 dengeki blue good for creating strangely like blue electricity stealth black good for spying on people in a state of undress and subscribe red good for you to be pushing it and subscribing to the ground line review for regular one piece content uploaded straight into your youtube feed hello and welcome to the ground line review your source for everything one piece and today we are continuing our ongoing exploration into the deeper relationships between the straw hats with this addition focusing on what i honestly believe to be one of the more understated dynamics in the series between the captain and the chef and actually to begin this one i think that we need to take some time to flesh out another key relationship to lay some very important groundwork here and that is the ongoing love story between luffy and food you see luffy is a simple man with supremely basic desires in this world in many ways he's kind of like a dog really three times when he is happiest it's going to be when he is exploring playing or eating and he takes mealtime every bit as serious as a golden retriever and he finishes his food just as quickly as one as well but food is nigh on everything to luffy not only is it one of his greatest pleasures but it gives him this almost magical energy to continue striving towards his goal the link between luffy and food is so profound that it could probably have its own video focusing entirely on that idea but with that in mind let's now consider the extreme importance of a chef in the mind of luffy a chef on this crew is very much luffy's key lifeline without a chef luffy's journey would become an immediate disaster an example of which we actually briefly got to see between the zoe and whole cake island arcs as within a couple of days luffy had managed to poison himself with his quote-unquote cooking and he just wasn't quite complete until sanji had returned to the crew we will get to that whole situation a little bit later but first up it's important to highlight that food is not everything with this relationship in fact it wasn't even the key factor that led luffy to scouting sanji in the first place there were plenty of highly talented chefs on baratier but what really locked luffy and sanji was seeing his sheer kindness towards guine a starving pirate who had rocked up with no money and who was thrown out only to be met with a plate of sanji's trademark seafood fried rice and this was very much something of an ultimate combination of features for luffy someone who was on his level in terms of a moral compass but also an individual who could prepare delicious gnomes and immediately after luffy saw sanji feed guine he made the declaration that he had found his cook and from that moment on whether sanji liked it or not he was destined to become a straw hat although this did also lead to the ever famous luffy refusing sanji's refusal to join the crew but despite the fact that sanji did decline there was only one major obstacle stopping him from saying yes right then and there which was the debt he felt he owed to zeff as opposed to other members of the crew specifically zoronami sanji didn't really have any reservations about becoming a pirate in and of itself i mean he did possess a dislike for them but at the same time he had been practically raised by a pirate in zeff and just about all of his colleagues were former pirates or criminals plus the restaurant he helped build was designed to cater to everyone including pirates so following luffy actually presented sanji with a very natural path after everyone else pushed him into it of course but that doesn't even begin to touch on quite possibly the most important thing that bonds luffy and sanji together which are their dreams now you can say this about most of the straw hats i suppose they all come together with their outrageous sounding dreams and support one another in completing them however with luffy and sanji in particular they have very difficult goals to strive towards ones that aren't say as tangible as others for example zoro wanting to become the world's greatest swordsman an incredibly difficult thing to achieve but something that we did have a tangible metric for you just need to defeat miho and you're done you did it congratulations zoro like nami wanting to draw a map of the world that one's even clearer you just need to literally draw a map of the world and in fact even usub's goal of becoming brave in general is quite easy to measure but with luffy and sanji their goals don't have that endpoint because they were both in search of something that may not necessarily exist becoming the pirate king is a very vague path i mean in theory you just reached laugh tail and then somehow magically you become the king of the pirates it's a very foggy goal especially in these early days when we didn't even know if laugh tail actually existed and that is very similar to the goal of finding the old blue because as far as we know it is a mythical existence i may narratively we as readers can assume that it does or will exist but in this world the dreams of sanji and luffy seem actively impossible to achieve compared to that of most of the rest of the crew and that creates a pretty immediate bond because of everyone in the straw hats these are going to be the two that get told their desires are ridiculous and impossible the most so while luffy and sanji exist with extraordinarily different personalities they immediately understood each other on that all important base level and not only that but it also creates near instantaneous respect for one another given that they are both so willing not only to break but to completely shatter the expectations of globalized society and that makes them an incredibly fearsome combination two wildly powerful figures each fighting for the benefit of one another with that said they do of course have some pretty grand differences on a more superficial standing one of the most fun is that sanji realizes that luffy is you know not the sharpest of rubber knives and in fact he will frequently state quite blatantly actually that luffy is an idiot but never in a particularly like negative way if that makes sense which isn't to say that sanji is complimenting luffy but there's always this aura of the unsaid surrounding sanji with these statements it's very much like saying yeah my captain is a moron but that's exactly what i love about him sanji very much appreciates luffy's simplicity and openness which sometimes results in saying dumb things or performing stupid actions but that is preferable to sanji in comparison to the more status quo mentality of the world and in regards to this sanji is almost never shocked by any decision that luffy makes at least not in the same way that luffy has the ability to shock say nami with very dangerous and seemingly not at all well thought out courses of action whereas sanji is a lot more like zoro he sees luffy's intentions and just accepts that as his own course of action although unlike zoro he doesn't just jump blindly into combat with luffy and this is where sanji probably displays one of his more important enhancements within this dynamic because luffy is the kind of man who suffers from some pretty extreme tunnel vision he will be driven by a singular focus no matter how great or small which means that he very much neglects the greater world around him sanji on the other hand tends to see the bigger