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senecio11 · 1 month ago

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Villain Analysis: The Garuda Himself

AKA What turns men into monsters; Is it ideology and propaganda? Projection and insecurity? Class and upbringing? Or perhaps, it is all of these combined.

A not-so-quick analysis of Vinsmoke Judge, what makes him so despicable and hate-able, why he works as a villain, what does this mean for Sanji as a character and WCI as an arc, and how the brains of awful men like his work.

Warning: this is very very long (around 2k words) and talks about topics of abuse and imperialism, obviously. Also, a lot of this hinges on personal subjective interpretation of the narrative and speculation, so please be patient.

For starters, let’s get a quick comparison between Judge as a villain and other antagonists throughout One Piece. There’s, in my opinion, something that quickly separates him from the rest.

While most villains in One Piece are often motivated to do horrible things because of personal pathos and experiences, wants, needs, desires and traumatic memories, Judge –at first glance at least, seems to be motivated by something very different: Ideology. He is an imperialist, a fascist, a eugenicist, a classist, a warmonger, and so on and so on.

He is most similar to a villain like Hody Jones in this regard. There’s no personal big event in their lives (that we know of, at least) leading this type of character to their horrible actions, but rather a worldview. Most other antagonists in One Piece are in my opinion written as “person first, ideology second”. They’re often motivated by their own specific experiences, even if they can be assigned an ideology on top of that. But Judge and Hody seem to be more symbolic of broader ideas at their core, so they’re in a sense the odd ones out. They’re the reverse; “ideology first, person second”, almost feeling like they’re representatives of broader harmful structures, rather than being their own individuals.

I think also it’s worth mentioning why the ideology is here, and what it offers in terms of the narrative of Sanji’s abuse. Some might think it was an unnecessary element that isn’t that thematically connected to Sanji’s struggles. Couldn’t his family simply have been abusive, without all that Germa nonsense? Well for starters, it’s mostly here for the pop-cultural Kamen Rider references, yeah. But getting that out of the way, I think Sanji’s suffering is connected to his father’s terrible worldview pretty directly.

For starters, fascism is all about control. It preaches scapegoatism, demonization of “weakness” and fetishization of strength. Judge is a man that runs his family the same way he runs his state; with an iron fist. Sanji’s abuse IS a direct result of him being unable to meet these horrific standards. It also helps that we know Sanji as a kind person, so juxtaposing him to his comically evil literal-supervillain family, makes it simply easier for us to root for Sanji and hate his relatives, from a narrative building perspective. Ideas around masculinity and what an “able body” is in Judge’s eyes, are both part of Sanji’s backstory of abuse. It is also important that the Vinsmokes are royalty, because the first thing we learn about Sanji in One Piece, is that he suffered through great hunger. These people are wealth itself; they have never experienced that hardship.

However, while I think it’s true to an extent that Judge at first is simply “walking ideology” without being much of an actual individual, the way WCI is written, he starts showing interesting cracks behind the mask that reveal hints of specific personal motivations. In other words, the awful person behind the just as awful ideology starts to subtly show, and can be pieced together by looking intently.

As we experience the arc through Sanji’s eyes, Judge is a man who initially seems like an intimidating “strongman”, an impossible-to-read stoic threat, with no thoughts of his own outside cruelty. He’s a walking stereotype without much depth to be found. But slowly, the faults of his character begin to show; he is hasty, he has emotional outbursts, he is pathetic and hypocritical, he is careless and thoughtless, falling easily into Big Mom’s trap. In other words the imperfection and insecurity that Sanji was never able to spot in his father as a scared kid, starts to reveal itself, as Sanji slowly overcomes his fear of this man. He is not terrifying anymore; he is pathetic. And he is human, the worst kind of evil. The image of a man who is as perfectly mechanical as his genetically augmented sons, is shattered. They have no choice in their cruelty (to an extent, at least, due to Judge’s actions no less), but Judge is perfectly capable of compassion. He simply chooses to disregard it. His evil, unlike his sons, is his own choice.

Judge often laments his own humanity, doing so multiple times throughout the arc. He complains about how he can’t bring himself to take “his own son’s life as a father” to Sanji’s face, or often shows his twisted love for the rest of his children. This is a man who wishes nothing more than to be like his so-called “perfect” cruel sons, these unfeeling warriors, soldiers with no fear or sorrow. He fashions himself after them, in a way. But that is not the truth of who he is, and he very very clearly hates that.

This is where his hypocrisy comes in; he punishes Sanji for the very same things he himself is very capable of. To me, that’s kind of the point of the scene of him crying during the assassination, a highlight of his “rules for thee but not for me” behavior. This might sound absurd at first, but don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. I think out of the three parental figures Sanji has had in his life (Sora, Judge, Zeff) he is the least like his birth father. He is in every sense, much more like the other two. However, no matter how absurd it feels, out of all his sons, Judge is most similar to Sanji. And he hates every second he is reminded of it. Not in the kindness, of course, but in his emotional nature. This is a man who, I think is not a stretch to say, projected on his eight-year-old son.

