Arlong

Arlong the Saw (ノコギリのアーロン) is the pirate captain of the all fishman crew, the Arlong Pirates, and a former member of the Sun Pirates. He is known for being the main villain in the Arlong Arc.

Appearance
Arlong is a large, muscular, and light blue sawshark fishman whose most distinctive trait is his saw-nose. He has long, black hair sprouting on the back of his neck, reaching down to his shoulders, from under what appears to be a brown ushanka, covering his head. He has a fin on his nape, surrounded by his hair, and the gills are located on both the sides of his neck. His Sun Pirates tattoo is on the left side of his chest, while his own Jolly Roger is on his lower left arm.

Arlong's attire is composed of fashionable, light clothes, reflecting his rich status. He wears a sleeveless, unbuttoned yellow shirt decorated by many black lightning-like spots, bermuda shorts which are brown in the manga and green in the anime, a purple sash around the waist and simple sandals. He also sports a lot of jewels: he has a golden chain bracelet around his left wrist and two golden bracelets around each ankle, with straw-like decorations hanging from them. On his hands are what appear to be rings, decorated by colorful gems. However, according to Oda in response to a fan about these rings, these aren't rings at all but more like piercings that go straight through Arlong's fingers, as his hands are webbed and are incapable of wearing rings.

As a member of the Sun Pirates, he wore an A-shirt, sometimes changed to a sleeveless, unbuttoned shirt decorated by flower-like motifs, a bowler hat, and loose pants reaching down below his kees, first a light-coloured pair with a line of similarly light spots on each leg's inner part, and later a similar pair, but darker in colour and with spots on both sides of the legs. He already sported the straw decorations around his ankles and the sandals, and also donned a pair of large circular earrings. During his first raid on the Konomi Islands, he had a long, light green scarf hanging from his shoulders, and wore a dark green coat and a pair of beige bermuda shorts with a chain-like pattern on them paired with a green sash around his waist. Also, instead of the ushanka he currently wears, he had a simple, dark grey hat on his head.

Personality
Arlong considers humans to be inferior beings and is very cruel to them. He is keen to separate his race from humans and constantly stuck by this mentality that his people are superior to humans in every way. He thinks nothing of killing a town full of humans, although he seems to prefer controlling people with money and deals (like Nami and Nezumi.)

Money is the best, you can trust it more than the human.

Despite (or probably because of) his love for money and his ideology of money making the world spin, he is known to be very cheap, as Hyozo refused to join his crew because Arlong refused to pay for his service.

He does not seem frightened by anything, and his fishman strength has made him extremely confident that he and his crew are virtually invincible. After Nezumi told Arlong that he as a Marine wouldn't stay for fear of being seen in Arlong Park, at this point Arlong invited the Marine to a meal and offered to kill anyone who dared report him.

He has an eye for spotting exploitable talent that he can use for his goals and is an excellent planner. He spent eight years using Nami and her maps to plan his takeover of the East Blue. Nevertheless, any promise about money he makes, he keeps. The best example is when his crew urged him to keep Nami even if she brings the 100,000,000. However, even though Arlong states he can't go back on his word, he has no qualms about exploiting loopholes in his deals to unfairly get his way.

He is rather easy to anger, going berserk after he was attacked by Usopp and having to be dragged back to his base by his crew to prevent him from destroying the whole town. During his fight with Luffy, the boy's constant fighting back made Arlong mad, to the point where it drove him into a deep anger. Arlong himself had expected Luffy to die quickly, but his anger made him become reckless and destructive, even seriously damaging his own HQ building while attacking Luffy.

He has been ill-tempered since his younger years. However, he wasn't always entirely brutal. During a battle with the Marines, Arlong told Jinbe to leave the unconscious Marines alone. However, it was later shown that he had grown more arrogant over time to the point that he completely had no sympathy for humans. Tiger's death led to his hatred hitting rock bottom.

Crew
Do you know how upset I am? You will give up and die. I am so upset my beloved crew mates were beaten by a bunch of worthless insects! He cares for his own crew (shown when he apologizes for accidentally biting them and becoming enraged at Luffy for using one as a fishman shield), while many of his crew share his ideals. They would call him "Arlong-san" while Arlong would call his crew his "brethren". He can be very angry when someone hurts his crew rather similarly to Luffy's feelings towards his crew. However, this is exclusive to fishmen.



