One Piece Sanji Reborn: Chapter 01-03 (Patreon)

I loved One Piece. It was my third favorite anime, only behind Full Metal Alchemist and Berserk, both of which are much, much shorter. A good portion of my entire life was spent watching or reading One Piece, and another good portion was spent reading or listening to One Piece fanfiction. So, you could say, I had plenty of One Piece knowledge.

Sure, I couldn’t tell you where all the Baroque Works members ended up after Crocodile was captured, or how the fuck Krieg wasn’t arrested by the marines and ended up on Pirate Island. I did watch a lot of conspiracy videos and more than one One Piece feed talking about side characters that had come up in my YouTube shorts feed.

I could comfortably say I was very knowledgeable about One Piece, and I had read enough to know what I like and dislike. One was all the iconic moments in the show. It felt like there were two or three in every single arc. The Zoro “Nothing happened” was my favorite, but Nami asking Luffy for help or Robin saying she wanted to live were up there on my favorite moments of the show.

That’s what made it so memorable; even Fishman Island had the conqueror’s haki moment where Luffy knocked out 50,000 fishmen. I could gush about what I loved about the show for hours, having detailed conversations on who I thought was the strongest or smartest, but with what I liked came what I disliked.

Sanji was one of the most pivotal characters in the entire show. He tricks Crocodile and diverts his attention, is one of the last standing against Enel, and sacrifices himself so Nami doesn’t die from electrocution. He comes in so clutch… Until he gets chased by a bunch of cross-dressing men for two years and goes fucking crazy. Seriously, that’s almost all he did for his time-skip to get more powerful. He learns how to cook food that heals and increases strength… Then it’s never brought up again.

He gets so horny by seeing Shirahoshi that he shoots so much blood from his nose that he puts his own life in danger… Yes… That actually happened and wasn’t a collective fever dream all One Piece enjoyers had. I rewatch or reread One Piece regularly, but when I get to Fishman Island, I skip it because of how fucking bad it is, and Sanji is one of the main reasons.

He doesn’t get much better after that either. Almost every arc leading up until then, he and Zoro had equivalent iconic moments where they shone through. Then his reason for leaving the ship was idiotic. Did he really think Luffy was going to stay away after he left? It’s a repeated, shittier version of Robin’s arc on Enies Lobby, where she doesn’t want them to come and is willing to sacrifice herself for the crew, but just done worse in every single way.

Then, any time it’s shown he’s not a simp, the girls are interested in him. It’s just so frustrating to watch that the only women who are interested in him are the ones he’s not falling over himself to simp for. They make him seem so weak after the timeskip. The anime leans into how much of a loser he is around every single woman. He simps for a little girl(Bonnie), and only after we find out about her age do people make a big deal out of it. I know he wasn’t being creepy toward her in the manga, but that only makes it worse. How does he know she’s underage to not simp over her if she can alter herself? Does he have secret child detection built into his perviness?

He became a walking gag to the point people noticed it when he wasn’t toward Bonnie, and people theorized she was actually underage before it was revealed… That’s how one note he became ever since the time skip. Sure, he has his moments, but they’re just that, moments. He was a three-dimensional character on par in fighting capability with Zoro, who became a gag character who got a bullshit power boost just to keep up with the rest of the strong members.

From one of my favorites to one of my most disliked, I wish they had just kept Sanji, the sometimes perverted cook with a heart of gold, instead of making him an idiot who would betray his crew if a girl is willing to fuck him. If he and Pudding actually got married, completely removing the simp part of him, the story would be better, because you can only beat a dead horse so much.

It didn’t hurt to say there was heavy Flanderization of most of the characters at this point in the story. They’ve existed so long we can almost predict what they’ll do given the situation they’re put in. Luffy put in front of food would eat it so fast it’s a gag, Zoro getting lost, even running in a straight line was something you’d expect to see, Nami was both money hungry and the end of most jokes when they went on too long, most of the time violently by beating up the captain.

I’m complaining a lot, but I really do love One Piece. It just could be better, especially if they fixed Sanji… It was just too long. Oda made one of the most vast and involved worlds, but if One Piece were a person, he could legally drink. Many people just waiting for it to finally be finished died before it did, and there were actual concerns now that he might not live to see the end of his own story.

