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monkeydluffy19920 · 2 years

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Respond: SaNami in the New World pt. 5 (2/3) - Totto Land

First of all sorry for the delays but anyway, it’s time to return to the series where I and my fellow shippers analyze and ponder about the development of the relationship between Sanji and Nami and how it has made huge step of developments during the time they have spent in the New World. Earlier posts that are related to these series are the following:

Fishman Island, Punk Hazard, Dressrosa, Zou and Totto Land (1/3). All of these arcs are full of possible hints and moments that could lead Sanji and Nami become actual canon as a pair.

As another disclaimer (because shipping wars are always on), these thoughts are just one opinion in thousands seas and made from one point of view. This series aims not to bash other ships and just a friendly reminder that Oda is the one who will decide whether any canon romance will be even happening. This post will be the second part that is focusing on the Totto Land arc and happenings from chapters 859 (from the aftermath of Luffy vs Sanji until the “grand finale part 1″ which is basically finding out about Pudding’s other side) . There will probably be still lots to talk and ponder about and again, some of these topics have been handled before either by me or other fellow fans. If there is anything important you feel that it’s missing or what I didn’t notice, feel free to toss ideas and make addition :)

Another huge shout out to my mate @pernanegra who has been an important support and help in this project! He has written his own series of analyzing SaNami hints in Oro Jackson forum (part 1, part 2 , part 3, part 4 and part 5). Unfortunately the site is taken down so the links don’t work :( but anyway, I highly recommend to check out pernanegra’s own Tumblr because it’s full of awesome analyzes~!

Without a doubt, this whole SaNami in the New World series wouldn’t be possible without my other amazing fellow shippers with whom I’ve discussed about these chapters. So thank you all equally and keep the flag high! <3

So, after the chapter 844, the roles have significantly changed between Nami and Luffy. Probably because of the icy glare when she tried to interrupt Sanji from not beating his captain and witnessing a(nother) battle between two nakamas she is first in great disbelief and kind of questions why Luffy even would want to stubbornly wait for Sanji after getting beaten up so badly.

Like @pernanegra said in his post: the glare was enough to tell Nami that Sanji is serious and not going with them. It’s his determination what hurts her the most and it was the last straw which lead her to slap him.

Luffy still sticks to his promise, literally ignoring even the droplets that keep falling once the rain starts. Luffy refusing the food at first glance sounds very unusual for him but when we go back to the past, like Baratie arc we start to notice that these panels below just indicate that Luffy understands deeply his friend’s pain and wants to show loyalty by this hunger strike, that he is willing to even sacrifice his own bottomless stomach just to show Sanji how important he is for Luffy and his crew (not sure if I’m writing a LuSan or SaNami post atm because this arc is perfect for both *laughs*)

We all know Nami is still disappointed and in disbelief but I think that slowly she starts understands Luffy’s behavior (that why Luffy isn’t mad or anything). Maybe she realizes that Luffy’s actions resemble the way he behaved towards her back in Arlong Park when she was felt hopeless and that deep down there Nami understands it’s no use to feel hatred against Sanji although she is definitely saddened how Sanji treated them in first reunion.

Like written in this post, Luffy interpreted the situation differently compared to Nami. He controlled his emotions whereas she took Sanji’s glare and speech much more personally and got hurt by his cold appearence.

As the Whole Cake arc goes on things get much more trickier. Nami and Luffy are facing the enemy and overpowered whereas the sky keeps darkening and Sanji’s despair gets worse and he needs to find a way out. My fellow mate @ecassandrae wrote well in this post about Sanji’s personality:

A person who wasn’t loved appreciates affection much more and truly considers those who love him “saviors”, because love isn’t perceived as something natural, as it should be, but as an exception, a miracle.

So, like @ecassandrae said, because of the past traumas, Sanji sees all those people who ever made him feel like he belonged in this world as his saviors. Those people who dragged him from misery and makes his life now meaningful.

So, not only Zeff who saved him from certain death and made the rest of Sanji’s childhood happy or Luffy who ignited Sanji’s will to chase his dream of finding All Blue but also his other crew mates has become his saviors because with them he feels appreciated and wanted.

