Sanji

Template:Infobox OPchara/Header Template:Infobox OPchara/Footer Sanji is a fictional character in the anime and manga One Piece.

Sanji is the chain-smoking cook aboard the Going Merry (Merry go in the English dub), as a member of Monkey D. Luffy's Straw Hat Pirate Crew. He has superb fighting skills that only make use of the lower part of his body, in an effort to minimise damage to his hands which would impair his cooking skills. Naturally, Sanji uses an array of powerful and varied kicking moves when he fights, all with French names related to food. His cooking skills are also the best within the manga One Piece, second to only Chef "Red Leg" Zeff (or "Red Shoes" Zeff" in North America) of Baratie, the floating restaurant and Sanji's mentor.

Sanji is quite the "charmer" in a way. He tends to flirt with any attractive woman he sees, specifically the female crew members of the Straw Hat Pirates (Robin, Vivi and especially Nami) when aboard the Going Merry (something which the girls seem to encourage as it gets them special treatment), and will do anything to win adoration from them, to no avail. His lovesick attitude is not only an annoyance to most of the crew, but has actually proved dangerous before, when Sanji has faced female opponents: Just as he is chivalrous and has sworn to protect them, he will never harm them, under any circumstances. This is in a stark contrast to his usual tough, brash, trash-talking attitude.

Personality and Relationships

Sanji is the chainsmoking cook of the crew and looks out for the health of his teammates. His goal in life is to find the All Blue, a legendary ocean which contains all the fish in the world. He is very love oriented, is constantly flirting (earning him the nickname ero-cook, or perverted cook) and swore to never let insult or injury happen to a woman while he can still stand. This is often problematic in his fighting as he can't attack female opponents. One exception happened during the Alabasta Arc when Luffy hit Vivi in front of Sanji and the others, although Sanji complained, he allowed it because he understood Luffy's purpose. However, also as a result, his fighting skills greatly increase when he is protecting a woman. Sanji also likes to swear a lot and is overall a bit of trashtalker, insulting his opponents while fighting.

Sanji respects Luffy as a captain, but often gets angry at him for eating too much and showing disrespect for the aesthetics of cooking. He is constantly in verbal fights with Zoro over each others' traits and they have developed a bit of a rivalry (almost like a sibling rivalry). He is very protective of the female crewmembers and Nami likes to take advantage of him. Sanji originally wanted to cook Chopper, and continues to refer to him as their "emergency food supply" to tease him. However, he does consider Chopper a friend.

Although Sanji never uses his hands in battle, on rare occasion, Sanji will use items like guns or kitchen knives to fight. At one occasion, Sanji points a gun at Miss All-Sunday (Nico Robin) during the escape from Whiskey Peak (One of the first of seven islands upon entering the Grand Line). Another occasion, when Sanji fought a CP7 chef, Sanji used kitchen knives to remove Wanze's battle suit but did not cut him. As he was in a a kitchen as well as fighting food, he had an excuse for using knives. Instead of letting the ramen fall to the floor he put them onto plates and stacked them on the kitchen counters.

Sanji likes to give himself nicknames in battles (such as Mr. Prince or Hunter) to hide his identity and overall likes to act in the background. However, he is also upset that he didn't earn a bounty yet, which gives him a bit of a disadvantage in his arguments with Zoro because Zoro has an extremely high bounty.

History

Red Leg Zeff attacks

Sanji was Zeff's protégé and sous-chef, and the two had a long history together. Nine years earlier, when a young Sanji was working as a ship's cook in the North Blue, the pirate Red Leg Zeff and his crew attacked the ship. However, both ships were caught in a sudden storm, and sank. Zeff managed to save the young Sanji from drowning and the two were washed onto a rock outcropping, high above the sea.

Despite their good fortune, there was little food for them: a few rations had washed onto the rock with them, but there was no vegetation, no animals, and no way to reach the water to fish. Splitting up what little rations remained, Zeff ordered Sanji to sit at the other end of the island, and look for a ship. Sanji protested that Zeff was keeping a large sack for himself, but Zeff brushed him off, saying that as an adult, his stomach was bigger. Days passed. Sanji had no more food, but there was still no sign of a ship. Many weeks afterward (the exact amount of time differs between the manga and anime), an emaciated Sanji decided to take a chance, and kill the old man for his food. He did not kill Zeff, however: when he slashed open the old man's sack in a fit of rage, he discovered that there was no food inside, only treasure. To his horror, he realized that Zeff had eaten his own leg to survive (in the anime, he lost it while saving Sanji after becoming entangled in one of the wrecked ships, and simply ate nothing). Wracked with guilt, Sanji agreed that if they were rescued, he would help Zeff build a restaurant on the water, so that those at sea would not have to go hungry. Soon after, a ship appeared, and they were spared from death. Because of this ordeal, Sanji pledges to never refuse food to a starving individual, no matter how evil or poor they may be.

Life on the Baratie

On the Baratie, Zeff and Sanji shared an uneasy relationship, frequently getting into arguments and exchanging insults. Sanji would call Zeff an "Old Fart" or "Shitty-Geezer," ("Crap-Geezer" and "Old Geezer" in North America) and in return, Zeff would call Sanji a "stupid eggplant" ("Under-done Eggplant" or "String Bean" in North America) and tell him his cooking was awful. Yet for all that, Sanji remained faithful to his promise nine years before, and risked his life to help defend the restaurant he helped build from the clutches of Don Krieg and his pirate armada. With the help of Monkey D. Luffy, he succeeded, but was unwilling to leave his position at Baratie to become Luffy's cook. In the end, Zeff had to remind him of the dream they both shared: to find the legendary sea, All Blue. Tearfully thanking the old man for everything, Sanji departed with Luffy to retrieve Nami, who had stolen the Going Merry and was making her way to the stronghold of the Merman pirate, Arlong.

