 I'll set sail with you on your quest to become King of the Pirates. Ever hear of the all blue? We both have foolish dreams, so I may as well chase mine too. Hello and welcome to One Piece 101, the series that breaks down every one and everything in the One Piece world. Today we are going to be taking a closer look at the ever amazing cook of the Straw Hat Pirates, Sanji. Sanji is a relatively average sized blonde hair man sporting two curly eyebrows, although only one of them is on display at any given time. He is one of the most skilled chefs in the entirety of the One Piece world and he holds a dream of one day being able to find the all blue, a legendary block of water that serves as a connecting point for every other sea in the world and thus contains fish and resources from all four seas, also known as a chef's paradise. However, how he came about this dream isn't a simple tale and Sanji's story actually begins before he was even born. His father, Vinsmoke Judge, King of the German Kingdom in North Blue, had genetically modified his unborn quadruplets within his wife Sora. However, prior to their birth, Sora took a drug to counter the effects of Judge's modifications, but it was only effective on Sanji. Sanji and his brothers, along with their older sister Raju, were trained at a very young age by their father to become military leaders of the German Kingdom. However, Sanji was often completely unable to keep up as he had not inherited the superhuman modifications of his brothers. As a result, he was often bullied by his brothers, much to the complete apathy of their father, Judge, who was simply disgusted by Sanji's weakness. Despite that, it was during this period of his life that Sanji discovered his passion for cooking, when one day he prepared a meal for his mother, Sora, who was permanently bedridden due to the drug she took. And even though the food was, uh, highly questionable in nature, Sora ate it, smiled, and proclaimed that from this day forward, she would only eat what he made for her. Unfortunately, as with most mothers in one piece, Sora would pass away not too long after this, and Sanji was left at the mercy of his abusive family. Eventually, Judge came to terms with the fact that Sanji would never develop any superhuman abilities, and he did what most parents would do in that situation, locked Sanji in a dungeon, and publicly faked his death. Whilst imprisoned, he read a book which described the legendary All Blue, and confessed to his sister Raju that he wanted to run away and become a chef. And Raju gave him that opportunity. After the German Kingdom crossed the red line and attacked an island in East Blue, she freed Sanji. As he was making his escape, he ran into Judge, who allowed him to go with the singular condition that he never tell anybody about his relation to the Vinsmoke family. Sanji then gladly renounced his title as a prince, and made his way onto a vessel called the Orbit, where he swiftly began working as a chef. And there Sanji trained happily for two years until the age of 10, when one day the Orbit was attacked by a pirate known as Redleg Zef. However, just after the commencement of Zef's attack, both vessels were caught in a storm tearing them apart. In what may have been Sanji's final moments, he cried out his dream of finding the All Blue, which prompted the pirate Zef to save him, although they would become marooned on a small rocky outcrop high above the sea. With no way of sourcing fresh food, the only option left was to divide the rations that had washed up onto the outcrop with them. Of the two sacks, Zef designated the smaller one to Sanji and kept the larger one for himself, claiming that he needed more because he was an adult. As the days passed, Sanji ran out of food and began the process of starvation. After several weeks, Sanji commenced a plot to kill Zef and take the remainder of his food. However, this resulted in the shocking discovery that Zef's bag contained only treasure, and that the pirate had eaten his own leg to survive. Luckily, soon after this, a ship appeared and rescued the two, and Zef went on to start the floating restaurant Baratie, where Sanji was employed as a chef under the tutelage of Zef, as well as trained in Zef's signature martial art, Blackleg style. Furthermore, as a result of his ordeal, Sanji vowed to never refuse food to a starving individual. And at the age of 19, he would make good on this vow when he fed a starving pirate named Geane. Conversely, at this point in time, Luffy and the beginnings of the straw hat pirates had arrived at Baratie, and after seeing this action, Luffy invited Sanji to join his crew. And of course, Sanji refused, because one, it's an outrageous offer out of nowhere, and two, because he felt a personal debt to Zef. Soon after the pirate Geane returned with his captain Don Krieg as well as his entire armada, and while pirates being pirates, it soon turned into a full-scale altercation. Luffy then joined Sanji in a battle to defend Baratie, and the rubber boy ultimately stunned everyone by overcoming Don Krieg. After the battle, Sanji shared his dream of finding the all-bluewood Luffy, and very eventually, after some persuasion from the other chefs of Baratie, Sanji agreed to join the straw hat pirates. Prior to his departure, Sanji fell to his knees and thanked Zef for everything he had done for him. And from this moment on, Sanji became the chef of the straw hats and traveled with the crew into the grand line. Throughout the journey, Sanji has been absolutely integral to the survival of the crew, not just through feeding them, obviously, but also by providing a huge boost in combat strength. Sanji is generally considered to be one of the crew's top three fighters, using blackleg style to obliterate most things that stand in his way. This martial art is unique because it focuses exclusively on using legs in order to preserve the user's hands for the much more important task of cooking. As a result, Sanji's legs are devastatingly strong, but he can even take this a step further with his unique technique called Diablo Jumbo, where he heats up his lower legs to an extremely high temperature by spinning on the spot to the point where they catch fire, thus