Yo, fellow Arlong fans! I have a little rant that I'm going to post on here but before I do that, I just want to get out there that Arlong is my absolute favorite villain on One Piece and if I had the money, I'd buy anything that had his face on it.
Now, let's get started on the rant.
This year a lot happened to Arlong, his character got a little more spotlight, he's been given a past that was considerable sympathetic, Oda decided to add to that background and say that Arlong got abandoned and had to take care of his baby sister, Shyarly when he was only 15, and as of right now, One Piece is marketing merchandise showing the Sun Pirates and even making toy statues of the key members, ie Arlong.
However, now I'm starting to wonder if Oda made the mistake of making him too sympathetic because for the past half year, I've been seeing comments from other Arlong fans (and fishmen fans in general) make the notion that Arlong's past is more tortured and painful than Nami just because fishmen are more oppressed than humans. Yes, you're reading this right. I could see that being compared to other One Piece villains but someone like Nami?
Now, let me get out there that I am no Nami fan but her character deserves a lot of respect for what she went through during her experience with Arlong and his savage rule over an island that did absolutely nothing to him or his friends and didn't deserve the cruelty and sheer brutality inflicted upon them.
The very idea of Arlong deserving more sympathy than Nami leaves me wondering if I've entered the twilight zone. Arlong's past can relatively be assumed that it was the experience of the kids who has lived and survived in the Fishmen District and I'm even gonna make the fair notion that Arlong is not the only one that has ever been abandoned in that horrid place. The statistics on how many kids were abandoned and/or left orphaned by tragic circumstances (like parents dying and leaving the kid the only survivor) in that place is unknown and it is impossible to guess. The point I'm trying to make is that Arlong is not the "special snowflake" concerning tragedy in the Fishmen District nor is he the only one that has ever experienced tragedy in the Fishmen District. For all we know, Hatchan and Jinbe's past might even be more tragic than his and nothing's stopping Oda from adding on to the characters.
Honestly, the only fishman in One Piece whose tragedy could exceed Nami's right now is Fisher Freakin' Tiger's. Why? He was a slave for the Celestial Dragons for several years and was fighting an internal war with himself ever since his escape to either forgive or continue to hate humans. The most tragic of his life was that just when he was starting to have hope for himself and resolving his relationship with humans, one town had to sell him out in order to protect that same little girl that he just saved. The effects of that action left Tiger feeling more betrayed than ever before and on his death bed, declared that he can't love humans HOWEVER he recommended that anyone not lose hope just because he, personally, did and there are more humans like the innocent Koala than they assume.
This is the oral will of Fisher Tiger that Arlong choose to ignore wholeheartedly despite his mentor's warning that killing humans will make them the same as the Celestial Dragons and the people that follow them. Despite his emotionally-driven nature, Arlong did have a choice to either rise above humans or sink to their level and what did he do? He decide to stupidly attack them alone and get himself caught by the marines.
Now there's only so many things that I can honestly justify concerning Arlong's character because in truth, he's a stone-cold, hypocritical inhumane monster to humans and an arrogant, self-righteous thug to his own kind that isn't apart of his posse. Either way, he's a complete bastard. The only things that make him different from Hordy Jones is that he doesn't kill his own kind and that is honestly where the contrast ends. Arlong and Hordy are cut from the exact same cloth and it doesn't make sense to ask the question "whose better?" when either way, you're going to die if you are human and the peaceful fishmen and merfolk still have to deal with a faction that is completely intolerable to humans to the point of killing regardless if they live or die.
Now, Arlong decided to attack a non-hostile island filled with civilian humans that did nothing to him or his crew or fishmen in general. Adding to that, he extorted from them horridly to the point of forcing them, even little kids, to pay up big cash every month so they can live to see the next month. He didn't care if they paid or not to him because he wanted to find every excuse imaginable to kill a human (ie. Arlong trying to kill Gen-san for owning a weapons collection that he wasn't using) and besides his stated goal to start an empire, I think it was more of a bullshit excuse to find a reason to terrorize humans and the fact that Fishmen were oppressed in this world, only made it a little more convenient to him. People can say that Arlong had gone through hell after he was tortured by the marines and Impel Down and that was why he acted the way he acted towards Jinbe and then later on, towards humans but honestly, Arlong was implied in the manga and proven in the anime that he was killing and terrorizing humans before Fisher Tiger came back into his life. There really is no real difference in his behavior before and after Tiger. Arlong had a choice to either learn a serious lesson from his mentor or be a monster. He choose to be a monster. None the less, what Arlong did to Nami and her home was inexcusable and cannot be negated or brushed off just because he had a supposed tear-jerker past. He's a villain and is only a hero to those from the Fishmen District that don't know peace or co-existence with anyone except merfolk and fishmen.
Because of Arlong's actions, Nami had to deal with being oppressed for the majority of her life by a race she had no idea existed until his appearance and had to lie, cheat, and steal her way through life in order to survive being around Arlong and help her people. She's had to deal with being despised for no reason. Some can say that it's Arlong dishing out what humans have done to him; me, I call it BS.
Two wrongs never make a right. Like I said before, that island, Nami, Nojiko, especially Bellemere, did zero to Arlong or his crew personally nor deserved the inhuman treatment.
I love Arlong but there are certain lines that cannot be crossed when it comes to loving his character.
(although it's still ok to me and I see the necessity of it). Also, I long ago dropped the anime after Thriller Bark almost completely because the quality deteriorated more and more starting with the Water 7 arc, at least what i perceive as quality, and I'm not a big fan of watching animated scenes from manga, ever since then I only watched veeery few episodes, so you won't see me on the OP Anime sub-forum at all 
