Zoro vs Sanji: A Full Retrospective

hey everyone so today we're going to do a retrospective of zoro and sanji throughout the series to determine whether zoro is supposed to be portrayed as stronger than sanji and if so by how much are they supposed to be somewhat neck and neck or is zoro a lot stronger i talked in my previous video on zorro and sanji about how a metric that people often use in this discussion is luffy and that that's what i'm going to be using here if luffy is the strongest zorro is second in sanji's third then is zoro supposed to be closer to luffy closer to sanji or right in the middle but before we get into that make sure to hit that subscribe button for more one-piece content like this so before i get into the retrospective i'm just going to come out and say what my opinion is and then we're going to go through the series and see if that makes sense my opinion is and you're not going to like this but i think oda has always made it clear that there is a gap between luffy and sanji that zoro is somewhere in the middle of that gap but the point is that it is always meant to be ambiguous where exactly zoro is i do not think that oda himself concretely thinks that zoro is neck and neck with sanji or that zoro is neck and neck with luffy or that zoro is even right in the middle i think that a huge part of the reason that there is so much debate regarding zoro and sanji is specifically because it feels like yes there are moments in the series you can point to where it seems like oda is portraying zorro on luffy's level and yes there are moments you can point to in the series where it seems like zoroda is portraying zoro and sanji on the same level but i don't think it's as simple as oda is inconsistent or even that the gaps are necessarily even fluctuating over time i think it's a little more deliberate than that and that it fits with the concepts of the characters so luffy is of course the star of the show he will always get the biggest fights and the best feats however a large part of the appeal of zorro is that even though zoro is not the number one guy and he's completely comfortable with not being the number one guy the fact is that in moments when it really comes down to it he can step up and be as extraordinary as luffy in moments he is right there to pick up for luffy or stan in his place the fact that we get glimpses of the notion that zoro may be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with luffy even though he normally chooses to stand behind him is a large part of what makes zoro so cool but then with sanji a huge appeal of his character is that unlike luffy in sorrow he is not a meathead he is not obsessively driven to get stronger that's not a defining goal of his character his role is technically just a ship's cook who prioritizes just making some good food over anything else but the reality is that even though he's just the cook even though he's not constantly fighting like luffy or constantly training like zoro even though his goals and ambition are not the same as theirs even though by all rights sanji should just be a more regular guy sanji's randomly absurdly strong he's the guy that goes under the radar so often he's the guy that the enemy may miss out on or underestimate he's not really written like luffy and zoro yet he can still hang with them despite that at the end of the day he's right there with them he's part of that trio so what i'm saying is that overall considering how oda likes to write their characters i think oda doesn't have a hard cap or set idea of what the gaps are between luffy zorro and sanji but rather it's more about what the characters can do i think oda may have sanji regularly you know often get the short end of the stick and have some bad showings throughout the series but at the same time at sanji's best moments he can be right up there with luffy and zorro and specifically be shown to be just as valuable as luffy's left hand as zoro is as luffy's right hand in the same way i think oda usually won't portray zoro as loopy's equal i think it's much more common that you see you know zorro and sanji bickering over their rivalry or who's stronger but at the same time when push comes to shove zoro can seem comfortable to luffy and strength zoro can get luffy-esque portrayal so i don't think oda's ever going to be outright like zorro and sanji are equal or luffy and zora are equal i think it's going to vary from time to time i think oda simply prefers the ambiguity you can look at certain parts of the series and say sanji can be equal to zoro but then you can look at other parts of the series and say zoro can be equal to luffy basically i would describe it as luffy's portrayal will always be greater than or equal to zoro and zoro's portrayal will always be greater than or equal to sanji and even though it's pretty clear luffy is stronger than sanji the gaps don't really need to be any more clear-cut than this general idea you may disagree but i definitely think the series works a lot better this way where we understand the hierarchy but there's enough room for interpretation that you can argue in favor of your favorite character without being an open and shut case so all that being said let's look back at the series from the start and obviously this will be you know my opinions on lots of moments and scenes on what the gaps between zorro and sanji look like and i will try to leave out my bias but you can let me know below if you think i did a good job or not so the first arc that zero and sanji are featured together is arlong park where zoro goes into the arc heavily heavily injured this is maybe the worst or second worst state we've ever seen zoro in he and sanji both beat opponents who seem to be of similar strength and really they're both a lot stronger than their opponents zoro just struggles a bit because of his injuries and sanji struggles just a little bit because he's underwater the main thing is that both zoro and sanji then get slapped around by arlon however during this scene oda definitely goes out of his way to make a big deal out of the fact that zoro is severely injured right now and arlong himself is in shock that zoro is even able to fight so basically oda stresses the point that zoro is extremely handicapped here leaving the idea of what a healthy zorro vs arlon would look like after interpretation so right off the bat oda's building an ambiguity as to whether or not zoro could pull off with luffy later pulls off in defeating arlon however