But here comes the problem, of course. As I said earlier, I think this is a man whose ideology came first. He doesn’t latch onto it to cover up for his insecurities, but rather, they are comorbid, it’s the reverse. The elements he sees in himself as “weakness” are elements that he hates, precisely because they clash with his worldview, not the other way around. The ideology is a result of upbringing, similar to the Celestial Dragons; taught from birth that as royalty he is superior to others, that he deserves everything by existing, that his kingdom’s horrific nationalism is excused due to whatever scapegoatism the Vinsmokes have been propagandizing for centuries. So when he is reminded that these ideas might be false, when he looks at his own “weak” son and realizes he is more like him than he is like his other “perfect” sons, he lashes out in ways the escalate in cruelty. I think he is at his core, a disastrous mix of entitlement and insecurity. After all, secure and happy men don’t fall for such ideas.

There’s an interesting moment right before he gives his last horrid speech where he lists all of the things he hates about Sanji (that scene where Luffy lovingly responds with “Why did he list all the good things about you?”). Before he starts angrily and pointlessly rambling, there’s a panel where he looks down at Sanji, their faces juxtaposed, with his bandages covering one eye; just like Sanji and his hairstyle, and while making a similar facial expression to him. There’s a pause in that moment. I think the narrative is telling us in a way, and if you want to interpret it as such, about the insecurity and projection hiding behind this man’s “strongman” mask. Literally a mask- Big Mom broke his helmet. He is here without it. And of course, he cannot change. He will not change. He will keep acting out his cruelty; it’s too late for horrible old men like him. But not for someone like Sanji. This is the last moment where we see the two reject each other for good. And it’s a reminder of how that man’s shadow no longer looms over Sanji. Sanji can see through him, he sees the real, pathetic, sad man behind the intimidating persona. Maybe he does see himself a little bit too, but he rejects that. He rejects a future where he grows to be like this man.

The last element I want to talk about however, one that I didn’t touch on so far, probably has to do with Sora. There’s two things that stood out to me in regards to Judge’s relationship to Sora that I never see anyone talk about.

The first is the fact that Judge calls Sanji “his greatest failure”. Think about it for a few seconds. Why would a man so self-absorbed not simply blame Sora for what happened? He could have easily gone “Oh, there’s no failure on my part here, my science was perfect! I didn’t make any mistakes; I was simply sabotaged. Sabotaged by a third party.” But he doesn’t. He doesn’t use Sora as a scapegoat. I mean- it wouldn’t have been inaccurate either. The reason Sanji was born human IS because of Sora’s interference, not because of any mistake in the science. So why? Why does he not do it? Why is Sanji “his mistake”. I simply couldn’t figure it out at first, but then it dawned on me.

If Sanji is “Judge’s mistake”, than it can’t be “Sora’s success”. He is erasing her. He’d rather present himself as someone who messed up, than include her and acknowledge her actions. It’s about taking agency away from her. If HE is the one that failed when it comes to Sanji, he can make it about himself, and take her out of the picture. He can strip her of her power and decision. This is at his a core a man who is obsessed with control. Everyone else exists to serve him, in his eyes.

We see this even further in one of the most interesting and under-analyzed parts of Reiju’s speech to Sanji in WCI. While trying to figure out her father’s behavior, she makes the suggestion to Sanji that right after Sora died “he blamed you for everything that happened, and started to mistreat you accordingly.”

While Reiju is an unreliable in-universe narrator, she is one of the few people close enough to her father to be able to figure out his behavior. And here, she is suggesting that a big part of Sanji’s mistreatment is because, in his twisted mind, Judge blames Sanji for Sora’s death. This to me reads in a couple of ways. For starters, it’s once again taking agency away from her. It couldn’t have been her own decision; it had to be the fault of something or someone else. In this case… their unborn son…? Wild choice on who to blame. But it works in his head; Sora didn’t CHOOSE to disobey him, it was all that child’s fault. But also, it does beg that question again of what happens when you mix that complex villainous humanity with wretched ideology. Did he love Sora? Or is him mourning her just a feeling of loss of something he owned, a loss of ownership and control? Well, if I had to guess, it’s probably a bit of both. And that’s what makes Oda’s villains much, much more interesting to me, compared to simple walking stereotypes. Twisted abusive love expresses itself this way very often. To people like this, genuine feelings of love and horrific desire to control and hurt are the very same. And I think the same can be said for his “successful” children. I do think he loves them, genuinely, but a man like this experiences that emotion through a sense of ownership, control, and an extension of his own ego. It's not that is isn't love, or that it's performative. It is simply twisted, selfish, abusive, but it is there. But Sanji? He doesn't even get that.

God I hope this man suffers a terrible punishment for everything he’s done. An excellent villain, I need him dead and rotting in hell. Whole Peak Island. Thank you Mr. Oda.

#one piece #whole cake island #black leg sanji #vinsmoke judge #character analysis #villain analysis #whole cake arc #one piece meta #Oda I need you to blow Judge and Ceaser up #seriously #I hate this dude so much but I am glued to the screen waiting to see what he does next #please show us more neo MADS Oda I'm begging you

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