At this point of the arc, Pudding becomes only person Sanji can lean on because he is there without his crew and him and Pudding were brought together by their families and Sanji has no clue what happened to the retrieval crew so he needs a plan and agreeing the Tea Party is now in his head the most relevant and realistic thing in order to keep the whole pack together.

One thing this arc brings up is the sacrificial nature of his. Even though Luffy back in Baratie basically said that “Debts aren’t being paid by sacrifices” Sanji is back at it again. I think this speaks for it how far Sanji wants to go to protect his loved ones: that he is basically not only willing to give up on his closest friends but also on his dreams just to agree Big Mom’s deal.

Well basically he could still chase after All Blue but I’m pretty sure if this marriage happened Big Mom wouldn’t let him do whatever he or Pudding would want at that point.

Anyway, Sanji is desperated to find the solution although he knows it would require a lots of sacrifices from him but at the same time he wants to protect his saviors at all costs and he wants to believe that things will turn out good for everyone.

One interesting part of this whole mess is that deep down Sanji probably knows what he is doing, at least partly. Well he is a tactician so he thinks of the plans in generals but he also knows that his captain is the most stubborn thing that exists and that even his mean words couldn’t keep Luffy away from saving his.

This is something Oda highlights in chapter 847 where Sanji is curled up on the window seat wishing that the others wouldn’t come to the wedding. In other words based on their adventures Sanji probably knows that Luffy will appear at some point there and that’s why he is distressed because his captain is very unpredictable and won’t follow the plans Sanji pictured in his head. If he knew 100% that his crew mates would leave him to deal with this all alone, I don’t think Sanji would stress about it but he is worried about their safety a lot.

Meanwhile Sanji is struggling trying to find his way out of this mess, Nami and Luffy are trapped into the cage by Big Mom. So here is one of the biggest plot twists of this arc. Pudding reveals her evil plans to Nami and Luffy and there are 2 things that makes this part very interesting (shipwise):

1. their reactions:

Pudding’s mystery words caused lots of ruckus when the chapter came out (writte about i.e here) and like written back in Sannami week 2022 - Day 4 - Fave Arc-post, here is again referenced what my fellow mates wrote back then:

@pernanegra‘s thoughts: This isn’t a normal shocked expression, Nami has the “serious” eyes (female version) that the characters only use when they are tense. Luffy also has a shocked expression but his eyes are normal, not the “serious” version….”. and @namivinsmokexsanjivinsmoke‘s thoughts: Luffy and Nami’s reaction are also somehow different. Luffy’s reaction looks more like “what have I done”, but Nami’s reaction is more like “I knew it but I just couldn’t believe it”. Her face also showed more despair because of how she is drawn. Luffy has normal color but Nami is colored darker.

Like @pernanegra said, Nami’s eyes definitely catch the attention: pupils are wide from the shock and she is wearing “unbeliavble" kind of expression while the tears are about to roll down. Luffy as well is in shock but his eyes aren’t drawn that big.

They both now know this mess is becoming even worse than they’d expected and what makes this even more stressful and awful is that they both know that Sanji is still unaware of all this and the clock is literally ticking for them.

From the shipping point of view again I can’t help thinking whether her reaction at chapter 850 (where we see what Pudding truly said) also was caused because of fear of losing someone she cares about, again.

It happened with Belmere before and Sanji’s disappearence did have similarities with Nami’s last moments with their (foster) mom so why wouldn’t she be worried? It would be awful for her to experience the same kind of loss again, even as a nakama-level.

So, what if inside her mind she started to fear that although she has full trust on her captain, what if they still can’t make it and therefore the last contact she and Sanji had would be them parting with tears and slap?

2. Where is Pudding’s eye looking at?

This was something my mate @ayumiyui pointed out in this post. It indeed is odd that Pudding who later was revealed to have a third eye was literally staring at something when she whispered the revelations to them.

Since Pudding is placed in middle of them and the third eye looks at the right side it would be very logical to say she’ll stare at Nami. The reason why she does this remains a mystery.

Shipwise we could guess that maybe Pudding knows that Nami has some interest in Sanji since back then when they first met at Pudding’s caffee, Nami was very active about finding of Sanji’s whereabouts and stuff. Obviously, Nami wouldn’t say out loud such things as “I like Sanji” but maybe the third eye senses something or like could use telepathy-like skills since her Devil’s Fruit has to do with manipulating and reading memories?

