The Straw Hat Oda Hates

hey everyone so it's time to talk about Sanji but for all the strats he's definitely the one who's standing or popularity or general perception has fallen the most in the eyes of the community since the time skip and it's gotten to a point where a lot of readers seem to think that Oda may be deliberately ruining the character that Oda may be kind of knocking him down in terms of general importance that oh that doesn't care about giving him good moments anymore or that Oda even hates Sanji and to start with I will say no I don't actually believe that Oda hates this character or that some weird change has come over him where now he randomly enjoys dragging Sanjay through the mud I think Sanjay is and always will be one of ona's favorite characters but I want to talk about why some like but things have gotten to a point where some readers feel that Oda Mae actually hates Angie why is it that it feels like Sanjay has been getting the short end of the stick since the time skip and really why am i confident that Sanjay will be written back to his former glory by the end of the war of art to me first and foremost it starts with examining the the the primary appeal of the character what did we come to expect of Sanji before that feels like it's missing today [Music] so here I'm actually not going to talk much about Sanji's actual personality traits not because they don't matter as part of his appeal as a character but because I don't think Sanji as a person has been written to differently pre to post time-skip for example if your favorite aspect of Sanji was his chivalry for example then that's no problem right from Punk hazard on we got to see that shine and really just in general hokey garland pretty much exclusively highlighted his personality traits now since I don't think that day-to-day personality has anything to do with why people feel Sanjay is being ruined let's set that aside and look at everything else that makes up the the primary appeal of Sanji's character and then get into why a lot of that is arguably missing post time skill so to start with a big big big part of why Sanjay is as popular as he is is that he is one of the top three fighters in the crew he generally gets the third most action highlights in the crew and since we are primarily following the stripes that means he is the third most highlighted fighter in the entire series now let me get this out of the way real quick that is in no way a shallow reason for liking a character you know that they're strong because most people naturally like characters who have high impact in his story it's the same way that people are more drawn to you know extremely smart characters in a show like house of cards because that's a show where intelligence matters way more than your physical strength and so more intelligent characters are generally going to have a higher impact and be more capable than other characters so similarly in in actions use like one piece it just so happens that fighting ability does matter quite a bit and so strong characters are naturally going to be more high-impact they're going to have bigger moments they're going to have a higher standing on average they're going to have the respect of other characters it's natural to like characters like that because a lot of characters we really like are often those we wish we could be like to a degree and more importantly people don't just like characters for being strong it's not like I don't think most people are like who's the strongest character that's gonna be my favorite if that were the case then Luffy would be everyone's favorite character in the straw hats and gold Roger would be everyone's favorite character in the series so while Santi is one of the three main fighters of the crew and he does get a large amount of action spotlight among the crew there's a lot of other facets that go into what makes you know one fighter character more appealing than another so again what is the primary appeal of Sanji in this case like among the crew why do some readers like Sanji better than luthiers or Oh to start with I'd say even though Sanji is extremely strong and he's one of the three quote-unquote monsters of the crew he's not really a dumb fight obsessed meathead like goofy and Zorro that's such really the differentiator I think is that when Sanji is portrayed at his absolute best it's a completely unique vibe where Sanji gets the sort of cool suave James Bond type of portrayal and forget Luffy and Zorro Sanji's really the only character in all of one piece that gets this type of portrayal three times give that especially shine through when oda had Sanji spearhead a lot of his own missions independent of the rest of the crew that usually came up really really big sometimes he would have another straw hat as his accomplice but it was always his show executing his plan and these Sanji covert ops missions definitely felt a lot more sort of intelligent again a lot more James bond-esque than what you would expect from goofy or Zorro not to mention a lot of really memorable character defining moments came out of these missions big moments that probably contributed a lot to Sanji's primary appeal as a character kind of giving him his own personal brand of badass that you don't really see from the other strats and that's something that I think a lot of people really vibe with and along those lines oda also generally wrote Sanji as the most clutch straw hat pre time skip oda loved writing Sanji as the guy that would maybe be on the sidelines for a while and then pop up out of nowhere to make a big save and a lot of the coolest Sanji moments are exactly that like look throughout the series coming in super clutch to save the entire crew and conclude the mr. prince storyline coming in out of nowhere again to save Vivi when she was being hunted down by mr. too by herself again when saving goose off out of nowhere to take the hit from NL while simultaneously ruining Anna's plans and yet again saving who stops life last-minute out of nowhere from Jai Bora with the big heroic entrance I think pre time skips angie has by far the most memorable last-minute