 I hate Sanji. I hate the way he holds this like perfect balance of comedy, action and drama seamlessly slipping into every possible role in the series like he owns the place, but most of all I hate that crappy cook smug eyebrows. Nobody should be smug with eyebrows like this. Nobody. This intro was brought to you by Zoro Gang. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review source for everything One Piece and today it's time to talk about fan-generated controversy with this very curly-eyed chap, because Sanji has been stirring again after the events of chapter 1005 and anime only watchers do not worry I won't be spoiling anything in this video primarily because there is nothing to spoil. Sanji basically did what Sanji always does and now there's some very vocal peeps on the internet who are unhappy with it as per usual. And to clarify I personally don't hate Sanji but I do hate the Sanji hate and so we're going to sit down here today and just unravel that complex web of Sanji feels. The first step towards which would be the act of you subscribing to the Grand Line review which will result in regular injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. Make sure not to miss out on this exquisitely prepared button from our fantastic chef. To get into things though, let's be real, we have not just arrived at this video as a result of manga events. The Sanji hate train has been chewing for an awfully long time at this point. Longer than most people watching this video will have even been fans of One Piece really, but there is a rather potent sentiment often expressed that Sanji is well he's something of a joke. He gets used for all sorts of perverted gags and as a stepping stone for the characters whilst never really getting the time to be cool himself. And a lot of that is quite true to a degree. I probably wouldn't quite use those words nor would I state it as negative. And to express what I'm talking about let's go ahead and make a straw hat cocktail. So here are all of the ingredients you need to make a perfect Sanji. One part action, one part comedy, one part drama. Mix them all around and you will end up with this swirly brown chef. And while this may sound simple, Sanji's perfect balance of action, drama and comedy is something that very, very few characters have access to. To demonstrate, let's make Azora. So what you'll need for this recipe is three parts action, one part comedy and one part drama because his comedic and dramatic aspects are heavily overshadowed by his action prowess. Let's try Nami. To make an army, you need to take three parts comedy, two parts drama and half a part of action if we're lucky and happen to have the right bartender during that particular arc. But the point is that these characters tend to have either an incredibly dominant or super submissive feature. The only other straw hat that I would equate to having equal parts action, comedy and drama would be Luffy. He's a perfect archetype like that. So Sanji is in very good company. I would describe him as something of a dramatic multi tool. He can flip seamlessly from any of these key features, which makes him pretty absurdly versatile. At the same time, however, this also means that he doesn't have that key defining feature that some people may be consistently looking for. And if you've become invested in Sanji for his action feats, which is kind of an accidental pun really considering he uses, you know, his feet for action, action feats. But if someone is invested in Sanji for that action aspect, then this balance dictates that the other 66.6% for the time they may become just a little bit unsatisfied with Sanji when his role is relegated to that of comedy and drama. And I think that's quite understandable. I mean, I for one can't imagine a world where Zoro would be clowned around and you know, kicked in the balls by a bubble bath assassin, mostly because comedy is not Zoro's strongest feature. Sanji, however, can get away with this because he is a clown. He is a very talented gesture equipped with his own very fancy hat. And one of his key weapons in reminding us that this is, at the end of the day, a pretty goofy pirate manga. Sanji is often not cool. In fact, sometimes he even borders on being kind of pathetic. But that's what gives his character the kind of range that the others do not have. It's what makes him a very unique member of the Straw Hats in particular because at any given moment he could fall anywhere between being the coolest smoking kicking mofo alive or he could be a writhing powerless simp. And once again, I don't say that is a bad thing because characters having negative even hindrance inducing traits are what makes them interesting. It's one of the things that I as a Zoro fanboy really wish we got a lot more from him with the exception of the whole getting lost and I guess getting drunk thing. And we can even have an argument over whether or not these jokers traits of Sanji are even in fact negative at all. I mean the whole blatant pervert thing is one we probably can't really