Or from more neutral perspective, maybe she just wanted to enjoy the shock factor she caused for both of them before bidding goodbye, really hard to say tbh.

At the same time elsewhere Sanji tries to pull on the brave face and kind of “tries to live with his desicion” (in other words tries to pretend he is truly happy with Pudding) but for oddly reasons all Sanji can really think about is his crew. He is supposed to pack a picnic basket for Pudding but he ends up putting there foods that his closest friends like instead of what Pudding likes.

So at this part of the arc Sanji’s mind (and heart) does constantly balances between becoming the groom to Pudding (whom he just met but whom he believes can be the “salvation”) and missing his crew and chasing his dreams of finding All Blue.

Just a random detail but for some reason Oda wanted to have a separate panel for Sanji packing some wine and tangerines to the basket]. We all know Nami loves citrus fruits and she likes Sanji’s cocktails too so as a SaNami shipper it almost feels like Sanji was secretly dreaming about taking Nami to the picnic and if we think about how much he adores Nami, it wouldn’t really be surprising.

Now we move forward to the turning point of Sanji where he realizes that all his plans are ruined and it was all a scheme and that he is now in the bullseye target because Pudding now reveals to Reiju what they have planned.

This is really painful to watch/read, why? Because Oda highlighted throughout the arc how Sanji truly trusted Pudding as his savior and thought he could fix things by doing compromises as far as his sacrificial nature allows.

Now not only his plan is ruined but also he realizes he did all that effort to keep the retrieval team out goes now to “waste”. Although I still believe that deep down Sanji is expecting the others to show up but still maybe at this point inside his mind he starts to regret on what he said to both Luffy and Nami because obviously things would’ve turned out differently if he would’ve let them rescue him before captain vs cook fight.

Pudding really can hit his weak spot, those are probably the most hurtful words Sanji can listen to at that point. Being called a failure must’ve sent him some flashbacks to his miserable childhood and being mocked not to be a proper prince must’ve also felt awful (his nickname back in Alabasta was Prince, probably that was foreshadowing back then) whereas mocking his swollen face (and he might be sensitive about his looks since Judge forced him to keep an iron mask).

Interestingly Oda has put placed Reiju as her victim which is well kind of a obvious choice but still it gives parallels. Reiju was after all reason why Sanji gained the freedom he wanted. Back in Sanji’s childhood Reiju was his savior and now Pudding is supposed to be his savior like he made himself believe but now the plot twist puts Sanji basically in a dead end.

What speaks for Sanji’s despair is all the symbolism that Oda has gathered. I might talk more about some of them in the last part of Totto Land’s series’ but here are listed what are the most noticeable related to the events so far:

The rain, the weather has been crap ever since Sanji parted with Nami and Luffy. Now again in this chapter is heavy and dark.

The basket and the roses were supposed represent a new beginning for Sanji and his future bride since they were supposed to have a cute picnic together. Roses are known as symbol of love and according to Google thornless roses are supposed to mean “love at first sight”. Well the rain wilts the roses while Sanji stands there and listens how everything falls down so this was quite straightforward message from Oda to Sanji that his plan is now ruined for good.

The thunder, the lightnings have so far appeared only in chapter 845 where he proposed Pudding. Parallel or not, there as well the situation was dramatic and similar: people that are important to Sanji were overpowered and he was a dead end at that moment too.

The lighter isn’t working. Last but not least the most symbolic thing to describe Sanji’s inner pain is that the rain is temporarily ruining his lighter. Since he is a chain smoker he seeks comfort in cigarettes so what could be worse than not being able to have a smoke after such shocking news?

Probably nothing so in other words poor Sanji is literally standing outside while it’s raining out like being poured from the bucket and all he would want is a little cheer and he is not even allowed to have that and all he is given is a cold hand and a pile of things he is now forced to question such as his beliefs, his actions, basically everything from the fight until this moment. So, this is something we could indeed call a rock bottom.

#one piece #nami #sanji #sanami #sannami #sanji x nami #sanjixnami #dorobo neko nami #sanji vinsmoke #cat burglar nami #otp #mellorine #analysis #SaNami in the New World #totto land #whole cake island

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