arrivals to save the day like if you did a quick comparison I'd say pre time skip Luffy you know he arrived on Pell to save Evie one time and then nightmare Luffy saved us often Nami but those were really the only two out of nowhere last-minute save type moments by Luffy even though he's the main character and gets way more screen time in fights since angie and that's simply because you know they're written differently Luffy is more like a force of nature when he's on his way it's like a storm is coming like he generally doesn't just show up out of nowhere similarly with Zorro I think you know that story you could count I guess orange town where you saved Nami and much later in thriller bark with Brooke but generally speaking Oda doesn't really play up these last-minute rescue type moments with the other two monster trio members as much as he does with Sanji and that's nothing on Luffy in Zorro it just seems like Oda likes to keep a certain type of badass moment reserved for Sanji while loopings or definitely have their own type that I could list a bunch of basically so generally speaking with Oda having Sanji go off to do his independent plans Oh to having Sanji come in with clutch saves at the last minute I think a large part of Sanji's primary appeal for the first half of the series was that he frequently he frequently got to shine as a sort of hidden ace of the crew now when looking at how readers feel about pre and post time scripts Angie I think a lot of the dissatisfaction stems from the sense that Sanji's primary appeal as a character has been missing or not quite right in the post time skip so to start with let's look at Sanji status as the third strongest straw-hat those time-skip now technically that has not changed among the crew he has kept his status as top three and the monster trio was honestly being highlighted more than ever at the start of the post time skip but the difference is that as the new world progressed it no longer became just about the crew now we're in a much bigger world with a lot more strong allies entering the mix so before the monster trio felt like very elite company to be in and the fact that Sanji was in this elite group despite not even being as fight obsessed or as much of a meathead as luffy and Zorro was pretty cool but now there are so many characters coming in and out of each arc fighting alongside the straw hats that the idea of being on the level of the monster trio is just much less especially in fact allies who may be as strong as or even stronger than Sanji are now pretty much a dime a dozen basically Sanji's still number three in the crew but that just feels a lot less important in the grand scheme of things now it's not like pre time snip where the crew could walk into places like drum or alabasta or thriller bark or wherever and you could confidently expect that Sanji was the third strongest good guy in any given arc like looking at all the powerhouses in the wah no alliance it's hard to even say where Sanji Falls exactly until he actually proves his standing by for example getting a big win like defeating Queen or something at least as many people believe now beyond that we also have yet to see Sanji get to showcase a lot of what made him unique in the past we haven't really had any of those major independent Sanji missions where he goes kind of rogue and executes a big plan on his own to save the day those were plot lines that gave sandy some of his absolute most iconic moments and that probably really drew a lot of people into becoming Sanji fans and oda has not written one of these type of plot lines for him yet in the New World similarly Sanji who was the master of clutch out of nowhere saves pre time skip has not done that in as satisfying a manner post time skip to be fair it doesn't feel like Oda has forgotten about these type of clutch moments as he had moments like Sanji flying in out of nowhere to stop Virgo and flying in out of nowhere to stop though flamingos both of the actual moments where he arrives are great but what's different from three times good is what happens afterwards that arguably makes them less satisfying the four generally when sandy had his heroic rescues the whole incident afterwards could be chalked up as a big satisfying win for him now you can interpret the Virgo fight however you want maybe Sanjay would have won if it continued we don't know but at the very least he was having some trouble it wasn't really a satisfying win then later down the line against doflamingo he had an even more definitive loss and obviously that makes sense doflamingo was the main villain of the arc but the fact is that similar moments oda rode pre-time skiff ended up making Sanji look really good in the end where his post time skip these clutch moments only really make for cool arrivals but not exactly something Sanji fans can hang their hat on afterwards and when I say Oda would make these heroic rescues come out as big wins for Sanji I don't even literally mean win as in win a fight for example three time skips Angie made a last-minute save only to get destroyed by Ana but despite the fact that this Angie couldn't beat NL in a fight it still felt like he had actually seriously gotten the better of an overall by sabotaging and else plans so even in a loss Angie came away looking really good which has not been the result of his post times give heroic attempts on top of that these two moments do give me the sense that Oda is using Sanji a bit as a sort of sacrificial lamb simply to show how strong the big bad of the arc is Sanji getting rekt by Ana wasn't really a big deal since NL was literally unbeatable to everyone except Luffy so it was actually really a big win that sandy managed to give NL a setback in any way at all but with Virgo and doflamingo it just becomes more blatant over the course of the arc that look look other protagonists can do better against these guys than sandy can and again that goes back a little to the fact that third strongest on the straw hat crew is just starting to feel less and less significant in the grander scheme of things lastly I think we're still waiting on a major Sanji fight there are