SAHAN1993
Leaf Village Regular 🍃
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FIRST THIS IS NOT MY THEORY.ALL THE CREDIT GOES FOR ORIGINAL CREATOR.SO ENJOY NB BRO AND SIS..
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Why It Works
Well, we know Sanji is attracted to Nami and that’s kind of important We also know that he cites her as one of the main reasons he joined the crew, and it seems like at least Kurobi thinks there’s something more to Sanji’s attraction to her.
The next big interaction that means anything (like hell am I going to list every time he goes crazy over her) occurs in Little Garden, which is an arc Sanji was largely absent from, true, but one of the few things he did shows a lot. During the climax, Nami’s shirt burned off in Usopp and Carue’s fire (but for some reason all of Vivi’s clothes, Zoro’s clothes, and the rest of Nami’s clothes survived). Sanji goes a little nuts seeing Nami in her bra, but he follows this up by giving her his jacket to let her cover up. Although he enjoyed seeing what he saw, he recognized that this didn’t exactly make her comfortable and tried to rectify the situation.
Almost immediately after, when Nami got sick, Sanji was extremely worried about her - as was everyone else, of course - but he was one of the ones in the girls’ cabin keeping an eye on her and later escorted Luffy on their way to see Dr. Kureha. Although Luffy was the one carrying her, it was Sanji’s job to protect them and he put himself in harm’s way to protect them both. After Nami started treatment, they did have something of a frank conversation in the castle while hiding from Kureha.
We’re going to jump WAY ahead into the Skypiea arc. Nami is obviously worried when Eneru takes Sanji out, but she’s equally worried when Usopp is knocked out, too. She is, however, willing to use the Impact Dial glove Gan Fall had to stand up and defend both of them, noting how many times they have stood up for and protected her. Later, after they wake up, Sanji freaks out when he learns Nami’s been taken by Enery and drags Usopp along to save her. As far as his comment about being willing to sacrifice Usopp … that didn’t happen. He took the hit for both of them.
Sanji’s over the top love letter to Nami during Water 7 could be significant, too. Although the over the top love letter part was kind of silly, he still chose her as his point of contact for his stunt on the Puffing Tom (granted his other choices would have been Luffy, Zoro, or Chopper …).
And now we get to the Califa fights (both Sanji vs. Califa and Nami vs. Califa). Do these fights have problems? Yes, yes they do! But that’s a different talking point. What we want to look at here is the interaction they had between their fights. Sure, Nami pretty much tells Sanji she thinks he’s an idiot, but she respects him for sticking to his guns. I don’t necessarily agree with her but, well, okay, the interactions are the interactions, I suppose.
This next bit could fall under Thematic Connection, but once upon a time there was a magical week back in 2007. It was called The Week Chapter 463 Was Released. That was the chapter where Sanji rushed in to rescue Nami from Absalom, and Sanji x Nami shippers proceeded to lose their shit because we had a CANON panel of Sanji holding Nami in a wedding dress. And you know what? He was the one who went after her. Whereas I think the others really had to go after who they went after, Robin or Franky could have gone with Sanji or instead of him.
Not much happened of significance in Shabondy and at that point they didn’t see each other for two years. I’m also pretty sure nothing big happened in Fishman Island, either (although that’s the arc I’m the LEAST familiar with so I might be forgetting something). That leaves us with Punk Hazard. Although Punk Hazard will also have lots of ticks in the next section, it has its good points, too. For example, Sanji decides he’s going to make Nami happy by helping her bust the children out of the Biscuits Room even though he apparently doesn’t like children. He then proceeds to spent about half of the arc in her body and she spends a good quarter of the arc in his, during which time his body took a lot of abuse. Sanji noted that even though this left him in a lot of pain once they switched back, he doesn’t think her body could have handled that level of punishment.
Dressrosa hasn’t had them interact much but the arc isn’t over.
In general, it’s safe to say they are at least friends – they certainly care about each other on some level.
Why It Fails
There are two big reasons, but we’ll get into others two.
One, even though Sanji seems to favor Nami, he doesn’t seem to have the emotional maturity to dedicate himself to one woman. Now I suppose if anyone wants a Sanji, Robin, and Nami OT3 or something this might be less of an issue, but we’re talking about the context of Sanji and ONE woman. Fidelity is a HUGE issue, and even as much as I love the pairing and it’s the main focus of most of my One Piece writing, here’s how I’ve handled Sanji’s behavior in my two longer fics:
1. In Deadline, Sanji was cursed and unable to control himself around women to deter them from kissing him
2. In The Laws of Motion series, to make a long story short, kind of beats it out of him by forcing him to look at his past behavior in a new light.
And you know what? I’m not the only writer who’s done this, and I’m sure that applies to, well, MOST of the Sanji pairings (and there are a lot of them because it seems like he’s the fandom bicycle, i.e. everyone’s been for a ride).
And Sanji’s behavior has only gotten DISTURBING since the timeskip. He’s hornier than ever, even to the point where his own sexual frustration NEARLY KILLS HIM. Look I get that this is Tumblr and you regularly see texts posts about how sexually frustrated someone is but no one here is going to DIE from that, least of all not from a massive nosebleed.
