Arlong

Arlong is a hulking, light-blue sawshark fish-man whose unmistakable feature is the long, saw-bladed nose jutting from his face. Shoulder-length black hair with a widow's peak frames thin, fierce eyes and a long angular jaw, and a brown ushanka usually sits atop his head. Gills run along both sides of his neck, a fin rises at his nape, his Sun Pirates mark brands his left chest, and his own Jolly Roger sits on his left forearm.

His everyday wardrobe is loud and tropical, reflecting both his wealth and his thuggish roots: an unbuttoned short-sleeved yellow cabana shirt dotted with black lightning-like markings, Bermuda shorts, a purple waist sash, and plain sandals. He loads himself with jewelry, including a gold chain at his wrist and gold bands around each ankle hung with straw-like trim. The studded ornaments on his fingers are actually piercings driven straight through, since his webbed hands cannot wear rings. During his Sun Pirates years he favored an A-shirt or a flower-motif top, a bowler hat, loose pants, and large round earrings.

Arlong views humans as lesser creatures and treats them with open cruelty, yet he often prefers ruling them through money and crooked deals rather than slaughter. His worship of wealth makes him notoriously cheap, but he keeps his word on any cash bargain, even while gleefully twisting the loopholes, as he did when he had corrupt Marines steal back the fortune Nami spent years gathering to buy her village's freedom. Supremely confident in fish-man strength, he fears almost nothing, and he flies into a destructive rage easily, once nearly leveling Cocoyasi Village after Usopp attacked him.

He was not always this hateful. In his youth he carried a temper but still showed restraint, and he idolized Fisher Tiger as a brother despite arguing against Tiger's refusal to kill humans. The treachery that killed Tiger twisted his contempt into something absolute, and he lied to the Marines about that death to guard his captain's honor. For all his prejudice, Arlong showed real loyalty to his crew, calling them his brethren, raging when one was harmed, and even counting Nami among his own despite betraying her. That made him a hypocrite, condemning humans for the very superiority complex he himself preached, and he laughs in his own distinctive style, "Shahahaha."

Abandoned as a small child in the Fish-Man District, Arlong grew up there alongside Jinbe, Hatchan, Chew, and Kuroobi, and at fifteen was left with a young half-sister, the future Madam Shyarly. He formed his own crew at twenty-five, spent time teaching younger fish-men like Hody Jones to despise humans, and later merged his band into Fisher Tiger's Sun Pirates. When humans betrayed Tiger and he died refusing human blood, a heartbroken Arlong tried to massacre the traitors of Foolshout Island, only for Vice Admiral Borsalino to capture him and ship him to Impel Down. He was freed once Jinbe became a Warlord, then parted from him bitterly, branding him a government dog before reviving the Arlong Pirates and pouring into the East Blue.

Settling on the Conomi Islands, Arlong extorted the locals, gunned down Nami's foster mother Bell-mère, and pressed Nami into service as his mapmaker, dangling a hundred million Berry ransom for her village while never meaning to honor it. A fish-man is roughly ten times stronger than a human and stronger still underwater, and Arlong towers even among his kind: he lifts houses, shatters stone and metal with his shark jaws, and shrugs off heavy blows. His arsenal is largely his own body, a saw-nose he hurls himself behind like a torpedo, removable teeth that regrow stronger and double as bear-trap weapons, and his giant serrated blade Kiribachi, and when enraged his eyes turn Sea King wild as his power surges. When the Straw Hats stormed Arlong Park, his officers fell one by one, and Luffy, after a brutal exchange, drove his full power through the building and buried him in its rubble. He was arrested afterward, and two years later he learned with disgust that Jinbe had joined the very Straw Hats who beat him.