instances you can point to asan G having a good showing but even like for example against page one we didn't get to see the victory hot argue it was an implied victory and it doesn't seem like it had a long-term effect now with all that being said if you are a Sanji fan I wouldn't worry because while it seems we have been in an extended period of Sanji having it kind of rough this is actually not the first time this has happened in fact pre time-skip Sanji would often go through these sort of cycles were for a long period of time his portrayal suffers a little bit and he doesn't really get any big wins now there's a lot of reasons for this as I see it I think Oda does generally like the hype looping zorro a little more on average simply because their characters are all about striving for greatness being fighters etc as such oda has always been a little more okay with just using Sanji as a measuring stick to show that other characters are strong you know sometimes or often times at Sanji's expense and we Sanji randomly struggle in ways that oda probably wouldn't have movie or Zorro struggle even if later down the line we are made to realize that Sanji is stronger than he was being portrayed earlier and along those lines Oda Mae make sure to take the time to write scenes that continually reaffirm Luffy and Zorro strengths but he may let it slide for Sanji sometimes such as drink sky Pia when all of the monster trio got embarrassed early on by wiper due to the oxygen change but Oda made sure to give luffy ins oral rematches with wiper later on just not Sanji and just generally sandy has always had bigger gaps in time between when he gets his major fights or major feats than luffy and Zorro like they will get their fights and achievements more frequently but and here's the most important thing despite Oda being the most lacks with Sanji's portrayal out of the monster trio in general and letting Sanjay go through these extended periods of time where he may be getting the least shine oda always has the awareness to rectify this in a major way when the time comes like it's easy to forget but after our long part all the way to alabasta sandy does not get any wins or cool feats like luffy in sorrow and in fact he's often sidelined or made like a joke during this time then we got the entire mr. prince plotline which basically made up for everything beforehand and it was capped off with him getting a big fight against mr. tutu reestablishes strength after that not really any good showings as a fighter at all throughout all of sky pia and even during water 7 for most of the sea train fight longtime readers will know it had gotten to the point that during the sea train battle most readers thought that Frankie was stronger than Saji because he was very much being portrayed like that and through all of water 7 as well before Frankie was the first person to even beat a cp9 member while sandy was fighting a guy who shot noodles out of his nose and then Oda fixed all that with the jayabharathi and it was again cemented that look sandy is right up there with Luffy and Zorro so bottom line it has always always been the case that Sandy's portrayal may suffer a little bit for a while not necessarily because Oda dislikes him but because I think he cares more about highlighting Luffy and Zora as fighters in general because that is more important to their characters and so sometimes sandy is just going to draw short straw basically but Oda always make sure to make up for that by giving him a huge win that reaffirms his status at some point as well as his own missions that are unique to him that allow him to shine any way that no other straw hat can it's just that in the New World I feel like the cycle I'm talking about has been taking a lot longer than normal as I've talked about in past videos the new world has mostly been just a lot of built-up storylines leading up to the big climax storyline the Wonewoc this is the arc where we can probably expect major fights for the straw hats new bounties and hopefully big moments for most of the crews as such this is the arc where I would expect the usual return to form for Sandy because Oda has always had the awareness that if Sanji goes through extended periods without many beats or big moments or chances to shine maybe even getting disrespected a little bit too then finally give him some really big wins out of nowhere that kind of reestablished the status quo with what readers generally expect from him and really I think the crew in general is going to take a huge step forward by the end of the arc so by the end of this I would expect that being third on the straw hat pirates would once again mean something pretty significant in the world at large and really just in general from everything we've seen by the end of the story being top three on the pirate Kings crew is going to be a really really big deal so I am confident that there will come a time when being part of the monster trio is really going to mean something and feel elite again and lastly while I think that Oda is generally aware of the cycle he puts Santi through I think where his awareness may have been lacking in the new world is just how long this cycle has been this time even if Oda does have some big wins planned for Santi and wah know considering the sheer length of time it's taken to get to this arc Oda may not have realized that this is an extremely long period to test leaders patience for waiting on classic moments for their favorite character and here I'll quickly address hoecake island where you could argue that look that was an arc where there were many great Sanji moments but again these were more character based now I personally really liked a lot of what I did with sandy and homey ballad and you can actually check out my video specifically on Sanji in whole cake oven after this but at the same time I think an author does need to keep in mind what a characters primary appeal to the reader is in the first place the fact is readers have been waiting on a lot of traditionally great Sanji moments for hundreds and hundreds of chapters and so when Hoka Garland the arc that was finally going to