For eight years Arlong reigned over the Conomi Islands, including Nami’s home of Cocoyashi Village. He controlled it all with an iron fist, using both his physical strength and emotional manipulation to keep all of the “inferior” humans from resisting his rule. In peaceful East Blue, the villagers felt helpless and could do nothing except rely on one girl-turned-woman to save everything they had ever known. In the short term of less than a decade, Arlong’s plan to conquer one island worked perfectly. However, he said that his complete plan was to eventually control all of the East Blue, and that’s where he starts to get pretty stupid. Even without Luffy and the rest of his crew liberating Cocoyashi, Arlong’s plan would have fallen apart given enough time, and he was just too arrogant to realize it.

First, let’s break down the basics of Arlong’s way of ruling. He and his crew had a few different ways of controlling people. There was obviously the fishman’s physical power advantage. He would kill or harm those who opposed them, and destroy entire villages to prove a point. None of the humans on the island had the power to stop him, and only faced death if they tried. As a former Marine, Bellemere was probably the one with the greatest ability to stop the Arlong Pirates from taking over, but she was gunned down saving Nojiko and Nami.

He also ruled over the islands financially. By them having to pay him tribute money every month, it demoralized them and led their entire lives to be focused on making enough money to just be able to pay for their families’ lives for the month — forget making enough money to actually live comfortably. So the people of these islands had to live for years with Arlong making them work as hard as they can just to pay him tribute all the while putting up with his racist rants because of their fear of his physical power. This led to him having a huge amount of mental control over almost every part of their lives. In the end, the humans of Cocoyashi and the other villages like it hand no choice other than to wait on Nami to save them or die trying to fight the rule of Arlong Park.

Like I’ve said however, Arlong’s plan to take over the East would only work short term, and by short term I mean within at least two decades it would have fallen into collapse regardless if the Straw Hats had shown up or not. Honestly, when you get down to it, the guy was kind of an idiot. There are so many reasons why this plan was doomed to fail, so let’s go over some of them.

The Arlong Pirates controlled their own portion of the East Blue for eight years. It is hard to tell just how far their reign reached, but we know that they at least had power over the villages on the Conomi Islands. However, for eight years in to a plan to control an entire Blue, this isn’t really great progress. I don’t know exactly what his time line for taking over East Blue was, but you would think that there would at least have been more evidence of expansion. However, imagine if they had been more aggressive with moving forward with their control. There is absolutely no way that there wouldn’t have been more of a fight against them from other islands and Arlong has definitely overestimated just how corrupt all marines are. Yes, Captain Nezumi was able to be bought off, but imagine if Arlong had tried to do the same thing with Smoker in Loguetown, which is part of the East Blue and thus part of the eventual take over plan. Not only would Smoker have completely refused to take bribe money, but he also definitely had the strength to beat Arlong into the ground when he tried to fight.

The very same is true if Arlong had ever come to Foosha village when Garp was there. It doesn’t seem to be hidden that it’s Garp’s home base, so if on the off chance the marine hero was there when the pirate crew attacked, they would have been destroyed. If Garp came back to find that his village was enslaved by pirates while he was gone, again they would have been destroyed. There is no winning in that scenario except for the ridiculous notion that Garp will just never visit home again.

Plus, lets think about what’s bigger than Foosha villaige: Goa Kingdom. It’s a kingdom complete with nobles and a monarchy that seems to be held with high regard, and most importantly, seems to have occasional visits from Celestial Dragons. It’s hard to say whether or not Arlong would attack Celestial Dragons if he came upon them if he tried to take over Goa, but if he didn’t, they would still probably attempt to make him a slave and he would undoubtedly fight back at that. So then an Admiral will get called all the way to East Blue and we all know just what chance Arlong and his crew would have against that.

So clearly the idea of turning the entire East Blue into a piece of Arlong Park was never going to work. But let’s go back to just where he started, the Conomi Islands and the villages within the archipelago. By the time we reached them during the East Blue saga, Arlong had controlled them for eight years. Like I’ve said before, there is no way that he could have been able to do so for much longer.

Let’s think about this monetarily. Arlong’s crew charged 50,000 beli for each child and 100,00 beli for each adult every month. For a small nuclear family of two adults and two kids that’s 300,000 beli each month. Not only that, but Arlong has completely isolated the islands from reaching for outside help and therefore other sources of money. If the island is isolated, that means that the only source of money for the villages is from each other, the cash flow just going in circles as they pay for each other’s goods and services. And considering that they have to pay for their lives every month, I doubt that they are spending money even within that community very much. The only way that I can imagine that the place wasn’t bankrupt within the first few years was that either Arlong has to at least be putting money into the economy somehow just to keep the economy going, or Nami, as the only one allowed off island, is also bringing back money to spend in the village. But Nami is also saving money to buy her village, so it is very doubtful that she has a lot to spare. Either way, controlling the people of Cocoyashi only worked when they actually had the money to pay each month, and since Arlong would destroy a whole village if just one person couldn’t pay it, eventually he would have all of the belis and everyone would be dead, and there would be no humans to rule.

The population of the Conomi Islands probably also declined as a pretty steep rate. Even if you ignore that Arlong would kill entire villages for not being able to pay, there is also the fact that families had to pay for the lives of each of their members. I doubt that many children were born during that time since parents probably could not pay for a new child and wouldn’t want to bring them into such a life. It’s also likely that a lot of suicides occurred, both from people who couldn’t take the oppression anymore as well as those who sacrificed their lives so that their families could pay less to live. A shrinking population as well as an increasingly older one is something that could not possibly have been part of Arlong’s plan, because what good is ruling over people if they are too weak to work for you?

It’s clear that by the end of those eight years, the people of Cocoyashi especially were reaching a tipping point. He had already recently destroyed the nearby village of Gosa due to them not being able to pay the tribute. They were scared and angry for having to put up with this for so many years, but the one thing that kept their hopes up was the idea that Nami was working so hard to help them. And then Arlong betrayed her. Even if the Straw Hats hadn’t showed up, once Arlong had betrayed what little trust Nami had in him in keeping his word, the people of Cocoyashi were willing to die to get out from under his rule.

Arlong did not want to kill all of the humans he met. That was too good for them in his eyes. He wanted them to suffer and he wanted them to have to look at him as their master. This is why he didn’t wipe out the entire population of Conomi when he arrived even though he could have, and instead made such a grand plan as ruling the entire East Blue. While Arlong’s hate towards a race that has harmed his own for so long is understandable, that doesn’t make him any less of an idiot in this plan that was never going to work with any considerable amount of time.

“Fort Knight” is a monthly editorial by Jillian Knight written exclusively for the One Piece Podcast website.

If you want to ask me a question or discuss other ways that Arlong would have failed to take over the world, you can post here or at my Twitter @PiratessUnluck.