Toratsugu

Toratsugu stands at an ordinary height, his dark hair gathered into a large topknot. His everyday outfit is a pale robe bearing two rectangular marks at its center, layered over a light shirt and circle-patterned trousers. Behind bars he wore neither the robe nor footwear, his bare feet locked in shackles. Drawing on his fruit, he becomes the legendary Nue, a chimerical creature whose head is a monkey's, whose torso and four limbs belong to a tiger, crowned with a lion's mane and finished with a snake for its tail.

He comes across as a forthright man, having served the daimyo faithfully as a florist and later confessed his entire predicament to the Straw Hats. Toward his betrothed Kikuhime his devotion is fiercest of all, pushing him to break out of a wrongful sentence and to attack Prince Lark before the prince could wed and then murder her. Faithful to the Hitaki line, he was stunned to witness his lord's slaying, the very killing he was blamed for, and his faith in the Straw Hats deepened once they treated his wounds and resolved to back him.

Calling himself a master of flowers and an able ikebana teacher, Toratsugu served the Hitaki clan that governed the Yo district. Friends with Princess Kikuhime since childhood, he fell in love with her and the two became engaged, only days before he saw Lark cut down Lord Hitaki. Lark fastened the murder onto him and threw him in jail, clearing his own road to the daimyo's seat. Slipping free the night ahead of his public execution, the famished man reached a beach and devoured a Devil Fruit, which transformed him into the yokai and drove him to take shelter in a mountain temple. When Kikuhime was promised to Lark, he burst into their wedding, snatched her away, and carried her to his hideaway. The Straw Hats came calling at Lark's request, and after Luffy beat him in a short fight he plunged down a ravine, reverting to human form and bruised; Chopper mended him, the crew was touched by his story, and they agreed to topple Lark. Borne aloft by Toratsugu in Nue form despite his injuries, the group reached Lark's camp, where Luffy snatched Kikuhime from danger and dropped the prince with one blow. A feast closed the affair, and the reunited pair bid the pirates goodbye to take up their lives once more. His grit in surviving the ravine fall, hurt yet not destroyed, marked his endurance.