"One Piece Sanji fans losing their minds even more than Naruto's Sakura fans..."(×)
Former (as of now) animation director that worked under Toei & who has directed at least one One Piece episode had THIS to say about the complaints being lodged by fans who are upset with how Sanji is being characterized in the anime. Even throwing in a disgusting comment about Sakura + her fans & trying to paint both groups as crazy with no valid concerns.....
I was not lying when I said this entire Sanji/Toei situation reeks of the Sakura Haruno/Pierrot lore. I was not making shit up when I said both the characters & their fans get unfairly treated by everyone else involved with the franchise. Now we even have people who worked on the anime drawing similar parallels, except they're projecting a much more negative connotation to everything as a way to deflect & dismiss valid concerns.
Literally every group from the internet will have at least a couple of insane people going too far, but to use that as an excuse to completey ignore the very valid critiques is irresponsible at the very least. Acting like every single thing that fans are complaining about is superficial, stupid, or doesn't go against canon characterization at all is ridiculous.
Also, as someone who was on Twitter when the most of this was going down....most of these people were not being being mean or crazy. Staff was basically telling them to shut up & not complain & not pose valid critiques because it's "mean" to the team. Even if said complaints were told in the most respectful manner possible.
Toei also disabled comments for ONLY One Piece related posts on their offical Japanese account so it's not like fans could directly lodge their complaints there. They have made it very clear they do not care about fan opinions. Western fans are not the only ones noticing the way Sanji is being handled either so it's not just us being "insane".
Idk...it really does seem that whoever this new batch of staff is over at Toei has a completely different mindset & I'm not sure it's for the better. This man in particular will also most likely come back to Toei in the future to work on more episodes....
So at the end of the day people with this attitude will continue to create the anime & do whatever they want with it & I'm not sure the fans will ever be able to get Toei animation to take concerns seriously. Yay.
*sigh* At least WIT Piece still has a chance right?? If only they could fix the whitewashing.