Of humans, the only one he ever had respect for was Nami. In particular, he cut away from his normal human discrimination to humans for her, since her navigation skills were superior to any fishman's. After he mentioned fishmen and their superiority over humans, Nami responded how tired she was of hearing it, leading Arlong to acknowledge her skills and in the only witnessed incident in his appearance. He then apologized saying that she simply couldn't help what species she was. However, this was simply because of her skill to draw maps and mistreated her constantly while she was on his crew, locking her in the tower and never properly feeding her. Despite his treatment, Arlong considered her as one of his brethren and always celebrated her return to Arlong Park. He would even have his crew celebrate when Nami 'came home' as greeting their returning sister.

Nami was expected to act how he wanted her to. However, this led him to misjudge her character. This was mostly because of his own ideals based on materialistic values. He could not see how she wouldn't be happy unless she had clothes, money and a place to sleep. He also didn't see her betrayal happening until it was too late. Even at the final stages of his fight against Luffy, he still stated that he considered her a friend.

Jinbe
It was shown that in their youth, Arlong and Jinbe were both friends who grew up together as orphans in the Fishman District, but they became rivals as Arlong became a pirate and Jinbe a soldier. While Arlong apparently wanted to be on friendly terms with Jinbe, Jinbe, who hated pirates, often argued with him. When Fisher Tiger took on the World Government Arlong and Jinbe teamed up and got recruits from the Fishman District and joined the Sun Pirates. The circumstances of Jinbe sending Arlong to the East Blue is unknown.

Fisher Tiger
Arlong looked up to Fisher Tiger as a hero and a big brother; in fact, Tiger's hatred of humans may rubbed off on Arlong. Despite this he and Tiger often had arguments about this; Arlong wanted to slaughter the humans they came across to make the world fear fishmen while Tiger didn't want to kill anyone because they would be stooping to their oppressors' level. When Tiger was betrayed and killed, Arlong cried and attempted to get even by attacking the island that committed the treason.

Enemies
As a pirate with a bounty, he is the enemy of the Marines and had the highest bounty in the East Blue until the Straw Hat Pirates were announced to the world. As he had been paying off the Marines to keep quiet, it's likely that his bounty did not fully reflect neither all of his crimes nor his true power/threat level. His cruelty against Nami and her village has assured him an enemy in all of them, as well as in the Straw Hats, who defeated him.

Other
When dealing with Nezumi, Arlong tells him that he doesn't like humans, with the exceptions of Nami due to her navigation skills and those who understand how to do business like Nezumi.

Abilities and Powers
Arlong is one of the fishmen, massive humanoids that are taller and stronger than any normal human. Arlong, however, is a giant even among fishmen. His power was remarked to be greater then Don Krieg, the strongest (military) force in the East Blue. As a fishman, he's ten times stronger than a common human, and even more underwater. However, he seems to possess amazing physical strength even for fishmen standards: he was seen lifting a house with his bare hands in pursuit of Usopp, and his powerful shark-like jaws are capable of rending metal, stone and flesh alike.

He also has incredible endurance to pain: during his fight with Luffy, he ripped off many sets of his rapidly re-growing teeth, and he put back in place his broken nose without a grimace.

Arlong is also capable of entering some kind of berserker mode when he gets angry. When this does happen, his eyes take on an appearance similar to those of sea kings. While in this state, both his strength and his speed grow exponentially, making him far more dangerous than he already is.

Predictably, as formidable an opponent as Arlong is on land, in water he is nearly invincible.

Weapons
Arlong's weapons are mostly natural features of his sawshark fishman body. With his great strength, something as harmless as a handful of water can strike as hard as a bullet.

Even his nose is a weapon. It is over a foot long and lined with razor-sharp points, and more than sturdy enough to use as a melee weapon. Swinging his head back and forth, Arlong defeated Zoro (who was weakened by the massive wound given to him by Mihawk previously and his fight with Hatchan) in a swordfight with this natural blade. He is very proud of his nose and claims his nose is unbreakable. However, Luffy managed to twist his nose in another direction during the fight with pure physical strength.