you also have to note that sanji probably isn't 100 here either as sanji did take some serious hits during his fight with kirobi the only difference is that oda doesn't go out of his way to really stress that sanji is now handicapped against star along like he does with zoro basically meaning that from the first star i think the dynamic that i'm talking about is in full effect with luffy as the strongest sanjay's iii and zoro somewhat ambiguously in the middle against arlon we see that yes luffy is a star he does what zor and sanji couldn't and we see that zoro and sanji equally struggle against arlon you could say that zoro and sanji are being portrayed as equal and below luffy however it's also clear that oda is building in heavy ambiguity as to what zorro could do potentially at full strength and then the reader can also decide themselves how much weight to put into sanji's injuries that aren't played up much but we also do know exist so after that we get two arcs that really seemingly sum up the zorro and sanji arguments in a nutshell first we get whiskey peak that clearly shows luffy and zoro as a briefly equal in a fight and yes it was a fight over something minor but the portrayal of the scene definitely felt like it was very serious intent from both ends i'm sure they didn't actually want to kill each other but i do think they were at the very least serious about finding out who was stronger so it should be settled right it's luffy and zoro at the top and then sanji below but then right after that we get little garden with zorro and sanji competing and then tying in a hunting contest you can say it's just a hunting contest but the context matters a lot as this contest was meant to directly parallel the competition of dory and bragi who themselves spent a hundred years trying to figure out who was stronger after tying in a hunting contest the clear portrayal here is that this was an equal matchup between zorro and sanji but that of course goes against the arc right before that implied it was luffy and zoro that was the equal match-up to me all that pretty clearly fits with my belief that oda simply doesn't want to set it in stone either way after that of course we get to alabasta and zoro beats mr one sanji beats mr two and luffy beats crocodile zoro had a lot more difficulty beating mr one than sanji did beating mr two but at the same time there's probably no way sanji could have beaten mr one but zoro definitely couldn't have beaten crocodile but you could even argue that hey maybe luffy couldn't have beaten mr one at that time because it's a bad matchup for luffy or something i don't have much to say on alabasta though it's important to note that luffy and zoro are the only ones who got bounties there that's something consistent oda does throughout the series in that he often elevates zoro in importance above sanji frequently such as beyond those bounties oda made luffy and zoro supernovas and part of the worst generation without having sanji ever get that elite status however at the same time that also just fits sanji's mo and that he is often supposed to go under the radar and that's where he excels now i'll also add that oda's often happy making sanji look bad make him the butt of jokes or have somewhat random bad showings throughout the series it's very common for a random arc to show zero looking kind of cool and have sanji you know maybe not so much if oda wants to establish that a new character like cricket is somewhat strong then he's going to have sanji fight him for example even if it doesn't really make sanji look good i would say the point in the series that looked most like oda was playing up luffy and zorro being close to each other with a big gap over sanji was the period between alabasta and islabi during skypia we saw luffy and wiper were equals and later we even saw zoro and wiper go roughly even not to mention sanji didn't actually beat anyone by himself the sark and had trouble with luffy against satori where zoro could beat om by himself you could argue this is the result of matchups but i'm just saying what happened not to mention after this arc we had zora perform comparably to sanji during the groggy monsters fight even though zoro didn't have his swords we still regularly get the portrayal that zorro and sanji are luffy's right and left hand men they fight the groggy monsters as a team while luffy fights the boss by himself zoro and sanji back luffy up while he takes on aokiji and so on but i think you could definitely make the argument that sanji didn't really seem equal to zoro for a long while during this middle portion of the free time skip that definitely continued through the water 7 train battles with luffy and zoro getting some great moments together looking like equals zoro getting lots of hype moments like cutting the train and taking out t-bone sanji on the other hand was honestly being outshone by frankie at this point with frankie overall looking more impressive during the c-train fights at this point in time it seemed way more like luffy and zoro are close to equals and sanji is further behind however after that we got the annie slobby battles and we got factual power levels with doriki to tell us what the gaps were zorro and sanji fought kaku and jaibura who themselves were factually practically equal zoro's opponent was slightly stronger but zoro also struggled slightly harder and the main point is that they were both way behind luffy's opponent luchi who was seemingly twice as strong as kaku jaibura so at this point you could say that okay never mind forget all that that we got between alabasta and this point it seems like oda's making it clear that luffy is at the top and then zor and sanji are close to each other far below him and that's the way that the gaps are supposed to be right so one might now say that okay that means that the gaps fluctuate before it seemed like it's luffy and zoro here and then sanji down here now it seems like it's luffy up here and zora and sanji down here i'm saying that no i still don't think that the gaps ever actually changed that much and that was always meant to be luffy sanji zorro somewhere in the middle and let me explain why that's the case even with this new information we got from any slobby the weirdly popular take that i see people say is that when luffy got gears oda moved him ahead of the other two however i don't think that's the case because what nobody brings up is that luffy had a way way way harder fight against luchi