I was terrified by the thought, just like Berserk, he should have passed on the reins to a different writer years before he died, and told him the story so we got a fully fledged one… Someone is continuing Berserk, but we’ll never know if the story of Berserk truly is the one the author intended us to see. Honestly, with how played out the comedy is in the story, I’ve had better times reading fanfiction when they do something new and interesting.

I had read… A lot of fanfiction of One Piece. Plenty of just plain stories where the protagonist gets a system that makes them invincible. Those quickly peter out and end abruptly most of the time. Those are also most of the harem stories I’ve read. Some of the ones where they straight up replace a character, not many involving Sanji, actually, most replacing Luffy, where his not being an idiot means there’s no real enemy that can beat him that isn’t an OC added to spice things up.

Most stories were like that, with people knowing of haki, and suddenly, only days after they talk about it, everyone knows both observation and armament haki in the East Blue. You know, the thing that Luffy trained two years to master, the entire crew could do in days. Those stories are the worst, though. The protagonist is an insanely broken existence in the universe, and yet Ace still gets captured and taken to Marineford.

People felt stuck to canon, and if you’re placed in a world you love and don’t make changes, stubbornly sticking to canon, you were weak in my eyes. If you’re going to get plopped into a world of your choosing and don’t try to go for a perfect run, what are you doing? So many people put themselves as a Mary Sue and just steal fights from Luffy while being omnipotent in strength, stronger than Garp, but just chilling with the Straw Hats because those are the ones they like the most.

I couldn’t just sit back and watch. If I were reincarnated into One Piece, I’d change things. I’d fix the problems I could while growing my strength in secret, by the time Luffy did go to sea, I’d have already conquered it… And perhaps, many of the beauties of the sea as well.

Chapter 02

Deadly- What do you mean you think Sanji can beat Aokiji in a fight? One is a previous Admiral, one of the strongest forces in all of the Marines, and he’s only gotten stronger after leaving. Why do you think he and Sanji are going to fight when the Strawhats finally clash with Blackbeard?

Sins- Well whose he gonna fight if not Aokiji? Laffitte? Zoro fights Shiryu, he’s the only swordsman. Jesus is too weak for him to fight, so Aokiji is the only one that makes sense.

Deadly- I think Aokiji is going to betray them during the fighting and free Garp, then help the Strawhats take them down.

Sins- Yeah but then aren’t the strawhats going to steamroll the Blackbeard pirates?

Deadly- I think it’s going to be a much bigger battle involving a lot of previous enemies and allies. That’s the only thing that makes sense… And Aokiji would stomp Sanji’s simp ass. 

Sins- You used to be such a Sanji dickrider. I can’t believe you still hate him that much.

We messaged back and forth just like that over the next few hours. Not always One Piece, but in the middle of both of them starting a new world on a modded Minecraft server, One Piece did keep coming up.

Sins- So gun to your head. Which One Piece character would you want to replace?

Deadly- Probably Luffy, that seems like the most straightforward answer. No! I’d pick Sanji, just so I could make him less of a simp!

Sins- Heh. You always find a way to bring it back to hating Sanji don’t you?”

I didn’t hate Sanji, though. I was sad they squandered his potential. He was a lynchpin player in the crew before the time skip. Then he becomes… Less important, the few times he does have screen time, it’s to simp over a girl. I was sick of it years ago, and it's remained the same ever since. More talking like that, and I fell asleep at my computer.

It wasn’t the first time I did, and I didn’t think it would be my last either… But when I woke up, I wasn’t in my home anymore. The sound of waves crashing against the shore was an alert to tell me that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I opened my eyes and felt sick, sore, weak, starving, and everything else wrong with me, then on top of that, memories slammed into my head like a hammer. Almost shattering my mind and knocking me unconscious again.

In the downtime, my brain began to parse my memories… Fuck. I was Sanji. That wouldn’t have been the problem; being Sanji isn’t that bad. But as memories began to pour in, I knew I wasn’t in the One Piece world I had expected, because I was the firstborn Vinsmoke child in this universe. When my mother gave birth the second time, it was to four sisters for me.

My childhood wasn’t greeted with bullying; no, I was raised as the heir to my father's work. I was going to be a scientist inventor here; the work on lineage factors went through, but my lineage factors were dormant, a sign that I was different from my sisters, who were born with their lineage factors activated. It meant that even when they were almost four years younger than me, they could beat me up if they wanted to. Thankfully, they were born with emotions and raised as children rather than soldiers.

