One Piece’s villains are some of the most intimidating in anime, but one in particular just makes you feel sorry for them instead.

From Arlong to the Thousand Beast Kaido, One Piece has produced tons of amazing and iconic villains throughout the years. After all, a well-written villain is not just an obstacle for the hero to overcome, but they could also have a big impact on the character development of the main characters. Which is why we remember great villains as much as the great heroes.

That being said, there is one particular villain in One Piece that doesn’t have a place in the conversation of great villains in the series. Not only that, you could even say that he is the most pitiful character who dared to pick up the mantle of a villain for the Straw Hats. His name is Hody Jones, and this is all you need to know about him, and also the reason why he is so pitiful.

Who is Hody Jones

Hody Jones is a great white shark fish-man, and the main villain of the Fish-Man Island Arc. Not only that, he is also the self-proclaimed captain of the new Fish-Man Pirates. They operate mainly within the confines of the Fish-Man Island, but they plan to eventually bring their carnage into the humans on the surface.

Hody was also a former soldier of the Ryugyu Palace. But he never has any sense of loyalty to the royal family, or for the Ryugyu Kingdom for that matter. Not only that, he actively seeks to topple the current monarch and take their place to rule the Fish-Man with an iron fist. In order to do that, he often caused disturbance, ranging from a simple violent skirmish to a full-blown terrorist attack. Usually with the help of his New Fish-Man Pirates.

The core members of his New Fish-Man Pirates itself are actually his childhood friends. They grew up together, and now they work together under Hody. And thanks to their overwhelming power, they manage to take control of the slump of the kingdom where all the ruffians live, and force them to join the New Fish-Man Pirates and uphold Hody’s ideals.

Hody Jones’ Powers

As a fish-man, Hody Jones is ten times stronger than a regular human being. And if he’s underwater, his power will grow double than that. The fact that he is a great white shark fish-man, a species that is naturally ferocious, makes him even more powerful than your average fish-man. So Hody Jones is clearly blessed with a terrifying raw, physical prowess.

Just like Jinbe, Hody is also a practitioner of the Fish-Man karate. Combine this with his already threatening physical capability, then his offensive powers are really off the chart. One thing worth noting, however, according to Jinbe, Hody’s Fish-Man karate technique is still amateur level at best. This means an adept fighter should be able to evade and even counter Hody’s attacks.

Hody knows that pure physical power and Fish-Man karate alone is not enough if he wants to conquer the Fish-Man kingdom, so he turns to a diabolical item. A performance-enhancing drug called Energy Steroid. Each pill of this drug can make the user four times stronger, in exchange for a shortened life span. It doesn’t take long for Hody to becomes addicted to these pills and start to pop it several times a day. During an intense fight, he even gulped down four or more pills at once, despite knowing the danger of overdose.

Hody Jones’ Motivation

The main driving force behind Hody Jones’s actions is his deep hatred toward humans. He knows how badly the humans on the surface treat the fish-men, and he is frankly baffled by it. Because he knows that the Fish-Men are way superior in any way to humans. So in his mind, it should be the other way around. The Fish-Men should be the one that enslaved humanity. Which is the reason why he idolizes Arlong so much. Because to him, Arlong is the perfect example of how a Fish-Men should act in the world.

Not only that, Hody actually thinks that Arlong didn’t go far enough. Because Arlong simply asked for a tribute every now and then. Hody thinks he should’ve killed more humans while he can. But the fact that a mere human like Luffy managed to beat Arlong and tear his pirate down makes Hody lose all respect for his idol. That is why he intended to use Arlong’s ideas and principles, and built the New Fish-Man pirate on top of it that is much more powerful, ruthless, and ambitious than ever before. And unlike Arlong, Hody is even willing to kill his fellow fish-men if he thinks they sided with humans.

So what is the cause of such bottomless hatred? Did he get enslaved by humans when he was small? Did a human killed or tortured his loved ones? Or maybe he went through both of those things, just like Jinbe, Arlong, and the rest of the Sun Pirates’ crew? As it turns out, the answer is none of the above. Hody never experienced such hardship in his life. It is a simple case of inherited hatred. All the adults around him hate humans. All of his idols hate humans. And he heard about all the terrible things that humans did to his people. So he took that hatred into his heart, nurtured it, and then went insane with it.

Hody Jones’ Role In The Story of One Piece

We now know that Hody Jones is simply a drug-popping strong man with no actual motivation behind his action. But if you think that he is just a badly-written character, then you couldn’t be further from the truth. Because he is pitiful by design.

Think about when Hody Jones encountered the Straw Hats for the first time. It was after their first reunion in two years. We know our beloved characters have grown and become much more powerful than ever before. But it’s hard to tell how stronger they’ve become just by looking at their appearance. Yes, there is a small skirmish happening in the Sabaody island with the Straw Hat impersonator and the Pacifistas. But the old Straw Hats should be able to take care of such problems, so it’s not a good way to showcase their growth.

What they need is a fairly strong villain with an acceptable yet not too complicated goal and motivation. They have to be able to pose a challenge to the Straw Hats, but once the heroes start to fight seriously, they should be able to easily defeat this villain. This way, the viewers would be able to tell how strong the Straw Hats had become. That is pretty much the role of Hody Jones and his New Fish-man pirate. A cannon fodder that allowed Luffy and his crew to showcase their new powers. If that is not pitiful, then we don’t know what is.