Shepherd
Shepherd is a commander from Marine Headquarters that comes to G-8 in order to inspect it. He came to the base onboard the Stan Malay which suffered earlier from a storm upon arrival. He is the closest thing to an actual antagonist in the G-8 Arc as opposes both the Straw Hats and the G-8 Marines. However throughout the entire Arc, he has had all sorts of bad luck from being accused of being a Straw Hat called Condoriano to accidentally helping the Straw Hats numerous times.
Shepherd is a grayish skinned man with a ponytail. He normally wears the official Marine over coat and purple clothes. These clothes and a pair of purple eye glasses were stolen by Robin when she assumed his identity. After he was freed from the brig, he regained his clothes but apparently not his eyeglasses.
Shepherd thinks himself to be superior over other Marines due to his high rank. He would often threaten others with decommissions, court martial, and such unless his orders as followed or if things don’t go his way. Shepherd thinks lowly of G-8 and it’s commander, Johnathan. He believes that the base and Johnathan are completely useless due the base’s reputation and the Vice Admiral’s methods. Shepherd would thus do anything from writing a bad report to showing off the G-8 Marines just to see the base be decommissioned.
Shepherd thinks so low of G-8 that he has refused help from Johnathan when the latter offers him some of the base’s Marines to aid the inspector in locating the Straw Hats. Due to this stubbornness of his, Shepherd has thus done several actions that don’t cooperate with the rest of G-8’s attempts to capture the Straw Hats. The majority of these actions have ended unintentionally helping the Straw Hats out of tight jams.
While Shepherd thinks himself to be superior, it has been shown that should the situation arise he shows a more cowardly side. This has been shown most prominent in a discussion between him and Johnathan. During the middle of the discussion, Shepherd decided to toy with Johnathan’s fishing rod in order to mock the Vice Admiral. The normally calm Johnathan however responded to Shepherd’s action in a tone which apparently made the inspector think otherwise.
Shepherd’s overall personality is somewhat akin to that of Spandam’s.
Shepherd possesses no special abilities or powers per say, however he does possess a special weapon called the Eagle Launcher. This extremely large bazooka is as he says is the latest and greatest portable bazooka that has been developed by the Marine Headquarters. It is as he says like the talons of a bird of prey hence it’s name. It’s power is on par with that of a small battleship. However despite the weapon’s power, Shepherd isn’t exactly an expert on using it. The weapon in fact unintentionally aids the Straw Hats several times than actually destroying them.
When he is later discovered, he is thought to be a member of the Straw Hat Pirates, with Usopp claiming he is really named Condoriano and he had lost his memory.[4] After some ruckus caused by the Straw Hats in the base, which included Robin as being identified as a Straw Hat in disguise, Shepherd’s real identity is revealed and he is freed from prison. With all that’s happened, Shepherd decides to take matters in his own hands in order to belittle Johnathan and the rest of G-8 when he learns the Straw Hats would come to retrieve their gold that had been confiscated earlier.[6] He does so regardless of the Stan Malay’s captain’s request to let their troops recover from the wounds they suffered from the storm.
With his men, Shepherd confronts four of the Straw Hats that had been conered in the G-8 vault. With the intent of paying back the humiliation that was inflicted on him, Shepherd decides to handle the situation himself disregarding a fellow Marine’s warning to not underestimate the Straw Hats. He then pulls out an extremely large bazooka, the Eagle Launcher and aims at the Straw Hats. However due to a mistake in holding the weapon in the wrong position, he instead fires it backwards. With a little help from Robin’s ability, Shepherd’s own weapon is then used on his own men and then later used to propel himself into the air. With Shepherd himself and the other Marines in the room temporarily knocked down by the Eagle Launcher, the four Straw Hats escape from them. With that, Shepherd then decides to execute his next tactic against the Straw Hats. With his forces on the Pine Peak, he orders them to intercept the Going Merry at the G-8 sea gate and sink it before the pirates before they could escape. Unfortunately this plan too goes wrong. The Pine Peak unintentionally showed the Straw Hats where the current was wherein they could steer Merry, which was disguised as a Marine battleship then. Shepherd’s plan was then once again thwarted as the rest of Going Merry’s disguise collided with the Pine Peak.
Believing that the Straw Hats were finally going to escape, Shepherd decided to leave the rest to Johnathan’s forces. Should the Vice Admiral fail to capture them, Shepherd threatened to hold Johnathan for everything that’s happened. However in response, Johnathan simply replied to the Inspector to include in his report himself as being a hindrance in G-8’s operations to capture the pirates. Shepherd then witnesses the base’s special 9 o’clock low tide trap the Going Merry. Fearing that he will become nothing more than a nuisance in the whole affair, Shepherd snuck away from Johnathan and decides to use the Eagle Launcher on the Straw Hats one last time. However upon trying to aim at Luffy while the ship had become airborne thanks to Usopp’s Impact Dial and the Octopus Balloon, Shepherd accidently shot the turret that was aiming at the octopus. His actions unfortunately aids the Straw Hats in escaping. After the incident, Shepherd returns to Johnathan and threatens to decommission the Vice Admiral for allowing the pirates to escape regardless of the fact that Johnathan is Admiral Akainu’s protege. He is however met with Jessica, Johnathan’s wife, punching him out in the face. As the Straw Hats leave G-8, and Johnathan and his wife laugh off the events that had happened, a knocked out Shepherd simply lies on the ground.