get away from. However, the other one that tends to annoy people more often than not is Sanji's chivalry. The idea that Sanji will not hurt a woman under any circumstances including to save his own life. And any time that Sanji's powerlessness against women is brought up in the story, this channel inevitably receives a ton of comments lamenting how lame Sanji is and how poorly he tends to be written and treated by Oda. And to be fair to this thought for a second, I do remember feeling similarly when I was first reading the Ennyslobi arc. I saw Sanji matched up against Califer and I was like aww yeah alright. This is the time where we are going to see some amazing growth from Sanji. He's going to be forced to confront this whole woman thing and he will better himself. And uh well it didn't quite turn out like that and it was quite disappointing when it did not in any way happen. For full context though I was also like 16 years old at the time that this was published and had really no care for nuance or I guess character in general. I was reading Lumpi's for the action. In fact I vividly remember when Robin's flashback started. I hated that because it meant that the action was going to be delayed by at least a month. Ugh how annoying. But these days in my old age I'm very much the opposite. Flashbacks are some of my favorite aspects of the series because they dump you with all of the coveted information about characters in the world and they hit the hardest in terms of drama. Meanwhile these days I look at action and go eh that choreography that was pretty cool but that's kind of all it was. And in the end it's almost more of a hindrance to progressing the story. And I have a similar flipped opinion regarding Sanji Shivalry. As a teenager I saw this trait as an incredible detriment. Something utterly ridiculous like why is he not working to overcome this? Especially when you've got someone like Goose up over here fighting his hardest to overcome his own detrimental trait of cowardice. But my mistake there was conflating two very different ideas. Later on in life what really struck me is that Goose up sees his cowardice as a detriment and so he works to overcome that. Meanwhile Sanji sees his Shivalry as a benefit. He sees his role of not hitting women as something that makes him a better person. A core value that he would rather die than forfeit. And to me there's just something very admirable about that even if I don't share that value myself. In a life or death situation I'm just saying probably gonna hit ya no matter how you identify with gender. Which is why I respect Sanji's decisions even more because he will not under any circumstances compromise his beliefs. It's very loofy like really. Loofy will never compromise his philosophy regarding anything. There is really nothing anyone can do to move loofy away from those core values. And I'd argue that's what One Piece fans love about him. So I would very much apply the same logic to Sanji. And post time skip events have only made that even more profound. After experiencing his extended childhood and learning that the only people who were in any way kind to him were women, I do think it makes sense in this world for Sanji to have developed this way. Furthermore, Sanji did also have this philosophy drilled into him probably quite literally by Zeph who very ironically violently insisted that men should never harm women. So this idea is tied to Sanji every bit as much as his dream to find the all blue. And would it be interesting to see Sanji have to confront that? Yes I think it would be. Then again every time he lives up to his ideals that is a victory for Sanji in my mind even if that results in the defeat in terms of a fight. Back to being a derp clown though, I find that a lot of Sanji criticisms tend to focus on the idea that his comedic aspects are just way out of whack with the action and even dramatic features. Specifically the action I suppose is the main complaint. And one I think those thoughts fail to contend with is the idea that Sanji comedy does not usually exist in a vacuum. Definitely not the important moments anyway. So let's take any slobby for example. Sanji fights Caliphah, he gets thoroughly clowned, it is admittedly pretty funny. Comedy, tick. After this absolute decimation, a desperate situation is triggered whereby Nami must step in and boldly take on a superhuman assassin. Drama, tick. And finally after exiting the scenario, Sanji then finds his true opponent in Jabra, resulting in a big ol' tick for action as well. This is the perfect balance that is Sanji. Equal parts of everything and whilst it might be kind of frustrating to see him made a mock reel of when focusing on a single chapter or even a single scene, in the grand scheme of things, these moments serve a double and in some cases even triple purpose, enhancing both action and drama later on. Let's have another example, Fishman Island. This is where fans will often cite Sanji as being at his most annoying and I do kind of agree with that, admittedly. Fishman Island