He can remove his massive, needle-like teeth and use them as hand-held weapons, snapping them at opponents like castanets. The teeth are replaced by a new set in mere moments, each regrown mouthful stronger than the one before. Luffy demonstrated, however, that these teeth can also be used against Arlong, either by holding them in his hands or as he chose, fitting them in his mouth and biting his opponent with them. However, Arlong states that only a fishman can fully utilize the strength of the teeth as he possesses much stronger jaws than a human. Also, fishmen are apparently ten times stronger than men from birth.

He was seen killing Bellemere with a flintlock, and in the last phases of his fight with Luffy he used a giant sawlike sword, the Kiribachi, with great proficiency, as he was able to cut even a building with it. He has had such weapon since his younger days, as he was already seen wielding it during his time in the Sun Pirates. Predictably, as formidable an opponent as Arlong is on land, in the water he is nearly invincible.

Attacks

 * Shark on Darts (鮫・ON DARTS（シャーク・オン・ダーツ）): Arlong shoots at his opponent like a torpedo with his apparently unbreakable nose. This attack is simply called Shark Darts in the Viz Manga and FUNimation dub and Shark and Awe in the 4Kids dub.


 * Tooth Gum (歯ガム（トゥースガム）): Arlong pulls out his own teeth and puts them in his hand to use them as a weapon, immediately growing another pair in his mouth. He usually uses one set of teeth in each hand. In the Viz Manga and FUNimation dub, this is called Tooth Attack.


 * Shark on Tooth (鮫・ON 歯車（シャーク・オン・トゥース）): Arlong opens his mouth and starts spinning towards the opponent and bites down on them. The kanji used for Tooth is that of Haguruma which means "gear" in Japanese in the manga. This is called Shark Tooth Drill in the Viz Manga and FUNimation dub and Shark and Destroy in the 4Kids dub.

Past
In exchange for becoming one of the Shichibukai, Jinbe unleashed some monsters in the East Blue. The sawshark fishman already formed his own crew at Fishman Island when he was 25. Arlong would usually spend his time harassing the citizens of Fishman Island for befriending humans much to Jinbe's scorn. Jinbe severely disliked Arlong for his brutish actions and behavior, often stepping in when he was causing trouble. Whenever Fisher Tiger returned from an adventure, both Arlong and Jinbe would give him a warm greeting. After Fisher Tiger attacked Mariejois and became an enemy of the World Government, Arlong and Jinbe followed Tiger and joined the newly formed Sun Pirates. During a battle with the Marines, Arlong was surprised at Jinbe's brutality towards them, continuing to beat them long after they had lost consciousness. In the aftermath of the battle, Arlong commented on how brutal it was.



During their time roaming the Grand Line, the Sun Pirates battled numerous Marines including those led by Rear Admiral Kadar. Arlong, who had become completely ruthless, killed a Marine simply because he was human. After the battle, Tiger had a discussion with Jinbe and Arlong telling them not to kill humans. Otherwise, they will stoop to their level. Tiger went on saying that their ultimate goal was freeing the oppressed and not becoming cold-blooded murderers much to Arlong's dismay. When Arlong brought up the suggestion of instilling fear in humans by using ruthlessness, Jinbe smacked him in the head. The Sun Pirates later visited an island where a former slave of Mariejois named Koala resided. The inhabitants there had no way of returning the girl to her homeland so they asked the Sun Pirates to take her. After she boarded the Sun Pirates' ship, Arlong hit her for being a human and had to be restrained by Hatchan.

Even though most of the Sun Pirates warmed up to Koala, Arlong remained antagonistic towards her. He believed that Koala was no different from the cruel humans, but Jinbe disagreed with him. Eventually, Koala was returned to her home, Foolshout Island and Arlong merely commented that Koala was just going to grow up into the humans he known and hated. Not long after Koala returned to her family, the Sun Pirates realized that the citizens there betrayed Tiger and the crew by summoning the Marines in exchange for ignoring Koala's status as property of the World Nobles. In the ensuing battle with the Marines led by Rear Admiral Strawberry, Fisher Tiger was badly wounded. The Sun Pirates lost their ship, but they were able to steal a Marine ship and escaped.



