You mentioning OPLA Zosan having a different dynamic is making me also look at how OPLA frames Sanji as an equal to Zoro in combat, in that it hasn’t really yet?
Like, it’s almost building as a reveal in a way? Thanks to budget and time restrictions, they are prioritizing combat and feats for Zoro, and prioritizing character&funny moments for Sanji? it seems? Like if they are gonna spend screen time on Taz, they would rather have him cook for Coco village rather then fight the fishman underwater (and probably not spend so much $$ on fx lol) or more Sanji&Zeff rather then more fighting Krieg, giving Sanji that scene to talk about his mom with Nami, doing bar tricks, etc
And budget is probably why they hunt 1 Dino together, but as a character beat it works as each is convinced they are the REAL hunter (imo Sanji is right and he into killed it, a slash wouldn’t DROP a beast like that vs a broken neck but unless you pay attention it DOES seem more far fetched if you don’t hear the crack haha) while also showing they work well together even if they don’t know it yet. And by Zoro rescuing Sanji&Usopp, withZoro not knowing Sanji’s rules about hurting women, Sanji&Usopps scared shenanigans with the skeleton, & Zoro&Sanji never fighting side by side while they are both 100%…
…as a consequence Sanji isn’t quite coming across as Zoro's combat equal in OPLA. Not yet anyway. But looking back, was Sanji seen as Zoro's equal right away in the manga? The rivalry starts proper on Little Garden, but was it Sanji=Zoro straight away or was Sanji JUST a strong guy that was by default the 3rd strongest, until they added Robin* and Franky and he still stood above them? Or was their equal footing not established until the Davy Back Fight, where Zoro had to actually stop reflexively seeing himself above Sanji?
They were designed as a duo/foils/reflections from Oda's early drawings**, and we know as the story progressed they are basically equals, but was that a given? I almost feel like their storyline during the Long Ring Long Land arc was both character development for their relationship but also as a “see? They are equals” to any fans that were going all Powerscaling Perverts about Zoro>Sanji (and then it never came up in the fandom again! Yay! lol)
I feel like maybe they are building to the Davy Back Fight for a BIG moment of understanding with Zoro, or Sanji vs Bon Clay for the audience. Or maybe their first spar***. Or OPLA accidentally prioritized Zoro's combat and minimized Sanji's to the point where oops we forgor to establish Sanji as an equal power house and him fighting 4reel 4reel is gonna be a shock lol!
*Robin is actually above Zosan as a combatant until like, Thriller Bark? imho. But that’s another discussion lol
** https://x.com/MelonTeee/status/1891685645875069117
*** I’m actually a bit surprised they haven’t pulled them sparing forward in the story and had Zosan spar early! Like them putting foot-to-blade outside of an actual tense combat situation and standoff wasn’t really a running gag until the LRLL arc iirc? They defo squabble and brawl in the anime in Alabasta, but as a cartoon cloud brawl and Sanji is actually punching Zoro so not actually canon lol
(I might be forgetting a few panels/scenes, when’s their first physical altercation and is it different from their first spar? Like Sanji protecting Nami in Arlong park&Sanji trynna kick Zoro for “insulting” Nami was it? Does that count?)
But with how OPLA is pulling forward other bits of lore/gags/characters I can see it happearly. Zoro and Sanji going forehead-to-forehead, tête-à-tête, foot-to-blade is so iconic to the series I think only the time&money it would take for Taz and Mac to choreograph their spars is the only thing that really stopped them from having one this past season imo lol, I could 100% see a Zosan spar opening the next season while Chopper frets over their well being haha.
(Or maybe they are waiting for the combat to get even wackier, since the realism of fighting legs vs swords is harder to sell irl than in animation (and it’s probably why, other then Taz admitting he was physically exhausted, the Unluckies fight was shown as difficult rather than a curbstomp; it looks way crueler for a grown man to fight a cute otter in live action unless the otter is an actual threat haha) once any last, tiny semblance of logic is gone we can have Sanji blocking katanas itch his dress shoes lol)
i've been mulling this over, and i disagree pretty firmly with the idea that OPLA doesn't frame zoro and sanji as equals in combat. zoro has had four episodes more of screen time than sanji, sure, but let's consider the fights that zoro has been in alone:
a group of marines in the tavern
baroque works in whisky peak
and the ones he's been in alongside another ally/straw hat:
a group of marines in the yard at shells town (luffy and nami)
arlong pirates at arlong park (sanji)
loguetown (nami, usopp, sanji)
the dinosaur, if i must (sanji)
Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine (usopp, nami, vivi)
wapol's army (usopp, dalton, kureha, etc.)
while i agree that OPLA prioritizes zoro in combat, i disagree that it minimizes sanji in combat. sanji participates in several fights alone:
fullbody and random pirate
as well as fights alongside an ally/straw hat:
arlong pirates at arlong park (zoro)
loguetown (nami, usopp, sanji)
the dinosaur, again, if i must (zoro)
chess and kuromarimo (chopper)
this isn't by any means some wildly disparate number of fights between the two of them, and this is just listing off the number of times they're participants in combat rather than number of enemies defeated in which case, obviously, zoro wins out by virtue of whisky peak. zoro's role in the crew is the fighter and protector; the first time we see him really lose his cool (and get firmly called out for it) is when he's stuck in the village on drum and can't participate in any Protecting or Fighting that might be going on up at the castle. sanji's role in the crew is different, because he's the cook first and a fighter second, but this doesn't mean he isn't very obviously a front-line fighter alongside zoro and luffy.
*tbh i'm a little iffy on including zoro's fight against mihawk here, because it does show his combat prowess, but this is one of very few fights across the entire series that zoro actually seeks out on purpose. he's not fighting alone through circumstance like in the rest of the list, but rather by choice.
**sanji is the one who defeats kuroobi at arlong park. zoro is at an obvious disadvantage throughout arlong park, which is their first time fighting together; he's clearly capable of holding his own, more or less, but it's also quite obvious that the whole fight against the arlong pirates would have gone very poorly for him without backup. when sanji steps up, zoro lets him have the fight without a fuss.
and, politely, i think the methodology of comparison is also a bit flawed—the way to go about this would be not to compare zoro and sanji to each other, but to compare each of them against the other straw hats. if you compare sanji's role and participation in fights to nami's or usopp's, it's very different: both the amount of fights and the way he participates in them. same goes for zoro. the two of them really just compare to luffy. nami and usopp (and vivi) aren't powerful like the monster trio, but particularly in OPLA, they win their fights through cleverness. sanji alone never would've won the fight against Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine if he'd been in usopp's place because he would have tried to smash right through both of them by brute force. same goes for zoro. nami and usopp vs. alvida is the same thing; zoro and sanji would've just kept whacking at her fruitlessly like luffy did. they don't necessarily need to be clever because they're strong. the others do because they aren't.
OPLA also consistently frames the two of them together after sanji joins, and within that, pretty regularly with zoro flanking luffy's right and sanji flanking luffy's left (wings, babey!). luffy also calls out to the two of them together first in loguetown when he's up on the execution platform, and then the shot pans into them fighting together towards luffy. sanji challenges zoro when they arrive at little garden because he's confident in his own ability; the others could have piped in, and they didn't. zoro and sanji are split up in drum because 1) of course luffy has to go with nami, 2) sanji wants to go with nami and if there's a fight, he or luffy could defend nami, and 3) sending the entire monster trio up to the castle would have left the village completely fucked.
more than anything, though, it's the fact that luffy says the same thing when he sees both zoro and sanji fight for the first time: "great fighter [...] really great fighter." personally, i don't really need more than that to understand that the show is framing them as equals.
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