Arlong is a sawshark fishman best known as the main antagonist of the Arlong Arc. He captained the Arlong Pirates—an all-fishman crew—and previously sailed under Fisher Tiger in the Sun Pirates. He's also Madam Shyarly's older brother. Before Luffy took him down, he held the highest bounty in the East Blue. His signature laugh is "Shahahahaha."
Arlong's defining trait is his absolute contempt for humans. He genuinely believes fishmen are superior in every way and sees nothing wrong with enslaving or even massacring people, though he's pragmatic enough to prefer controlling them through money and leverage when possible. He exploited Nami for eight years, leveraging her navigational skills to plan his takeover of the East Blue. True to his word on deals—at least technically—he'll honor the letter of an agreement while happily exploiting its loopholes to get what he wants.
He's a sharp strategist with a talent for recognizing and using people's strengths. That said, he has a serious anger management problem. When Usopp attacked him, he flew into such a rage his own crew had to physically drag him back to avoid him leveling the entire town. During his final fight with Luffy, his escalating fury made him reckless and destructive enough to wreck his own headquarters while fighting.
There's a complicated layer to his character, though. He wasn't always this brutal. Back when he fought alongside Jinbe, he even showed restraint toward unconscious Marines. But after Fisher Tiger's death, something broke in him. He didn't understand Tiger's philosophy of sparing humans, and as he gained power and command of his own crew, his arrogance metastasized into outright dehumanization. The irony is brutal: a fishman who experienced enslavement became an enslaver himself.
Despite his racism, Arlong genuinely cares about his crew. He looks after them, values their loyalty, and reacts fiercely if anyone harms them—when Luffy used one of his officers as a shield, it sent him into a blind rage. He even made exceptions for Nami, treating her as a permanent crew member despite her humanity. When his officers got heated about his rule to let her go if she paid her debt, Arlong insisted he wouldn't break his word, but it's clear he didn't want to lose her. He was willing to fight Luffy over it.
The ultimate irony: Arlong accused Koala of being indoctrinated to see humans as superior, when he himself preached the exact same fishman supremacy—making him hypocritical in the worst way. Yet according to Hatchan, there was one line he wouldn't cross: he'd never harm a fellow fishman, no matter what.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