On board the stolen Marine ship, the crew tried to save Tiger's life with a blood transfusion using human blood, but Tiger firmly refused the transfusion. Tiger told the crew that he was in truth a slave who escaped Mariejois, and that he could never truly love humans due to all that happened. He ultimately died from blood loss. Arlong, furious at this betrayal, returned to Foolshout Island in an attempt to murder all its citizens in revenge, but Borsalino defeated him.

Following Tiger's death and the recruitment of Jinbe into the Shichibukai, the group split into pieces and Arlong and his own "Arlong Pirates" left the Sun Pirates. Around this time he attempted to recruit Vander Decken IX and Hyozo into his crew, but the former disliked the idea of working for others, while Arlong was too cheap to pay the fee for the latter's services. Jinbe then turned them loose in East Blue, although this was a decision that the Shichibukai would later regret.

Arlong set up his domain on one of the larger islands in East Blue, with a number of smaller villages in the vicinity under his control. Arlong dismantled his original galleon and used the materials to build Arlong Park, an eight-story building that served as his headquarters. From Arlong Park, Arlong hoped to conquer all of East Blue using superior underwater tactics through maps drawn by Nami that charted underwater terrain.

When Arlong and his crew (consisting of Hatchan, Chew, and Kuroobi), first arrived on the island that would someday become Arlong Park, the first village he encountered was Cocoyashi Village (Coco Village in the English version), the home of Nami. Arlong then proceeded to extort money out of the residents of Cocoyashi Village. Adults would have to pay 100,000, children would pay 50,000 or be executed by Arlong's men. Bellemere (Nami's adoptive mother) only had 100,000 so she decided to pay for Nami and Nojiko and sacrifice herself. Arlong shot her in front of her children as an example of disobedience and then kidnapped Nami.

He forced Nami to become a part of his crew as a map maker, and told her that if she brought him 100,000,000 he would free her village and everyone in it, including her adoptive sister Nojiko.

Destruction of Arlong Park
Years later, when Nami was about to fulfill her end of the bargain using money she stole from Monkey D. Luffy, Arlong arranged to have a corrupt Marine captain confiscate the money from her so she would be forever under his control.

Luffy, who followed Nami after being robbed by her, saw Nami brutally stabbing Arlong's tattoo on her arm in desperation. Angered by the obvious suffering Arlong had wrought against her, Luffy stopped her from hurting herself and unquestioningly accepted her plea for help. Along with Zoro, Sanji, and Usopp, they marched into Arlong Park challenging them. Arlong was surprised when Luffy effortlessly dispatched two of his gaurds and caught then knocked back with a punch. When Mohmoo attempts to escape Arlong strikes fear into it forcing it to fight for him. When Luffy revealed his devil fruit powers Arlong was shocked at this.



A long and arduous battle ensued between Luffy, Arlong, and the elites of their crews. Arlong bit into Luffy's arm when he attempted to punch him again and tossed him into the water to drown. He became enraged watching his crew fall one by one to the Straw Hats. Sanji and Zoro fought him but were no match for his strength and were easily defeated.

Luffy was freed from being trapped underwater and resumed battling Arlong. After getting back up from a barrage of his attacks, he commented that he was upset that his crew was defeated by the Straw Hats. He made a speech that fishmen will always be the superior race and have the right to dominate humans, justifying his actons. He attempted to bite off Luffy's head but took out a chunk of the pillar behind him. Luffy continued to mock him and took up two swords to try and fight with, that Arlong effortlessly took away. Annoyed with his antics, he was caught off gaurd when Luffy delivered a powerful blow shattering his teeth.

In a second his teeth regrew and using this, he pulled his teeth out to create hand-held castanet weapons for each hand. When he went to attack Luffy again, he used one of his crew as a human shield taking the blow. This upset Arlong further at his dirty tactics. Luffy broke his teeth out again, and stole one of his castanet teeth to use against him. Arlong hit Luffy in his side with the remaining weapon, as Luffy retailiated by stuffing his own teeth in his mouth to use as a weapon and bite down on his neck.

