Long time no see. : )
It was the "Year of Sanji" no doubt about it.
But you gotta agree that, all he did was whine and got his ass handed over to him here and there. Not my fault or yours but Oda's.
We all love Sanji and he'll shine again sooner or later, no question about it.
Yeah but I was never denying that. My gripe in this thread was more with Baba, so I decided to shred the last bit of his credibility.
But I think I'm a good example of someone who likes a certain character but still can look objectively to it. The risk on this forum with a name like Love Cook, a Sanji avatar and a Vinsmoke signature is that people who can't stand you start calling you a Sanji fanboy. Well so be it, that's not something that keeps me up at night. I've been here since 2009 and people can search my entire post history but I don't think I've ever said anything unreasonable about Sanji ever. Nor did I discredit other characters to try to steal the spotlight. Both are things that you see plenty of in this section, and that is where I draw the line and actively join in the discussion.
The amount of times people send me a private message or post on my page to take a stab at me to make fun of "The year of Sanji" is just sad. But to those people apparently when Oda calls it your year they expect that you will be the vice-pirate king for 52 chapters. I've enjoyed myself perfectly fine with this year, the story was good, we got a bit of history on Sanji and his familly and we saw his sacrifice to the crew and a climax with his captain.
If Sanji is your favorite character it requires a bit of a delicate taste. You know he will never have the biggest fight, he isn't even really interested in pursuing personal strength. But more often than not he plays a bit part in arcs and operates like a spy, takes initiative and save the day. That is what I think is cool. I don't care if Sanji got his ass kicked most of the time in the New World, he got back up and did other things to be important like leading G5 out of the poison and save the kids on Punk Hazard after fighting Vergo. Or leading the Strawhat remnants away from Big Mom after fighting Doffy.
After Naruto ended we've seen an increase in readers that discovered One Piece and this section on this forum. But what some people don't realize is that One Piece is not a Shonen fighting genre like DragonBall, Naruto, Bleach and Fairy Tail. One Piece is an adventure manga with occasional fights. And if you read this purely for the fights I understand that some people might get disappointed about the pace if Oda is carefully building up his world and preparing for a big finale, or when some fights get off paneled or some characters don't live up to the fight "hype". If you're looking for stuff like that you're reading the wrong title.
But long story short, there was nothing wrong with the year of Sanji. Oda gave him a lot of panel time in one of the biggest arcs so far. He is a key figure and we're just 2 chapters into the big ending. So I take the all the whining, nosebleeds, and ass kickings for granted, I enjoy his character, he is a bit like Batman. The hero that doesn't get the recognition. And it should stay that way. I would hate it for him to get mainstream fan material or get "hyped", he should be like a whisky that is not for everybody, bit of a niche character.
And Brook did a couple cool things this arc. Don't think a lot of people would have the balls to face Big Mom in a 1 v 1. Probably even Sakazuki and Blackbeard would like to skip that fight if they could.
