@Greg:
Oh! Phhh! Yeah, that's no question. 901 is easily one of the biggest letdowns in the series in terms of delivering on answers, victories and promises.
But there was a lot that works very well and keeps everyone in character.
I believe there will be vindication for Sanji with that cake. It's coming.
But! BUT!!!!!
Where Oda clearly dropped the ball is in making Sanji shine in battle or at least strategy.
When his secret escape plan was revealed to be….to run away...fast.... I had to facepalm. Yes, the story focused on Sanji. Yes the cake is AMAZING as an accomplishment.
But come on man. You gotta know what your fans want….
Yeah okay, sure, even if we know Oda will deliver, it stands that he did not deliver here where it was much needed. And I say 'deliver' in terms of fan expectations.
An unfortunate side effect of the germa having to look cool at least once tbh
And also regarding oda, does he for some reason assume the readers have this great idea of sanji from a combat perspective so he doesmt need to show it? Because everytime sanji does something badass, (like when he knocked out raisan) it got followed up by him being knocked back himself. Or he did something cool but it wasnt the focus and the story moved on.
Like how he blocked the Giant Genie from slicing carrot and there's barely any emphasis. I know oda doesnt follow the western fanbase at all but when you look at zoro and sanji post timeskip, one looks much better. One is used as a guy to hype other guys smetimes and the other is just badass and flawless honestly battle wise (god I hope zoro really has to struggle in Wano, he's too much of a smug asshole lol) since the timeskip.
I just hope oda doesnt have sanji lose easily in wano to hype a powerful kaido guy only for a supernova/marco/zoro to take the guy out with a moderate effort. Just give sanji a good 1-2 chapter fight in there and quit making him get distracted all the time and be knocked around by small fries. Seriously any time sanji looks away in a fight he gets hit, but zoro manages to deflect it. This isnt Sanji <=> Zoro comment but oda framed them as being close so they shouldnt be this far apart in terms of performance
Uh I dont mean to sound like I want DBZ from one piece but Sanji shouldnt be TIEN'd out of the story fightwise or any other way and though they tackled his personality issues in some of these fights a clear victory would have been nice.
People were guessing, daifuku (cause he slapped pudding), oven (cause he tried to stop them from leaving) and Snack (because he was in the vicinity and "oda didnt bring him back for no reason")
So if you think about it compared to anything sanji set out to do there are mixed results. He didnt really have a shining moment. Even the cake decoy wasnt presented there but capone took that on.
From a story perspective
Saving his family? They might all die anyways. Rendering the reason to go to the wedding pointless. Saving his captain? Pekoms got luffy put of the mirror and sanji and luffy almost died if not for the vinsmokes. His plan was literally skywalking out of there and nothing else. Having the cake knock out big mom? Sort of, now she back at full strength and ready to kill them all.
So its a mixed bag for me.
I know some people hate it but I love the entire chase scene from 873-901. It goes to show how frightnening the yonko are. I just wish sanji's role had more of an effect now to close up the arc satisfyingly. I dont doubt what he does will have a role here later but him having a golden moment here was expected for the arc so i feel like losing something.