picture of any given situation and while luffy is away causing chaos in that charming luffy way he does sanji quite often uses his head a bit more to make the situation in question much more favorable to luffy and the rest of the crew and i think one of the greater examples of this occurred during the anise lobby arc when whilst everyone else was facing off against a large legion of marines sanji instead chose to find a way to close the gates of justice which is the act that would inevitably allow the straw hats to escape this ordeal alive and this just shows a kind of initiative and brought a utility that many straw hats don't quite have because they like luffy tend to focus on the more immediate issues at hand and the interesting thing is that a lot of this is just subconscious sanji operating as well like there are countless examples of him acting counter to luffy and the rest of the crew like when he boarded the sea train or found mr threese hideout on little garden or focusing on destroying elzark maxim on skypeer sanji is responsible for a lot of game changing actions within the series and he works in perfect balance with luffy who acts as the loud powerful distraction whilst sanji vanishes and accomplishes some incredible feat speaking of incredible feat though another great advantage sanji has is that he can also act as a powerful combatant alongside luffy which does give sanji quite possibly the most utility amongst the straw hats because he is a character capable of raw demolition as well as great intelligence and while he's not the strongest or smartest member of the crew the ability to seamlessly bounce between both worlds is 100% integral to luffy's success in most major arcs and as a result of this i really cannot overstate just how much trust luffy invests into sanji so luffy sanji is a pretty incredible being who can do an absurd array of really finicky cool things that luffy could never even dream of but at the same time luffy can also trust sanji to protect the rest of the crew as well because he has that innate power and in this way sanji very much acts as the tertiary captain of the straw hats i say tertiary because zoro is the natural second in command which i explored in his video but that isn't to take anything away from sanji because when situations become extraordinarily desperate he is more than capable of stepping into that role of leadership in luffy's stead the situation which immediately comes to mind being dressed rosa when the crew decided to split up and luffy giving sanji permission to act against the big mum pirates as well as lead half of the crew to zoe and while i'm certain luffy would do this with any other crew member because he trusts the entirety of the straw hats there was definitely a supreme sense of comfort and confidence in this particular situation because sanji was in position to be the temporary leader of this faction that factor alone meant that luffy could give his undivided attention to the chaos on dress rosa and not worry about the rest of his crew because there would sanji and being with sanji automatically means that they will be fine that is a pretty incredible degree of trust right there but that does of course lead us to the major conflict that has occurred between the captain and the chef which happened on whole cake island after sanji had been blackmailed to leave the crew now it's very rare that straw hat members face off against each other in a non-comical sense and there was something very heartbreaking about this instance in particular and that's because this wasn't a situation like luffy versus usa where two people were fighting over differing ideals or luffy versus zoro which was fighting over a misconception in this case sanji was actively fighting against luffy in order to protect luffy and i suppose fight is a very liberal way of putting it because luffy didn't actually make any physical attempt to strike sanji he just stood there and took his various blows but the actual fight was confined to the mental realm due to the extreme pressure being directed at sanji he was putting on an act saying that he had never believed in luffy and had been looking down on him this entire time and etc i say etc because luffy didn't believe any of it neither did we and when everything was said and done luffy was a relentless iron war breaking sanji's facade and blatantly calling him out as a liar which worked and sanji was forced to face the truth which became even more clear after the revelation that charlotte pudding was also a lie but the truly touching moment of this whole exchange was when luffy admitted that he would be unable to become the pirate king without sanji and not just because he was the chef but because of everything that sanji represents which we've already gone over luffy saw sanji retreating and in response he said that he would just sit there and starve because in his mind there was no point in even trying to continue his journey to become the pirate king without sanji and that's kind of incredible actually because luffy has never made such a statement like that about any other crew member and even though i have no doubt that he feels yeah the same way about everyone else it was still really powerful to hear that out loud because most of one piece consists of the straw hats making sacrifices and bold claims regarding luffy so to see that happening in the other direction was really quite something and eventually luffy would break through to sanji properly with a trademark punch in the face hole and as soon as sanji revealed his true feelings about wanting to go back to the crew well it was another one of those moments where all of a sudden everything was okay luffy reacted with a smile resolved crash wedding and take on an emperor of the sea all for the sake of taking sanji back and this ultimately leads us to the best part of this relationship which was explored in hall cake island because when everything was said and done or almost said and done they had an encounter with sanji's biological father finn smoke judge who proceeded to berate sanji stating that he had no royal pride his mentality was too soft too easily swayed by emotions etc and luffy just responds by being genuinely curious as to why judge is listing all of sanji's best qualities which is a scene that was played for comedy but i actually think it's one of the most telling moments in regards to this entire dynamic especially because it mirrors sanji's thoughts about luffy he willingly admits that luffy is an idiot but that quality which is seen by many others as highly detrimental is something that sanji truly values just as how luffy truly values all of those sanji features that judge despised and that brings us to the very modern day where luffy and sanji are both proceeding fairly smoothly along the path of their highly impossible dreams sanji providing luffy with the energy utility and that extra boost of power he needs whilst luffy continues to lead sanji to greater and greater heights and more importantly ever closer to the all blue because that is the dynamic of the captain and the chef but what do you guys think please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my discord server and if you'd like to see more videos like this then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight into your youtube feeds but for now this has been the ground line review and i'll see you next time