greatly increasing the damage dealt to an opponent. Furthermore, after spending two years training on the Kambaka Kingdom, Sanji emerged after the time skip with the ability to use Arman Haki as well as Gepo, one of the Rokushiki techniques that allows the user to step in the sky as well as a similar ability called Blue Walk, which is the same thing, but in water. Sanji's strength has even been recognized by the world government, assigning him a bounty of 77 million berries after the events of any lobby, and 177 million berries after Dressrosa. However, brute force and fine dining are not Sanji's only skills, and the moment should be taken to highlight his more underrated feature being his intelligence. Underrated more than likely because Sanji can act like a complete idiot. However, unlike many members of the crew, Sanji is able to critically analyze situations and judge the best possible course of action under tremendous time pressure. This often involves Sanji separating himself from the crew in order to enact an essential element for their survival. But Sanji also comes with one heavily detrimental trait, which is his, how shall we put this, affinity to women. Upon seeing any form of beautiful female, Sanji is put into an amorous coma, whereby he becomes entirely defenseless and completely subject to the whims of said beautiful female. In fact, Sanji once even claimed that 98.72% of the reason why he joined the Straw Hat Pirates was Nami. In terms of the crew, it's also worth noting that Sanji has a particularly volatile relationship with Zoro, and the two often get into a lot of physical and verbal fights. Despite that, they do respect each other, it's more like a sibling rival really. Sanji is also generally quite fiercely loyal and has been willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of his crewmates. Although at a certain point in the new world, this loyalty would be put to the test when his royal past caught up with him. During the events of Zoro, Sanji was approached by Bege Capone, a member of the worst generation, who presented him with an invitation to a tea party hosted by Big Mom, one of the four emperors. He was also informed that he was now betrothed to the 35th daughter of the Charlotte family, Pudding. This was because following the Dress Rosa Ark, his father Judge had discovered that Sanji was alive, and in an attempt to make an alliance with the Emperor Big Mom, he had offered his least valuable son Sanji in order to craft a political marriage. Through a combination of black male wanting to protect his crew and being love struck at the sight of Pudding, Sanji left the straw hats. And as we'd learned a couple of times at this point in the series, that doesn't really work. And a squad led by Luffy made their way to Holkeic Island in order to retrieve Sanji. Meanwhile, Sanji was treated to a family reunion of sorts, which included beating up his slightly younger brother, as well as facing off against his own father. And to top everything off, he even had a heartbreaking fight against Luffy, who was practically powerless due to spending 11 hours fighting one of Big Mom's sweet commanders. In any case, complications ensued, and eventually Sanji discovered that the Big Mom pirates were plotting to kill the entire German kingdom, including himself, and furthermore, after a punch in the face, Sanji finally admitted the truth that all he really wanted was to go home to the Thousand Sunny. Following this, Sanji became involved in a plot to crash his own wedding and attempting to assassinate the Emperor Big Mom. And even though his family had caused him nothing but pain, he actively sought their safety as part of this plan. The assassination plot would fail, however, and the straw hats immediately fled, having no possible way of dealing with Big Mom and her forces. During this time, Pudding pled with Sanji to help her make a replacement wedding cake to satisfy Big Mom's demonic hunger tantrum and save the entirety of Totland. And Sanji once again making good on his vow, never to let an individual starve got to work on a masterpiece cake that could knock out one of the four emperors. And it didn't quite do that, but it sure as hell did satisfy her and save the entirety of the Big Mom pirates from destruction. In the end, Sanji and the retrieval team barely escaped with their lives, however, Sanji reaffirmed his commitment to being the chef of the straw hat pirates, as well as to his dream of one day finding the legendary All Blue. Some more fun facts about Sanji. Like many characters in one piece, Sanji was directly inspired from a real life figure. In this case, being Steve Buscemi's character of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs. Sanji is the only straw hat confirmed to have biological siblings, and given how well that worked out for him, I'd say that the other straw hats dodged a bit of a bullet there. Sanji is a subject of a plot hole in the series due to him being unaware of the fact that Devil Fruit users are unable to swim during the Baratier arc. However, during the Thriller Bark arc, he states that he was aware of it as a child, which makes sense given that he read a whole book about them, but doesn't because he wasn't aware of it early on in the series. According to Oda, if Sanji became president, he would pass laws that would give extreme preferential treatment to women and discriminate against men, so sort of like the opposite of the real world. Oda then went on to state that this would result in men forming a rebellion against him and Sanji losing his position. Following the events of Whole Cake Island, the world government further acknowledged Sanji's skills and assigned him a bounty of 330 million berries. Sanji is subject to one of the more infamous edits in the Four Kids dub, where they replaced his cigarette with a yummy, yummy lollipop. Speaking of Sanji began smoking shortly after he started working at Baratier in order to impress Zeph. Despite Zeph's warnings that it would destroy his taste buds, Sanji replied that he was now a man, which brings us nicely to a truly useless fact. Thus far in the series, Sanji has only ever smoked two brands of cigarettes, those being King Ground and the aptly named Death.