Arlong stated that the power of the bite doesn't come from the teeth but from the jaw muscles as he bit through Luffy's arm. Luffy freed himself by slamming him to the ground, releasing his hold on his arm. Arlong then took to the water to fight, gaining the advantage of speed. Launching himself like a torpedo, his attack Shark On Darts increased speed was able to break through all solid objects. Luffy was able to catch him, and critically injured him with a powerful kick to his stomach. Arlong's eyes changed, become enraged. Nami stated she had never seen his eyes change like that.

Wanting to end this fight, Arlong retrieved his sword Kiribachi (Saw Shaped Sword), which resembled a long steel saw with teeth shaped like a shark's, gaining the advantage once again. Luffy seemed to be on the verge of defeat until the battle moved into the top of Arlong Park, where Nami slavishly made her maps for Arlong as a child. Arlong explained to Luffy the importance of this room and the endured slavery of Nami here was all part of his grand scheme to conquer the East Blue. After feeling the turmoil and desperation that had seeped into the room over the years, Luffy became enraged and the tables turned dramatically.



Luffy broke Arlong's Kiribachi sword with his bare hands, and then began destroying the room to Arlong's dismay. Arlong attacked again, biting into Luffy's neck and shoulder but this did not stop the strawhat. Effortlessly, Luffy snapped his powerful nose that he was so proud of. Using the full power of his attack Gomu Gomu no Ono, Luffy managed to send the full force of Arlong's attack: Shark On Haguruma attack through to the bottom of Arlong Park, destroying the building in the process and defeating the fishman, as he lay buried in the rubble.

Later, Arlong and the rest of his crew are imprisoned by the Marines. Hachi was the only one to escape His defeat echoed through the ranks of other Fishmen who were allies of his.

Fishman Island Arc
Arlong was often referred to when the Straw Hat Pirates arrived at Fishman Island. Hammond identifies them as the one who put an end to Arlong's ambition, and it seems that Arlong is considered a hero among the New Fishman Pirates, who share his symbol and his hatred toward humans.

Hordy Jones mentions that he shared the same ideals as Arlong and at the time when the Straw Hat Pirates defeated the Arlong Pirates he was gathering strength at Fishman Island in order to be his right hand man. Hordy Jones claims to have learned from his hero's mistakes, referring to Arlong as a barbarian.

Major Battles

 * Sun Pirates vs. Marines
 * Arlong vs. Vice Admiral Borsalino
 * Arlong vs. Bellemere
 * Arlong vs. Sanji and Roronoa Zoro
 * Arlong vs. Monkey D. Luffy

Translation and Dub Issues
Arlong's brutality was censored in the 4kids dub, as seen when threatened to imprison Bellemere instead of murdering her for not paying her tribute. He does not offer to spare everyone except the other Straw Hats if Nami rejoins, or threaten to kill everyone in Cocoyashi if she leaves. During the climax of the battle, scenes of him slamming Nami's head against a desk for drawing a picture of Bellemere instead of a map, and threatening to kill someone from Cocoyashi Village if she disobeyed him, as well as Luffy destroying the maps, are removed.

He was also given a gargly sound to his voice in the 4Kids dub, and he refers to humans as "Pew-mans".

In the FUNimation dub, Arlong's dialogue was made much more believable and accurate to the original translation. However, Arlong's unique laugh "Shahahaha" is not kept. According to a spokesman from FUNi when they took over, the reason for the loss is that in many cases the unique laughters of some characters were hard to convey over from the orginal Japanese version and were simply lost in the translation and dubbing process.

Trivia

 * Many of One Piece's characters are given an distinct laugh. Arlong starts his laughs with either "Sha" or "She" (i.e Shahahahaha!/Shehehehe!). At one point when fighting against Luffy, Luffy mocked Arlong using his own laugh. This is missing from the English dub.
 * In a panel containing a small flashback scene of Hatchan's, Arlong's silhouette is seen alongside Hatchan's, Kuroobi's, and Chew's as they look upon Sabaody Park in a distance from the water.
 * Coincidentally "Ah-long", which has the same pronunciation as "Arlong", means Loan Shark in Singapore Chinese-Hokkien Dialect.
 * In the 4th Japanese fan poll, Arlong is ranked the 48th most popular character in One Piece.
 * In the fourth movie, Arlong was given a former rival: Willy.

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