Arlong

**Arlong** (アーロン, *Āron*), also known as "**Saw-Tooth**" **Arlong** (ノコギリのアーロン, *Nokogiri no Āron* literally meaning "Arlong the Saw"), is the fictional character and antagonist of the *One Piece* series. He is a sawshark Mermen, an anthropomorphic race that can exist on land or in the sea. He was the pirate captain of the all Mermen crew, the Arlong Pirates, a former member of the Sun Pirates, and the older half-brother of Madam Sharley. He had the highest bounty of 20,000,000 berries in the East Blue before being defeated by Monkey D. Luffy. He is the main antagonist of the *Arlong Park Arc*.

He is infamous with humans for his unhinged ruthlessness. Mermen regard him with renown.

Living as a pirate since his youth, Arlong eventually built a reputation for himself as the strongest pirate of East Blue. Ten years before the main story, he thought to make a kingdom for himself and landed his ship on Nami's homeland. After he quickly bested the island's residents, he took an immediate interest in Nami's talented map making and forces her to be a member of his crew. Arlong and his crew had then refashion their ship to a building called Arlong Park.

While he promised to respect Nami's deal to buy her home back, Arlong sells her hard work away to a Navy during the main story. He considers Nami to be an irreplaceable asset to him and wants her eternal servitude. Once Nami tearfully pleads for Luffy's help, the Straw Hats confront Arlong's crew. During his confrontation with Luffy at Arlong Park, the Mermen appeared to have the upper hand until they fight in the room containing Nami's painstaking maps. An enraged Luffy then savagely beats Arlong and destroys Arlong Park.

"*Inferior humans! You think you can beat a mermen?!*"

—Arlong.

## Appearance & Biography

*Voice Actor*: Chris Rager (English), Jurota Kosugi (Japanese), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (German), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (French), Not Known (Latin American Spanish)

### Appearance

Arlong is a large, muscular, light blue saw-shark merman whose most distinctive trait is his saw-shaped nose. He has long, black hair with a widow's peak reaching down to his shoulders, under a brown ushanka. He has a fin on his nape, surrounded by his hair, and the gills are located on both the sides of his neck. His own Jolly Roger is on his lower left arm. Other notable features include thin, fierce light-blue eyes and a long, angular jaw.

#### The Young Past Days

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 knees, first a light-colored pair with a line of similarly light spots on each leg's inner part, and later a similar pair, but darker in color 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. His Sun Pirates tattoo is on the left side of his chest.

During his first raid on the Commi 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.

#### Pre-Timeskip

Arlong's attire is composed of fashionable, light clothes, reflecting his rich status as well as his background as a thug. He wears a short-sleeved, 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 piercings that go straight through Arlong's fingers, as his hands are webbed and are incapable of wearing rings.

#### Post-Timeskip

* Hair Color: Black
* Skin Color: Light Blue
* Eye Color: Light Blue
* Age: 39 (debut), 41 (after timeskip)
* Birthday: May 3rd
* Height: Not Known
* Weight: Not Known

## Personality

Like many other One Piece characters in Japanese version, he has his own unique laugh, which is "Shahahahaha".

Arlong considers humans to be inferior beings and is very cruel to them. He is keen to separate his race from humans, and is constantly struck 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 good! It's the only thing a man can really believe in!*"

—Arlong deals with Nezumi.
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 Hyouzou refused to join his crew because Arlong refused to compensate him 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 Navy would not stay for fear of being seen in Arlong Park, Arlong invited the Navy 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 ambitions and is an excellent planner. He spent eight years using Nami and her maps to plan his conquest 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 berries. However, even though Arlong states he cannot go back on his word, he has no qualms about exploiting loopholes in his deals to unfairly get his way. Like with Nami he said he would free her village if she brought him 100,000,000 Berries but is more than willing to cheat her by having his corrupted naval officers find her remaining amount to keep her in his services.

He angers rather easily, as he nearly goes on a rampage after being attacked by Usopp and has 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 headquarters building while attacking Luffy.

He has been ill-tempered since his younger years.However, he was not always entirely brutal. During a battle with the Navy, Arlong told Jimbei to leave the unconscious Navy 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. He also failed to understand Fisher Tiger's reason for letting humans that they attacked live. As a result, when Arlong led his own crew and had committed murder, humans came to view him as a "monster". He was loathed for the actions of him and his crew. In the end, he enslaved humans just as the humans once enslaved many Mermen.

Though his opinions and his ideals were extreme, he displayed a high level of brotherhood with his crew and even towards Nami despite her species divide. Arlong looked after his subordinates and even though he betrayed Nami, he did so because he did not want to lose her talent. On top of this, in the final moments of the battle with Luffy, he stated that Nami was his crewmate and would be forever, and while he never displayed any regard for her as a friend he was prepared to fight to keep her in the crew. If humans insulted their group, Arlong would react to the insult, and due to the high level of concern amongst his officers they would attempt to keep his temper under control. When weaker members of his crew were hurt, Arlong would seek out revenge on those who had committed the act against those crew members. He cared for his crew to a level that when Luffy used one of them as a shield, Arlong became extremely angry.

