One Piece 844 Review: That's Different

One Piece, Chapter 844: Luffy vs. Sanji

Well, that's different! Everyone and their mother thought that this confrontation was going to be at least more than a little similar to the Luffy/Usopp fight, except, y'know, Sanji can fight a lot better than Usopp can. But no! Sanji is trying to drive Luffty and Nami off, telling them what stupid peasants they are, and unleashing a barrage of Diable Jambe techniques, but Luffy? Luffy sees through it all, knows that Sanji's just faking, which is excellent. As entertaining as it would be to see two of the strongest members of the Straw Hats fight, seeing Luffy actually use his head is very cool.

Luffy just stands there, tanking every single one of Sanji's hits both physical and verbal. Nami gets to slap Sanji one time, but I think she knows, too at the end, though earlier in the fight Nami seems to actually be fucking scared of what's going on. Maybe there was a message exchanged between those two during the slap?

That screaming session as Sanji cries in the carriage, as the bloodied face of Luffy just shouts about how every single hit from Sanji hurt him more than it hurt Luffy, about how Luffy will stand there and wait forever, and starve to death, if Sanji doesn't come. It's a very touching moment, a very awesome moment that puts this in a different light than the Robin situation as well -- whereas Robin has just accepted her fate as not being allowed to find happiness, and it needed Luffy and friends charging in to show her that there are people who love her, Sanji knows all of it. It's the combined reasons of being afraid of what's going to happen Zeff and the other Straw Hats that's preventing him from taking a stand. In a way, it's forcing Sanji to basically be the main character and make his own stand against his family, which I can't wait to see.

There's really not much to say about this chapter, because it's just one long confrontation between the two that's pretty well-written. I like this chapter quite a lot.