for Sanji really was just one gigantic mess of nosebleeds and mermaid titties, which led to probably the most ridiculous Sanji situation to date, whereby he needed a full blown blood transfusion to recover from having a face full of boob. And to make matters worse, the transfusion came from the other two of them. I think their names were Splash and Splatter, so this whole situation was pretty extremely odd. However, in an insane twist of narrative, this ridiculous plot point actually serves as the crux of the entire Fishman Island arc. It's only because of this stupid and I repeat stupid moment that we discover the Fishman human blood taboo and that is what allows Jinbei to have his moment of breaking down racial boundaries by offering his blood to Luffy at the end of the arc. That's right, Sanji's clownish nosebleeds is what allows us to feel that full weight of drama brought on by Jinbei. Now could this have been done another way? Probably. I think it could have been done far less, extremely goofily, but then again, that is the beauty of Sanji. He's the kind of character that can simply get away with crap like that, so Oda doesn't have to do something convoluted and painfully logical. And sure, a lot of these situations do come at Sanji's expense, but that's how a dramatic multi-tool is best utilized, with its wide variety of functions building towards something greater. And so long as the payoff lands, I am usually absolutely fine with the weird setups. If the payoff doesn't land, well then that's when I'll start complaining at great length. But in regards to chapter 1005, well that was no different than anything I've stated here. Sanji's narratively advantageous characteristics were invoked, a joke was made and it resulted in a fantastic action piece for a character I won't name, as well as a very sound dramatic callback. The setup was perhaps a little bit clunky, but it did pay off. Which is all well and good, but another argument that does often come up is that Sanji was treated far better pre-timeskip, many more quote, proper fights and such. And I guess that's also technically true, but really how many proper pre-timeskip fights did Sanji have that weren't also complete jokes? I can think of two off the top of my head, you've got Karubi and you've got Jabra, but the whole Jabra one was only really possible due to being clowned around by Calypher earlier on. But what else do we have? Bonclay on alabaster, well that was an almost purely comical affair until the final blows. Skype here maybe against Sartori, but is that really a proper fight considering it was a 3v1? About Wanzi on the sea train, are things really a proper fight when your opponent is a weird joke noodle dude? So I guess we should move to Thriller Bark then where Sanji's proper fight was against Absalom and entirely predicated on the idea that Sanji wanted to be more of a pervert than he already is. So this whole idea that Sanji has somehow had this incredible cv of like serious proper fights pre-timeskip is very nostalgia coloured. And honestly I think the only real difference is that he won those fights as opposed to his post-timeskip cv where he does face pretty amazing serious opponents like Virgo, Dolph Lamingo, Judge in page 1, only for those fights to either be inconclusive or for Sanji to lose. And on that note I will empathise with those that crave action. Sanji still gets plenty of it though even if it doesn't generally result in the desired outcomes. At the same time though Sanji is flooded with action compared to characters like Chopper, Robin, Nami and even Frankie. I mean you just try being a Robin fan in particular, this woman hasn't had a proper fight in the last 15 years of real-time publication. And the answer I receive most often in regards to that is well Robin doesn't need to fight, that's not her purpose in the story, she's the archaeologist you see. And I get the same thing with Nami as well. Nami doesn't need to fight, it's not her thing, she's the navigator you see. And with Chopper as well, he doesn't need to do the fighting, he's the doctor you see, yes I see. But really I guess we could say the same for Sanji. He is a cook whose dream is to find a bunch of water. He excels at intelligent thought, comedic relief and acting as a support mechanism for other characters. He does not need to fight you see, but he does anyway. And those super hardcore Sanji fans who don't like the way that Oda handles him really have no idea just how lucky they are. He is by far the most versatile straw hat. And if you really do want a character who has this overwhelming focus on action then let me introduce you to Zoro. Trust me he will never disappoint you. But Sanji will, he fails, he fails often and he also frequently gets used as a gag. But these features combined with his affinity for action are what makes him so interesting. And if you'd like to investigate some more Sanji content then please do check out this playlist of The Essentials of Sanji. But for now this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.