One Piece: Why Arlong Is The Best Early Villain

gamerant.com:

Each of the Straw Hat pirates must deal with their own histories and origin stories before they are truly able to join the crew in One Piece. Nami especially, as her first effort at joining was cut short when she saw a wanted poster for Arlong. This resulted in her abandoning the rest of the crew and eventually recruiting their aid. This diversion resulted in an extensive arc involving the Arlong pirates and Arlong Palace. But the main antagonist was of course Arlong himself. Compared to previous antagonists such as Captain Morgan, and Buggy the pirate, Arlong was more extreme, and perhaps also more archetypal.

One Piece follows the story of Monkey D Luffy and his efforts to recruit the best pirate crew that he can, with his main goal is to become the King of the Pirates by conquering the Grand Line and claiming the One Piece. The second person that he recruits is also the final person to commit to his crew before they head to the Grand Line: Nami, the crew’s navigator.

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Viewers are slowly fed information about Arlong and his backstory over the course of the arc. Fundamentally he is a Fishman who believes in the superiority of his own race as well as having a surprising amount of honor when it comes to contracts. It is also known that he is one of the Three Great powers that keep the world in balance.

As the leader of the Arlong Pirates, he enslaved Nami with the promise that she could back both her own freedom and that of her village for the price of 100 million berries. For eight years he allowed Nami to struggle and attempt to gather the prodigious sum by herself. But after she teams up with Luffy and the straw hats and grows very near her goal, he begins regretting