than zoro or sanji did against their opponents the fact is zoro and sanji pretty much one-shotted their opponents after they busted out their power-ups just because we got to see luffy use gear second extensively against luchi doesn't mean that zoro sanji couldn't have done close to as well against luchi if they had used asura or diablo jambe against him for example bluno is much weaker than kaku and jayabura once luffy went gear second he stomped bluno but zoro and sanji pretty much did the exact same thing to kaku and jaibura once they use their respective power ups and these opponents are much much stronger than bloon that's just something to think about when people say that luffy got way stronger than zoro and sanji once he got gears that just seems extremely unfounded to me because zoro and sanji got huge power-ups too they just didn't get to showcase them for an extended period of time against a strong opponent like luchi because they actually bluenode their own opponents so fast with their own powerups if anything the only time we got to see all three of the monster trio going all out with their respective power-ups pre-time skip against one common opponent was the pacifista and as far as i can tell they all did close to the same i don't think luffy was portrayed as being head and shoulders above them at this point in time i saw it more so as luffy got the final blow but they could each individually damage the pacifist before that but i'm getting ahead of myself and going off on a bit of the tangent the focus is still on zorro and sanji and my point is that during any slobby that is the time that it seemed like you could now most concretely make the case that zorro and sanji are pretty much equals with luffy far ahead i'm just arguing that they were also both closer to luffy at that point in time than people think meaning that i don't think that the gaps whatever the gaps are really ever changed i think the dynamic stayed constant all the time that luffy is the strongest sanji's third and zoro is ambiguously in the middle how close they are all are that's up for debate i think that's reinforced in thriller bark where zoro and sanji both do similarly well against oars you could actually argue that sanji had the best feat against wars but at the end of the arc zoro was literally able to take on all of luffy's pain plus his own so zoro had by far the most impressive moment of the arc out of any of the straw hats including luffy and then of course the following pacifista battle i already went over and then we had the time skip so recapping the free time skip i definitely feel like zoro and sanji were regularly grouped together very often or put on the same level but then there are also many many moments throughout where it definitely felt like zoro was portrayed as comparable to luffy that feeling definitely continued through the start of the post time skip with small moments from the start where we see zoro and sanji regularly doing things together taking out the pacifista together taking out kraken tentacles before luffy does the big finish taking out these henchmen before luffy takes on hordy so on and so forth however as the time skip progressed yeah i definitely think that sanji has gotten a lot more moments where he seemed to struggle such as against virgo such as against doflamingo etc on the other hand zoro's moments have been much more ambiguous he wasn't immediately defeated by even by fujitora and even though zoro obviously would have lost if that fight had gone on i'd say it looked pretty good for him at least in the context that he could at least counter-attack an admiral's attack and then throughout wano we've just generally got a lot more good showings for zoro fighting other supernova left and right and being shown to be at least roughly on par with everyone he's gone up against again with that ambiguous placing of zorro i think most people agree that zoro hasn't really shown us his upper limit yet or even come up against a clear wall where he has had to go all out and show us how strong he is and the zoro luffy dynamic has definitely been played up throughout wano and especially during this onigima raid but at the same time luffy has been going above and beyond with crazy feats and wins throughout the new world beating doflamingo cracker katakuri so what are the gaps between luffy zorro and sanji at the moment well as a reminder the last semi-decent zoro sanji comparison we had was both of them against x-drake whereas sanji didn't look great but it's not like he lost and it was very quick and zoro looked equal roughly but it's not like he was going all out so all that is to say that right now i still think we've got the same dynamic as ever with luffy clearly having a very high ceiling then sanji's somewhere below him we don't know how far off and then zoro's current strength being clearly ambiguously somewhere in this in this range maybe zoro's full strength is near luffy's now that he has enema maybe it's closer to sanji now that sanji has a raid suit so sanji also got a buff overall i think all three of them are going to get great showings by the end of the wanna war with all three of them getting even more big buffs by the end of it but at the end of the day i think the dynamic is going to be the same as always the gaps might feel different at certain times maybe for a while it definitely might seem like zoro and sanji are being portrayed as equal or about the same level and luffy's solidly ahead like at the start of the post-time skip maybe at times it'll seem like zoro could be as strong as luffy as some people feel he may be now with all this talk of zorro cutting kaido and joining in that fight but the point is that long term over the general overarching trend of the series this stuff is meant to be more nebulous in my opinion i think the main dynamic oda likes is simply luffy at the top sanji iii and zorro ambiguously somewhere in the middle with the gaps somewhat hazy and unclear everything else is just momentary shifts in perception based on recent events that will always average out over time with future events if you enjoyed this video then definitely like comment and subscribe and you can support me on patreon to get my extended thoughts on this topic and all future [Music] topics

Channel: Mr Morj

Views: 120,896

Keywords: zoro vs sanji, zoro, sanji, is zoro stronger than sanji, zoro and sanji equal, one piece

Id: m7ZK7xlNnzo

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020