Experience Tumblr like never before
I find it interesting that over time, Luffy began to clearly divide the people around him into his own and others'.
The East Blue saga is different from all the others, so we don't take it into account, but the rest of the major arcs are fundamentally similar to each other and the main similarity is that there is always some character of the location who will interact with the crew.
so, the first such character is Vivi, and, in fact, everything goes as usual: acquaintance, a request for help, the way to the villain of the arc, a fight, and everyone is happy, BUT Vivi is literally the only character of the location who was accepted by the Mugiwaras into the team as an equal member (even in the pauses in the middle of the episodes, she stood among them) and who later did not become a member of the team, but retained this connection.
neither Luffy nor the rest of the team showed such willingness to accept a location character into the team, no matter how close they got (neither Connis, nor Rebecca, nor Yamato, although the situations were quite similar)
my take: Mugiwaras and Luffy in particular began to grow up long before water 7 and timeskip, this process began after the first big adventure on the grand line