And then in Punk Hazard, Sanji really doesn’t show a hell of a lot of respect for Nami while he’s in her body. He looks at her, feels her up, and even tries to run off with Brook to find a camera so they can get pictures. There’s even a scene where he grabs her breast and this motivates him to run faster and longer despite being tired.
Side note - am I the only one who’s surprised Sanji didn’t freak out over not having his man bits? From what I understand, talking about penises isn’t taboo in Japanese culture and it isn’t something Oda has shied away from AT ALL.
As for Nami, well, most of the time when Sanji fawns over her, she brushes him off if not outright uses him to get ahead. He’s basically her ***** and does her bidding pretty much without question. You know that negative female stereotype about women using their sexuality to get their way? Need I say more?
Thematic Connection
1. According to Oda, the colors that represent Sanji and Nami are blue and orange. Blue and orange are direct opposite each other on the color wheel and are considered complementary. The other directly complementary Straw Hat pairings would be Luffy and Zoro (red and green) and Usopp and Robin (yellow and purple). Chopper’s color, pink, is technically “light red" so Zoro and Chopper would TECHNICALLY work, as would Franky and Nami (as Franky’s color, cyan, I would identify as a blue). Brook’s color is black - his opposite would be a Straw Hat associated with the color white, but no such character exists as of this writing.
2. Nami’s dream CANNOT be completed without the completion of Sanji’s dream. If we assume the All Blue exists (and for the sake of this essay we’re going to assume it exists) then it has to go on Nami’s map. This is the only case where one Straw Hat’s dream requires another Straw Hat to complete theirs with the information we have now.
3. The value of money. Now this sounds like something that should apply more to Nami than it does to Sanji, but that isn’t the case. Although Nami’s been getting less and less money-hungry as the series goes on, it’s still pretty high on the list of things that she likes. Sanji, on the other hand, has been in a situation where money has been completely worthless - that is, when he and Zeff were starving and he discovered the big bag was filled with gold. Like I said, Nami hasn’t been as greedy as of late (she even stated that having things didn’t mean anything if she was alone while on the Maxim), but I still suspect that Sanji telling her that story might still give her a lot to think about.
4. Several fanfic authors and at least one person who submitted to the One Piece Headcanons Tumblr blog have made the connection between Sanji’s cigarettes and Bellemere being a smoker. Now there’s a saying or something about people choosing partners similar to their parents. Is this always the case? No, of course not. I don’t think this was the case with my parents. My sister, on the other hand, TOTALLY married a guy who is very similar to our father. My parents figured this out immediately, I didn’t figure it out until I walked in front of their car and he decided to beep the horn, which is something my dad used to do to me ALL THE TIME. This can also be a bad thing - I can’t remember if it came up in school or if I read it somewhere, but children who grew up in abusive households sometimes go on to marry abusive partners.
In the case of Sanji and Bellemere, they’re both the type to help strangers in need but I think most of this stems from both of them being smokers, which aside from potentially suggesting an addictive personality isn’t really saying that the two are similar. However, the sense of smell is strongly linked to memory, so it’s entirely possible that when Nami is around Sanji and smells the smoke from his cigarettes she’s either consciously or subconsciously reminded of Bellemere and that may put her at peace.
5. Now let’s talk about something I am PROBABLY going to screw up but you kind of HAVE to talk about when it comes to this pairing, and that’s the honorifics. While other members of the crew use honorifics, they’ll usually it them for everyone on the crew. This isn’t the case for Sanji and Nami – they use honorifics almost exclusively with each other. I think I’ve heard Sanji use “-kun” with Zoro once, but when they talk to each other’s it’s Nami-san and Sanji-kun.
So what do they mean? Let’s go to Wikipedia for an answer! Also note that I’m going to include two other honorifics, which I’ll exlain when I get to them.
“-san”: The closest English approximation would be the likes of Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Miss, so Sanji is essentially referring to Nami as “Miss Nami” or “Ms. Nami”. It’s an extremely common honorific, even being used between married couples, but is generally reserved for people who seen as equals.
“-kun”: Usually reserved for men (but not exclusively), it’s used in a variety of situations. One use is by a person of senior status referring to someone of lower status, and considering how Nami usually treats Sanji it is EXTREMELY easy to read her use of the honorific as a reference to him being beneath her. However, it may also refer to male child and male teenagers (Sanji was 19 at the start of the series so this would fit) as well as among male friends (explaining Sanji’s use of “Zoro-kun”). When a female is using it, it can refer to a male she is emotionally attached to or has known a long time.
“-chan”: This one is a term of endearment but it’s generally considered rude to refer to a superior with this honorific. It may be used among lovers or among close friends.
“-sama”: This one is used when referring to someone of much higher rank (and also sometimes customers).
Why did I mention the last two? Because Sanji usually refers to the females he encounters as “-chan”, including Robin (who should PROBABLY be referred to as “-san”) and Vivi (who is a princess and should be referred to as “Vivi-sama” or “Vivi-hime”, with the “-hime” denoting her as a princess specifically).
Whereas Nami and Sanji’s honorifics, in a vacuum, can be taken either way, it’s important to note that Sanji treats her differently from the other women in the series.
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