Recent Chapters

Sanji, Zoro, and Sogeking have re-united with Nami and Chopper in the tunnel underneath the Bridge of Hestitation, along with the sea train conductor Kokoro and her grand-daughter Chimney, but the tunnel is flooding with water and all present are in danger of drowning.

Abilities and powers

Sanji has mastered the martial art of Red Leg (a fictional martial art that takes some inspiration from the Brazilian martial art Capoeira and the Korean martial art Tae Kwon Do and bears an almost identical line, in name and in style, to the extremely powerful and dangerous [to both user and opponent] style Blood Leg) that the pirate Zeff apparently taught him. All of his maneuvers come from his legs and feet. His legs and feet are extremely powerful, able to smash boulders and defeat creatures much larger than himself (like bananadiles and Mo-Moo). His legs also imbue him with superior speed and agility, able to leap and run much farther than normal humans. He has stated that the reason he fights with his feet is that he doesn't want to risk damaging his hands as he needs them to cook.

As for his actual "attacks," Sanji has a very large number of specific kicks and techniques he uses to fight with. It should be noted that he doesn't call out an attack name whenever he kicks someone or something, but for important events and fights he usually will. Most of his attacks are said in French and are usually cooking/food terms related in some way to the specific portion of the opponent's body that he's targeting or to the nature of the attack itself. In the English anime, the attacks are changed to be funny sounding, non-existent food items that have something to do with the target area of the attack.

Common attacks are Mutton Shot(Sanji jumps and flips, and kicks with all his might into the foe's mid-region or head) and Anti-Manner Kick Course(One of Sanji's most powerful kicks where he delivers a 180 degree vertical kick upward into a giant foe's torso or back, which is usually used on those he sees as having no manners, e.g. those that attack women.)

In the Enies Lobby arc, Sanji reveals a new ability - Diable Jump, the power to heat his shoes to a temperature so high they glow bright red, by spinning rapidly in place. The afore mentioned attacks also have the word Diable Jump preceding it (ex. Diable Jump: Flambage Shot). The heat is so high that in less than a second of contact would set a person aflame; this renders tekkai, the hardening of muscles to cushion damage, totally useless. Sanji used this ability during his fight with Jyabura, in which his attacks were previously barely even hurting him due to his active usage of tekkai.

• Attack List.

Although Sanji fights with his legs, his arms also possess some strength, enabling him to use an array of handstands, making him more versatile in certain situations. He is also able to use one-handed handstands, proving that his arms are also quite strong.

Last but not least, Sanji is an expert cook, knowing and capable of preparing almost any kind of food with a strong sense to the aesthetics of cooking.

Differences between versions

In the manga and the original Japanese anime, Sanji smokes cigarettes. In the English anime, Sanji sucks on lollipops (most likely because, had it not been edited, it would've encouraged kids to start smoking). In the English-language manga, Sanji often uses "crap" as an adjective while speaking. While in the English-language anime he uses "crud". This is an attempt to convey both his extremely coarse speaking style in Japanese, as well as his use of "kuso" (roughly "shit") as an expletive. For example, he often calls Zeff "Kuso-Jiji" (roughly "shitty-geezer). In the English anime, he simply calls Zeff "old-geezer" and "Crap-Geezer" in the English manga. Also, in the English anime, Sanji appears to have a nasally Brooklyn accented voice (done by David Moo). It was once believed that 4Kids was going to give him a French accent and that Eric Stuart was going to be his voice actor. This would have been an allusion to his role as Brock in the Pokémon series as both characters fall in love with the female characters of there respective series.

Trivia

• In Japanese Fan Polls, including the most recent one, Sanji is consistently the third most popular character. While in the recent 4Kids poll, Sanji is the second most popular character.
• Sanji comes from North Blue as revealed in the Skypiea Arc where he is very familiar with the North Blue tale of "Liar Norland" whilst the rest of the crew were not, it can also be assumed that "Red-Leg" Zeff comes from North Blue.
• Sanji's left eye is rarely seen, always covered by his hair, in the Manga it is never seen (leading many to write to Oda asking if he has one). Sanji's left eye was shown in anime episodes 21, 27, 82, and 128 (although extremely briefly in 128, only 1 frame, 09:18). It can also be seen in the Doctor Stop card in the One Piece CCG Set 2, Passage to the Grand Line. Just recently, in Chapter 419, Sanji was seen holding a spyglass to his left eye.
• According to Oda, Sanji most resembles a duck.
• A running gag with Sanji would be about how he wants a bounty, but never gets one, though it is speculated he (and the rest of the Straw Hat crew) will receive one after leaving Enies Lobby.
• "Sanji" is a way of saying "three o'clock" in Japanese.
• If you play against Nami or Ms. Sunday (Nico Robin) as Sanji in One Piece Grand Battle!, Sanji will fight in 'love-cook' mode.

See also

• Straw Hat Pirates

External links

• Codename: Prince Sanji site with in-depth info, media and more.