Sanji is a complex character who early in the Baratie arc of A piece. He eventually joins Luffy and the Straw Hat pirates, though his specific quest is to find the All Blue, an area of the sea where fish from every ocean can be found in one place. His dream comes from early childhood and even the trauma he experiences cannot stop him. One thing that would certainly have influenced his trauma is his smoking habit. It is highly unlikely that anyone who went through what he was doing would have ever picked up a habit as addictive as smoking.
A piece follows the story of Monkey D Luffy as he assembles a crew and sets out to conquer the Grand Line in a bid to become King of the Pirates. The first few arcs are aimed at acquiring a solid crew, before moving on to the Grand Line. The Baratie bow comes after Luffy acquires a swordsman, Zoro, a navigator, Nami, and a marksman, Usopp. In this arc he finally finds a cook, Sanji.
What happened to Sanji?
When Sanji was just a kid working as a trainee chef, his ship was attacked by pirates and sunk in a storm. His life was saved by the captain of the pirate crew at the cost of the captain’s leg. The two were stranded on a raised rocky island with only what little food Zeff could salvage from the water before being washed ashore. Zeff gives Sanji food for five days and advises him to ration it longer. The two nearly starve to death and Sanji discovers that Zeff had given him all of the food, not just some of it.
When the two are finally rescued, they stick together and start a restaurant that floods the ocean, along with a promise to never let a soul go hungry again. They wanted to make sure no one else had to go through what they were doing. This causes serious problems for the restaurant when they feed Krieg and his crew, which gives back the pirates’ strength and encourages them to attack the restaurant.
Sanji today
When viewers are first introduced to Sanji, his habit of smoking quickly becomes a primary character trait, as does his hot-headed personality. He is unlikely to be seen throughout the series without his signature cigarette, and its condition is often representative of Sanji’s. While this visually sets him apart from the rest of the crew and gives him a unique identifying mark, it’s unlikely anyone who went through what Sanji did would ever commit to something so addictive.
It has been established multiple times that his trauma still greatly affects him to this day. He never refuses to waste food, and if something happens to it, it upsets him greatly. He also refuses to ever let anyone go hungry, despite what the consequences may be, as shown by Krieg and his men. However, Sanji’s trauma doesn’t seem to worry him about health or balanced eating, meaning that at least the negative aspects of cigarettes probably won’t weigh heavily on his mind either.
Sanji and cigarettes
His awareness of food scarcity and knowing what life could be like without something you deeply need is so deeply ingrained in him that it has become his personality. However, nicotine is also a substance that creates an intense need among users. Sanji knows what it’s like to go without. Why would he voluntarily create something else that could make him feel worse than death from losing.
It doesn’t make sense why Sanji would ever have started smoking, let alone why he would always have a cigarette in his mouth. What will he do if he is ever stranded again? Withdrawal, especially when one is weak, can kill a person.
The counter-argument to this may lie in the time setting of the story. It is not entirely clear when exactly A piece is set, as characters wear modern clothes, but there is no modern technology. Perhaps medicine is not yet so far advanced that people understand what nicotine can do to a person. It’s entirely possible that Sanji had no idea that cigarettes were addictive when he got into the habit.
It’s also possible that by the time he realized it was too late, he couldn’t live without them. Anyway, the fact that Sanji smokes cigarettes is a highly unusual aspect of this deeply traumatized character that undermines his words and actions if examined too closely. From a simple surface-level character design, it helps set its tone as that of a noir-era romantic quite well. But look deeper than simple aesthetics and it is extremely difficult to justify this particular habit.
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