 million Beli on Luffy's head is a little bit old; his current bounty is 400 million Beli.
Quote:
Fourth Bounty: Defeating yet another Shichibukai (Gekko Moriah), attacking a World Noble, causing an unprecedented breakout from Impel Down, participating in the Whitebeard War, and by intruding Marine Headquarters a second time and ringing the Ox Bell 16 times (which was taken as a declaration of war), Luffy's bounty has gone up 100,000,000 more to make a total of
400,000,000 making it the third highest active bounty known. The public revelation of his relation to Monkey D. Dragon may also have influenced it.
In One Piece, the currency is called ベリ.
However, in Japanese, there is no "real" 'l' or 'r' sounds, so it would sound like something between 'r' in 'rock' and 'l' in 'lock'. Native speakers can pronounce it in different ways, with 'l', with 'r' or with a mix of both, it still stays the same kana.
It's pretty much the same as with "Horo"/"Holo". So the correct romanization would be either "Beri" or "Beli". "Berry" probably appeared because "beri" sounds similar to "berry", and "berry" is an actual English world, or maybe there was another reason.
As for the prices, looper's answer already mentions some of them .
To compare the prices:
- One cabbage loaf: 150 Beli
- A Bon Chari: 500 Beli for renting, 10,000 Beli for buying
- A Doskoi Panda brand shirt: 10,000 Beli
- Namis Jacket: 28,800 Beli
People seem to read past your second question, but yes Luffy's bounty was an equivalent to 30 million Yen. As said in the trivia section of the wiki page on Beli, both the appearance and denomination of the beri closely resembles the Japanese Yen...
In appearance and denomination, the belly closely resembles the Japanese Yen (日本円 Nihon En). The characters Yukichi Skull, Ichiro Kumaguchi, and Hideo Usaguchi portrayed on the belly banknotes are a pun on Hideyo Noguchi, Ichiyō Higuchi and Fukuzawa Yukichi portrayed on the corresponding yen banknotes. "Kuma" and "usa" mean bear and rabbit.
...and so does its value.
Some Images for comparison:
One Piece Beli bills and coins
Real Japanese Yen bills and coins
For reference I put a few prices below gotten from the wiki page. Comparing them to contemporary slave prices or terrorist bounties, it seems that we put more value on human life than in the One Piece universe and have somewhat higher prices going on, but when comparing everyday objects like a cabbage loaf, jacket or brand shirt, it seems that the prices pretty much resemble current Japan prices. Therefore it is safe to say that Oda based the One Piece currency on the currency of his home country Japan.[A reference of Oda confirming this would be nice, but I could not seem to find any]
- One cabbage loaf:
150
- Doskoi Panda brand shirt:
- Nami's jacket:
- Human slaves:
- Portgas D. Ace's now inactive
The author have clarified it in S.B.S corner (a Q&A corner, may not be available for non-Japanese, or non-Korean readers), that one "BELI" worth 1 yen.
Now it's about 80 cents for 100 yen, but it is more appropriate to see it as 1 dollar for 100 yen, so 30M Beli would equal to 300K USD.
I find in Skypia ark when the crew don't pay for entrance, Guards say they need to pay 10 billions xtals for each one and all will be 70 billions and rate of xtals per belly is 10000 xtals for 1 belly, that means they need to pay 7 millons belley for all crew. Sanji say that for this price he can buy 1 ton of rice, at the moment rate for 1 ton of rice is around 408 USD on 19/03/2019 from that we can calculate that 1$ ~ 17156 Belly. At the last in this ark Luffys reward is 100 millions belly in USD will be ~582$ dead or alive.