My father wasn’t a moron in this universe. Having child soldiers and turning your children into soldiers were two separate things, and if he wanted to leave a legacy behind after he died, his children would have to be the solution to that problem. He was practical and pragmatic, and from seeing how removing emotions affected the intellect of his soldiers, he decided against hindering his children’s mental abilities to make them more loyal to himself.

Judge was kind to his children and a demon to his enemies. Our childhood was mostly normal, well, as normal as having younger sisters stronger than most men would be. The simp nature of Sanji took effect as he spoiled all four of them, treating them like princesses, which they kind of were since we were the rulers of a country.

The big difference was in how I left. Our kingdom was attacked by Big Mom, and my mother died in the process, getting me out to sea on a ship before we were overrun. Whatever plan Big Mom had in this universe was different then it was in canon. Instead of Sanji escaping from his evil family, it’s Sanji escaping his family's downfall. Only after the fact, looking through my memories of the future, do I see they were taken over and ruled by Big Mom’s faction, my sisters most likely to be given to her male children when they came of age… Which wasn’t something Sanji or I wanted for them.

His goal in life was to free his family from the Charlotte pirates that moved in and took over. It really was weird that we didn’t see more influence from the other emperors in the four seas other than Shanks. Big crews/families like that would require heavy resources to fund, taking over a few islands in the easier seas seemed to be an easy way for them to build those resources, especially if the ruler was a genius inventor unaffiliated with the World Government.

Several other memories made it clear that this was an alternate universe to the one I expected. Things were very similar, but different enough that I wouldn’t be able to rely on my memories of the original timeline. Red Leg Zeff still sacrificed his leg to save me… The only problem was that the food that would hold over a ten-year-old boy couldn’t keep a fourteen-year-old from starving to death.

Yeah, Sanji actually died in this universe, and I replaced him. Sanji’s death awakened his lineage factor early, and only now do I realize how much of a difference it made in my strength. My body rapidly recovered while I slept because my adaptive exoskeleton activated; whatever Judge did to me meant I could strengthen myself. Right now, I am still weaker than my sisters, but the changes my lineage factor made to my body altered me forever.

Starving to death meant I could now survive much longer without food, not just that, but I felt as if the exoskeleton in my body was absorbing the sun's rays, allowing me to survive off solar power. There was more to it than that as well. I felt like I was only scratching the surface of what this body was capable of and would need to experiment after I woke up to find everything different from me and the original Sanji.

Finally, hearing the sound of someone yelling from a ship, we’re finally rescued. I felt my body greedily absorb the nutrients in the food as I cried, thankful to be alive, even if I was Sanji, even in a universe where I couldn’t use my meta knowledge to know everything before it happened. I felt happy that I got reborn in this universe, instead of one of the death worlds. My friend talked about Warhammer and Helldivers all the time, too. 

Chapter 03

The ship that saved us ended up going to the biggest island in the Conomi Islands archipelago. You don’t realize how big the world is until you realize that the island Nami was on, with over twenty islands, is one of the smaller islands linked to this archipelago. This single archipelago houses over ten million people. Most could live their entire lives on this island and still never feel the need to leave.

Marco says there are over twenty million islands spread out across the world, and that number seems incredibly wrong to me. Sure, it’s up there, but nowhere near his upward estimate. I don’t think there’s even ten million, but with several islands the size of this archipelago, the estimated human population has to be higher than Earth’s.

Zeff was looking at me like I was some sort of oddball. I barely touched any food since we’ve been rescued, then immediately asked for a map of the world. Most maps weren’t marked down; the map was more a placeholder for something, so you weren’t completely lost, and I could already tell that even the archipelago we’re on is drawn incorrectly. But this map of the world and a map of the East Blue would help me start to make up a plan in my head for what I needed to accomplish before the canon started.

Devil fruits seem like they just fall out of thin air, but I doubted anyone of the millions living in the archipelago had a devil fruit. Most went their entire lives without seeing one, and only those who actively traveled, or got extremely lucky, ever had the chance to eat a devil fruit. We’re just biased toward them being less rare because we see so many in the show, but in all of Arabasta, a place with millions just like this archipelago, the only two native devil fruit users are Chaka and Pell.