focus on Sandra came around and it did not give us any of the traditional Sanji greatness and was instead much more character trait driven the storyline became a lot less satisfying than many Sanji fans may have expected so basically in my opinion what Oda did with sangeun hokey garland was great in isolation but it also wasn't really what readers were waiting on for Sanji in the grand scheme of things I think something as simple as giving Sanji a fight like Sora versus pika or even Zorro versus Monet in the 200 chapters before hoecake Island would have satisfied what readers wanted in terms of the primary appeal of Sanji and then made them a lot more open to a more character focused storyline afterwards instead I think for a lot of Sanji fans it was harder to enjoy hoecake Island for trying something new with the character when it had already been hundreds and hundreds of chapters since they had gotten anything they traditionally enjoyed about the character and to anyone who says that alters shouldn't be criticized because readers had the wrong expectations because I have heard people say that before I'd say it depends I think that that's true sometimes but really it's a case-by-case basis because the fact is that lots of times authors are clearly and deliberately responsible for setting readers expectations and then it is on the author if they fail to deliver for example at this point it is fair to expect based on everything that's happened in the series so far it is fair to expect that Zora will generally get to fight the strongest subordinate of a given arc and Oda should be fully aware that he has created that expectation among readers and that has now become one of the main reasons that readers really like that character and yes you can criticize Oda if for the rest of the series he were to suddenly stop giving Zorro the strongest subordinate and instead had him fight the weakest subordinate every time but again everything that's happening with sandy so far does seem like it fits the usual cycle of him going through extended periods without big wins or big moments and then Oda having him come back in a big way it's just that the cycle feels a lot longer this time based on the past Santi should be getting a big boost in portrayal towards the climax of the 100 arc now the other major point that needs to be addressed is Sanji's gag this is where I think there may be some legitimate lack of general total lack of awareness on notice part and I have no idea if this is going to change anytime soon so more and more since the time-skip I have personally felt that Sanji's gag has crossed the line over to just being plain obnoxious and I don't think I'm alone as I do see lots of readers complaining that a big part of Sanji's but the problem of Sanji's post time-skip portrayal is that Oda is making him look bad over and over and basically be the butt of cheap jokes repeatedly with the nosebleeds being particularly annoying now obviously I can't prove to you what is funny or not funny maybe you find post time skips on do to be hilarious that's fine here I'm just going to address why a lot of readers may not like it and what it really comes down to is that there has been a change between what's Andrews gag actually was pre times give to what it has become post time skip and why I think the gag worked better in general B time skip so let's go back to square one without thinking about anything that has happened post time skip what was the initial concept of Sanji's gag at its core well Sanji could very easily have been simply written as this suave you know clever well-dressed James Bond type badass character and that's a character type you see in many other series the gag that oda wrote is simply that all of this immediately vanishes the moment he's in front of a woman he goes straight from being one of the coolest and smartest members of the crew to the undisputed stupidest and lamest I personally think that's a good gag on paper you know making Sanjay a lovestruck idiot only specifically when it comes to women because it's a sharp contrast to what you normally see of him and what she would normally expect of Sanji's character type and I thought that came out really well in many ways throughout the pre time-skip like even in just you know this simple scene with Luffy where they're having this conversation about snow and Luffy is going on about ridiculous myths he's heard about people who live in snowy Islands and of course Sanji is much too smart for that sort of thing so he a very intelligent rational person is explaining to Luffy and absolute idiot why this makes no sense the joke is that immediately afterwards we find out that Sanji despite being such a logical intelligent person believe something even stupider than Luffy simply because he's that dumb specifically when it comes to women so it's not obnoxious in any way it's actually a great bit of extended back and forth dialogue for a comedy scene with a nice setup and punchline in my opinion and of course we can see the gag happen in more blatant ways such as Sanji having arguably his coolest moment in the entire series as mr. prince and then oda suddenly completely flipping that on its head the very next page by reminding us that he is an idiot at his core similarly seeing sanjay go into a never-before-seen over-the-top literally fiery rage when he finds out that someone else is getting to live out his fantasies getting to marry Nami and being able to turn invisible works in my opinion as it's allowing us to see a completely new set of reactions from Sanji by giving him a fresh situation to play off of and along those lines a whole different side of the gag also opens up from the fact that as someone who cares a lot about women he naturally cares a lot about what they think of him as well so Sanji's image is extremely extremely important to him that means that moments where that image is shattered can make for great comedy moments as well Sanji has easily the best bounty reveal in the entire series and it only works because it's Sanji who would naturally care the most about his image and on top of that in my opinion the single best most