Shoujou

Standing well over three meters, Shoujou is so simian in build that strangers take him for an ape, though he is fully human beneath the shaggy green mane he has never once trimmed. That uncut hair stretches nearly the entire length of his enormous frame. A black buttoned shirt strains across his hairy chest, worn under a green captain's coat and a matching hat stamped with his personal skull emblem, while a belt engraved with the character for forest cinches his waist. Years later he sheds the coat for a wide straw hat and carries, slung across his body, a small case holding a beetle that Luffy once gave him.

He inherits his sworn brother's hot temper and turf-guarding instincts, yet carries himself with a far more relaxed air and bristles at being called a monkey. New acquaintances win him over just as quickly all the same. Shoujou rates his own strength generously, even declaring himself the obvious pick to fill Crocodile's empty seat among the Seven Warlords, a boast nowhere near matched by his actual power. He loves rattling off odd facts about his own life and pressing listeners to be impressed, only to be tuned out. Like Masira, he treats Cricket as a father and guards him fiercely; after Bellamy wrecked their work, the alliance simply dusted themselves off and kept rebuilding the Going Merry. His final parting with the crew is a warm one.

Born in the South Blue, Shoujou befriended Masira and the two pledged themselves as brothers over a shared love of tall tales. Eight years before the present story they joined Mont Blanc Cricket's quest for the lost city of gold, inspired by the legend of Noland. Shoujou leads roughly half of the Saruyama Alliance, a crew expert in underwater echolocation; he scans the seas off Jaya by broadcasting sound waves through a microphone and reading the returning echoes, and that same booming voice doubles as a destructive weapon in a fight. He first crosses the Straw Hats by smashing the Going Merry in retaliation for Masira's beating, then warms to them and helps refit the ship for the climb to Skypiea. After Luffy rings the long-lost golden bell and proves the sky island real, Shoujou follows Cricket toward their next dream, later joining the alliance's search for the island of Nakrowa.