Yamakaji

Tall and broad through the chest, Yamakaji has a faintly wrinkled face with a rounded nose, flared nostrils, thick lips, and a wide jaw. A thick beard wraps his chin and joins the brown buzz cut on his head. His eyes stay shut, a cigar rests between his lips, and a cheerful grin is rarely far away. He dresses in a dark brown double-breasted suit over a yellow shirt dotted with red, paired with brown trousers and shoes, his Marine coat slung cape-style over his shoulders beneath the standard cap. Decades earlier he looked much the same, though clean-shaven apart from stubble and sideburns, and clad then in an orange suit with a red tie.

Yamakaji usually carries himself with relaxed indifference, grinning calmly even as the Marines leveled Enies Lobby. That ease cracked during the war at Marineford, where he watched the fighting with visible unease. He clearly looks up to his senior officers, growing excited at the sight of Garp and Sengoku teaming up and turning protective toward Tsuru. His fondness for smoking runs so deep that he lights up mid-battle. A Marine through and through, he is markedly obedient, refusing to move against Blackbeard without explicit orders from above.

As a vice admiral, Yamakaji holds the authority to help command a Buster Call alongside four peers and to direct the lower ranks of the Marines, though he proved no match for Boa Hancock. Since every vice admiral is said to wield some form of Haki, he too possesses the ability. He was also seen carrying a green katana during the Marineford war, although he has yet to be shown drawing it.

Twenty-seven years before the present, Yamakaji and Momonga remarked on Garp joining Sengoku to chase down Roger and Shiki. When the Buster Call fell on Enies Lobby, he was summoned alongside vice admirals Momonga, Onigumo, Doberman, and Strawberry to crush the Straw Hats and their allies. They shelled the island into ruin, sparing only the Bridge of Hesitation, yet the operation failed to kill a single target. At Marineford he told Tsuru to hang back, only to be brushed off, and looked on uneasily as Luffy challenged the admirals and toppled Garp.

Following the abolition of the Seven Warlords, Yamakaji led a fleet and two Seraphim against Amazon Lily to seize Hancock. After his forces breached the gate, the Blackbeard Pirates appeared, and he refused his subordinates' request to engage the Emperor without clearance from headquarters. Hancock then petrified nearly his entire force, sparing only Koby, until Silvers Rayleigh's intervention prompted her to release everyone. Still lacking authorization, Yamakaji could only watch as Blackbeard's crew carried off eight hundred soldiers and a battleship; when Koby offered himself in exchange, Yamakaji tried to object but relented on learning Koby belonged to SWORD, and Blackbeard took the young Marine prisoner.