brilliantly built of gag in the entire series the Duvall reveal is only possible because Sanji cares so much about his appearance in the first place and would by far have the angriest reaction to this situation so generally whether you find his gag funny or not I do think that pre time-skip oda did a good job timing it well for moments that highlighted the contrast between Sanjay's cool side and his lame side and also did a good job mixing it up and finding new angles to make a joke with it so what changed post time-skip well first of all I think one crucial aspect that has been lost is that contrast again the joke is that there is this character who seems really cool in many ways but is also unbelievably lame in this one specific way that contrast is what's funny but as I talked about in the previous section it's felt like Sanji post time skip hasn't gotten as many of those big memorable badass moments or those extended solo plot lines that remind readers how cool he can be when a character is not getting as many highlight moments or scenes as they once were but the amount of times they're being made the butt of the joke is the same or maybe even increasing then it can start to feel like the author is disrespecting the character or enjoying making fun of them and again this is where I think it may just be genuine lack of awareness biota I think he just finds his Sanji jokes funny and he doesn't quite realize how long it's been since he's given us the scenes that counterbalance that so I think this sense of contrast will at least hopefully come back once oda does deliver on positive Sanji moments that readers have been waiting for so this aspect of the problem can be rectified but what I think has definitely changed potentially more permanently is also the overall nature of the gag itself three times did Sanji turned into an idiot around women and would do anything to please them that was the joke but ever since the time skip the joke has pretty much just shifted to become Sanji's a weird pervert it's mostly just that over and over again look Sanji's really perverted he's really perverted he's so perverted it's basically a medical condition it kind of seems like we at least get past the nosebleeds after a Fishman Island but not really and yes Sanji was always a little perverted pre-time skip but that wasn't the main part of his gag that thought it was really playing up that was just that was one aspect of it that happened to exist like yeah pre time skips Angie did like to see simply dressed women if he had things his way that would always be the case but it was never anything too crazy or too frequent and in fact it wasn't even too far out of line from the other guys in the Greek I think around thriller bark with the introduction of Sanji's true dream to have the invisibility fruit so that he could peep the seed was planted for Sandy's primary gag to change to become more about him being a pervert and for the record I personally found this specific joke funny at the time just due to the absurdity of but now I kind of hate it because I think this might be when oda started thinking you know this idea is just really funny all the time he started gradually writing pervert jokes more often until instead of the gag being that Sanji is a cool guy who's lean with women the joke is just that Sanji's a weird pervert and that's a very very important difference I'm not going to act like the pre-time skipped a gif you know cool shown in character who's actually a total idiot with girls is brilliant writing but at least it's a fun twist on a commonly seen character type on the other hand when the joke is literally just that this character is a pervert I think that's pretty much one of the most generic low-hanging fruit gags that you can Center a character around it's pretty OneNote and I generally don't think there's a lot you can even do with the guide because Oda has been trying like he has technically found lots of fresh situations to put Sanji into you know having Sanji find paradise with the mermaid Cove being put into nominees body getting the in visiting an invisibility suit yet I still feel like I'm getting the same joke over and over again and it's a joke I already personally think is pretty generic in the first place again compared to pre time skipper I think Oda was able to get a lot of different punchlines and sets of reactions from different situations and generally could write more extended comedy bits where you don't see the punchline that that's actually setting up forth now I feel this modern-day gag doesn't lend itself to any of that the joke is mostly just that look Sanji is turned on about something or look he's disappointed that he didn't get what he wanted so I think Sanji's gag has gone backwards in two ways first we get much less of the suave who intelligent Sanji meaning the contrast between Sanjay the badass and Sanjay the idiot feels less sharp and second it's not even really Sandi the idiot anymore it's just Sandi the pervert weirdo and I really don't know if Oda is ever going to change this I thought he had shifted hard away from that as a polka Colin where Sandy's perversion during that art was actually pretty much completely taken out of the picture but in wha know that dag has been back in pretty much full force I think Oda just thinks it's a funny gag now and he's going to be sticking with it so rather than hoping that it's just going to be gone from the story in the future we can more so hope the frequency with least decrease whenever the story gets more serious as it did during okay Colin so that's all for this video if you enjoyed then definitely like share and subscribe let me know your thoughts on the comments below and you can support me on patreon to help me make more videos in the future link in the description below [Music]

Channel: Mr Morj

Views: 314,638

Keywords: one piece sanji, Sanji in the New World, sanji character, sanji vinsmoke, sanji one piece, will sanji get a fight, oda hates sanji, does oda hate sanji, one piece, sanji, sanji in wano, morj

Id: Q4OWqAseSvI

Length: 28min 13sec (1693 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020