Ironically, Arlong is a hypocrite, having accused Koala of being raised to look down on Mermen and think of humans as better than everyone else, when Arlong looked down on humans and preached Mermen superiority himself, making him no better than the humans. Surprisingly despite his hatred of humanity according to Hatchan, Arlong would never harm his fellow Mermen no matter the circumstance.

## Powers and Abilities

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 than Don Krieg, the strongest (military) force in the East Blue, with only Krieg's military might and massive armada forcing the Navy to deem him the bigger threat.

As a Fishman, he is physically 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 bending metal, crushing stone, and ripping through flesh alike. Arlong's fortitude was also displayed when he was able to withstand most of Luffy's attacks. Although Luffy unleashed most of his techniques and forced Arlong back, he was mostly unfazed after each attempt.

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 rearranged his broken nose without a grimace. Arlong is also capable of entering a kind of berserker mode upon angered. When this happens, his eyes take on an appearance similar to those of Neptunians. While in this state, both his strength and his speed grow exponentially, making him far more dangerous than previously stated.

Arlong was not bothered by Luffy having a Devil Fruit power and took advantage of his weakness to the effects of the sea. With the Marines focusing their attention on the Grand Line and the incapacitation of all other major East Blue pirate bands by the Straw Hats, there would have been nothing to stop them from taking over East Blue if the Straw Hat Pirates had not intervened.

### Attacks

* **Shark and Awe**: Arlong shoots himself at his opponent like a torpedo, piercing them with his sharp and apparently unbreakable nose. When used from water, the speed of the attack is greatly increased.

* **Tooth Attack**: Arlong pulls out his own teeth and uses them as weapons with his hands. He immediately grows another set of teeth after pulling the previous ones, so he can bite his opponent with both his mouth and his hands.

* **Shark and Destroy**: An enhanced version of his **Shark and Awe** attack, Arlong fires himself at his opponent spinning with his mouth open, trying to bite them down and tear them to pieces. The kanji used for Tooth is that of *Haguruma* which means "gear" in Japanese in the manga.

### Weapons

Arlong's weapons are mostly natural features of his saw-shark Mermen body. With his mermen strength, something as harmless as throwing a handful of water can strike as hard as a bullet. This attack is similar to the **Water Shot** technique of Mermen Karate. He was also seen killing Belle-mère with a flintlock.

#### Arlong's Nose

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 Zolo (who was weakened by the massive wound given to him by Mihawk previously and his fight with Hatchan) in a sword fight 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. This unbreakable-ness is particularly evident by the fact that when he flew directly into the concrete section portion of his park and got up without any damage done, causing others look on in pure shock and comment on its toughness. When Luffy snapped it to another direction, Arlong twisted it back to it's original position without any noticeable pain or discomfort.

#### Arlong's Teeth

He can remove his massive teeth and snap them at opponents like castanets, almost like hand-held foothold traps. 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 merman can fully utilize the strength of the teeth as he possesses greater strength than a human.

#### Shark Saw

*Main article:* *Shark Saw*
In the last phases of his fight with Luffy he used a giant saw-like sword, the Shark Saw, 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 twice as powerful.

## History

### Past

#### A Broken Family

At a very young age, Arlong was abandoned by his father in the Fishman District and soon forgets his father's face. However, at the age of 15 he was then approached by a man claiming to be his father who left Arlong with a young girl, born to a different mother.

#### Subjugating East Blue

"*In exchange for becoming one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Jimbei unleashed some monsters in the East Blue.*"

—Yosaku talks about the Arlong Pirates.

## Battles

### Canon

* Sun Pirates vs. Navy (numerous times)
* Sun Pirates vs. Navy (Foolshout Island)
* Arlong vs. Vice Admiral Borsalino
* Arlong vs. Jimbei
* Arlong vs. Belle-mère
* Arlong vs. Genzo
* Arlong vs. Usopp
* Arlong vs. Monkey D. Luffy
* Arlong vs. Sanji and Roronoa Zolo
* Arlong vs. Roronoa Zolo
* Arlong vs. Monkey D. Luffy (Second time)

### Non-Canon

* Arlong, Jimbei, and other Merman District citizens vs. Fisher Tiger

## External links

* Ushanka - Wikipedia article about type of hat Arlong wears.
* Sawshark - Wikipedia article about the type of fish Arlong is
* Arlong *One Piece Encyclopedia*

## Notes & Trivia

* 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.
* In the 4th Japanese *Popularity Fan Polls*, Arlong is ranked the 48th most popular character in One Piece.
* According to One Piece 10th Treasures, Arlong's hat costs 100,000 Berries.
* Arlong is the first individual known overall to have been released from Impel Down.