I needed to come up with a plan. Knowing gave me far better odds of getting a devil fruit than other people. I planned to follow Zeff and learn cooking from him, just as the original Sanji did, but I wouldn’t remain there until the story started. There was far too much to do before then if I wanted to give myself and my crew the best start.

I wasn’t just going for one devil fruit; I was going for several, and the first thing I needed to do was find a devil fruit encyclopedia. The fruits we saw in the show were only a small portion of what was possible, and if I missed an incredible one because I didn’t know its value, I’d kick myself later on. It was expensive, and they didn’t have an older one that had the more dangerous devil fruits inside. It meant that if I found one I didn’t recognize, it would most likely be more valuable than one I did recognize.

As I kept reading, my eyebrows rose more and more. Most devil fruits were absolute garbage. There was a literal garbage-garbage fruit that allowed the user to turn themselves into garbage. I thought logia could only turn into one specific thing, but as I kept reading, there were a few similar logia turning into a collective of things like this.

None seemed good, though; they seemed like the lowest of the low tier of devil fruit, which is probably why we didn’t see much of them. If a person ate a bad one, they’d either retire or end up dead in the ocean. No one died from drowning in the show, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen off-screen. No crew would support a useless person like the Straw Hats would.

I read through and decided to count the fruits that could fly in some way. Pell said there are five devil fruits that allow flight, and I wanted to see how wrong he was… What the heck was he talking about? There are at least eleven zone fruits that would give flight alone, let alone all those that gave flight through other means, and this doesn’t have the phoenix fruit, azure dragon, or the vampire bat fruit.

No, as I looked, most types had multiple fruits that could do something similar, if not worse than the main ones we knew. There was a thorn fruit for vine creation, grow-grow fruit that allowed you to rapidly grow plants, a plant fruit to turn you into a plant, all of which were worse versions of the forest fruit Admiral Ryokugyu ate. The encyclopedia had hundreds, close to a thousand, fruits listed.

In the East Blue, I had a relative idea of where the three devil fruits were. Ace’s flame fruit was on Sixis Island. The barrier fruit(must get) from Bartolomeo. The smooth fruit was on an uninhabited island close to Luffy’s starting island, slightly more than a day’s travel in rough weather. I hope in the direction of the nearest village, but I’d check every direction from his island to find it eventually. There was also the movie fruits, but who knew if those even existed, yet already consumed. I’d have to look them up when I get the chance.

But… Were they there yet? All three could still be out in the world, being used by people, and not have spawned in yet. It was too early for me to go to the Grand Line, and none of those fruits was one I wanted to consume myself. I only wanted them for the crew members I planned to have in the future. Wapol and Enel haven’t eaten their fruits yet… And I wanted either of those before they got eaten.

I felt that the munch-munch fruit was underutilized because its user was stupid, and the lightning fruit was just too strong to ignore. Even if I didn’t consume it, I’d want it for a crewmate… And. I had an inkling of how I could use the munch fruit to steal devil fruits from people in a similar way to how I thought Blackbeard did it. Eating the munch-munch fruit for that alone was worth it.

Many fanfictions say that eating seaking meat will improve your own strength rapidly, and I’d like to test that out before deciding on anything. If I could grow stronger just by eating something, that would be my preferred method of power. I had the basic knowledge of the Rokushiki techniques, but that might not be enough to learn them without a manual, and training my body to prepare to learn Haki was something I needed to start sooner rather than later.

Right now, I am still recovering from almost starving to death. I had no idea how much stronger I was compared to before now that my adaptive exoskeleton was activated. I practiced my newfound power and found that starvation resistance from solar absorption was the smallest change to me. I was recovering at an extremely rapid pace. Zeff was eating far more than I, but still had refilled out from almost starving to death, where I already had.

I was not only more resilient, but stronger and smarter as well. I was stronger than a male adult and would only increase my strength once I began training. I could now piece things together that I couldn’t before; whatever changes happened to my body made me as smart as my father. Judge was training me to be his successor, but I didn’t have the mind he had for creation; now I did.

I was only scratching the surface of what I could do. I knew there were plenty of other secrets hidden in this body, and it was my job to bring them out. I knew I would be stronger than canon Sanji, I was just wondering by how much now. How broken could I get if I trained while learning how to cook from Zeff?