#i need to reread chainsaw man i’m in that mood

[fuumiku]

Alexa play Washing Machine Heart… Been having that Succession quote on the mind

[monsterrates]

ARLONG THE SAW (One Piece)

So I’m sorry for the unannounced absence but I think I gotta just post whenever the mood hits me from now on. After all, the point of the blog is passion for monsters, I can’t do it out of obligation. ANYWAY.

INTRODUCTION: Arlong is a sawshark fishman, and the captain of the Arlong Pirates.

PROS: ♥ First things first, I wanna bring up the panel that reignited my monsterfucker fire, in which we see how fucking BIG this lunatic is. I was just minding my own business, rereading One Piece, when this panel came along and my lizard brain was like “bIG MONSTER.” As I’ve said many times before, I am always 100% behind some sort of monster man being huge for no reason, and Eiichiro Oda is the KING of making characters huge for no reason. (For the unfamiliar: theres 10ft tall dudes running around all over and it’s never commented on.) Fishmen on the whole are bigger than humans, but with a few exceptions, don’t tend to be based on fish LARGER than humans (Sawsharks tend to be about 4-5 feet). So why are they so big? FOR THE AESTHETIC, YOU FOOLS. ♥ Of course, the teeth. They’re wonderful. While Arlong is far from the only shark-based fishman to sport such lovely pointy chompers, he’s the only one who really fucking COMMITS to having them. He’s not fucking “above just straight up biting fools. This is a man who wears a Hawaiian shirt with a furry winter hat. Do you think he has shame? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Anyway, you may have heard of how sharks can afford to lose teeth bc they will always regrow them. Obviously in the real world this takes time, but this is fantasy pirate world, so Arlong’s regrow immediately, and our man here isn’t gonna squander this fact.

♥ “HOLD ON A SEC, LET ME JUST RIP MY OWN TEETH OUT SO THAT I CAN BITE YOU WITH MY HANDS” He even boasts that his teeth regrow stronger each time and this is AFTER he literally bites through a stone column. “How are they all connected after he tears them out, that’s absolutely not how teeth work,” you ask. Listen Stephen, this is One Piece, a manga about pirates who can’t fucking swim.  One of the main characters is a skeleton with an afro who is also a rock star. Don’t fucking worry about it. ♥ Let me just double back and talk about fishmen in general for a second. Obviously, with One Piece taking place in a world full of ocean, you have to have some fish people. And yeah, there’s mermaids, and Oda could have just done that. But NO he decided that there’s also these huge dudes (and I say dudes bc there really aren’t any prominent female fishpeople, though there are male merfolk) who are just like sort of fishlike and huge and BUFF. Mermaids are honestly not that exciting to me in concept since usually they’re just regular ass people with bland generic fish bottoms. I don’t like a sharp delineation, but more than that, I want more than just the vague concept of MAN + FISH, and the fishmen designs tend to deliver that more overtly than merfolk. ♥ Which brings me to my next point, Arlong’s charm point, the NOSE. All fishmen are based on a specific type of fish, and Arlong here’s a sawshark, known for their distinctive snouts that legit look like fucking chainsaws. So really, Arlong’s nose is underselling it, if anything. He’s also got a nice shark fin on the back of his neck too, in case you forget this man is basically anime pirate Jaws. ♥ You can also see Arlong showing off a fishman’s characteristic webbed hands. With these and the gills they have (usually in the shoulder/neck area as seen here), fishmen REALLY excel underwater. Though even ON LAND an average fishman is stronger than an average human, they have even more of a leg up in the water. Anyway, here’s a classic moment of Luffy’s stellar intelligence in the midst of a fight.

CONS: ♥ I mean the major downside here is that unlike perfect, wonderful blueberry dad Jinbe, Arlong is a bad mean shark man who decided to respond to racism with MORE racism which is never a good plan especially when the people you’re subjugating aren’t even the people who were racist in the first place? Anyway Arlong is an early series antagonist and thus exists mainly to be The Worst and get punched in the face by Luffy. ♥ Honestly, Arlong is mostly humanoid, so I’m legally obligated to say “COULD BE MORE MONSTERY” but given that he’s some sort of fish/human hybrid creature, I don’t really know how it’d be better per se. I guess some extraneous fins? Maybe another, bigger fin on his back? You might say “claws,” which I am generally all for, but sharks don’t have claws so I’m actually just fine with them not being present here. Really the best improvement that could be done would be to just remove the neck/delineation of head and chest (and thus removing that heinous Jay Leno chin) which would allow him to have a bigger shark mouth. But at that point you’ve basically just got mean Jinbe, and Arlong’s hateful Jay Leno chin honestly suits him. ♥ I’m again legally oblicated to bring up that like many One Piece characters, Arlong has a “signature laugh,” a shonen manga trope I absolutely hate because 90% of them aren’t a sound anyone makes when they laugh. Arlong’s is “shahahaha,” and it’s honestly one of the more tolerable ones, because I can just imagine it resulting from some weird toothy lisp, but I hate these laughs in general and he doesn’t NEED to do this. Also 4kids translated one of his attacks; “Shark on Darts as “Shark and Awe” and I’m furious that they came up with an actual good idea. ♥ I know this isn’t part of the monster design explicitly, but I really just hate Arlong’s hat so much. The ugly shirt is fine, the dress code of One Piece on the whole is vaguely tropical and hawaiian shirts are always fine, but why is he wearing a FURRY WINTER HAT? It doesn’t make sense. When you make a stupid bowler hat look like the BETTER option, you’ve chosen a bad hat.

RATINGS: MONSTRUOUSNESS: 6.5/10 He’s still pretty humanoid, but like, as far as the concept of a “shark man,” which I am very much about, goes, Arlong’s a nice execution of it. People LOVE to put the gills on the chest in fish dude designs, so I really wanna point out that this is where they hecking SHOULD be, logically.

FUCKABILITY: 5.5/10 While I appreciate the big muscleman body, like, a whole lot, Arlong doesn’t have enough of a nuanced personality as a villain to make up for his ridiculous chin and terrible fashion sense. A bad man with a bad hat.

PERSONAL RATING: 7/10 I appreciate that Arlong isn’t just a feral monster man, but actually very cunning in his dickery. As the first major fishman character, if he had been stupid, it’d make the running issue of human/fishman racial tension less immediately grabbing. Anyway, if you ask me, Arlong is the most memorable East Blue antagonist, even if in the grand scheme of One Piece antagonists, he’s pretty one note. A solid B- shark man.