#i’m approaching the end of skypeia

[biohazard-inevitable]

“So what’d you do over winter break?”

Got through 2 one piece arcs why

[ghostlycreatoruniverse]

Dabi and the awkward black ballon: a narrative comparison between Touya Todoroki and Vinsmoke Sanji

Hello everyone!

I’m really thrilled about this whole situation , I can’t stop coming up with ideas!

This is about Dabi, Hawks and the black balloon. I’m making this post because I’m totally convinced that Dabi hadn’t tell Hawks he was Touya Todoroki. He might have said something that implied it, but I think that this is not all he told to Hawks. I’ll try to cover others possibility in another post, but to consolidate my position I wants to draw another comparison.

This time is between Dabi and Black Leg Sanji from Eiichiro Oda’s great masterpiece: One Piece.

One Piece is a worldwide famous and one of the most important and best sellers manga of this generation. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not: at some point if your life if you like mangas you’re bound to hear One Piece sooner or later.

For those who never read/ disliked it, Black Leg Sanji is one of the main crew character and soon after his introduction he haunted fans with one question: who he really is?

In years hints became gradually more important; however One Piece is full of adventure and emotional moments so you’re bound to forget about it from time to time... just to be reminded that he’s hiding something.

I don’t know what Horikoshi thinks about One Piece, but I think he should know one or two things about it at least . Oda is considered one hell of a mangaka, being able to tie plot lines among the years, so if I were Horikoshi I’d give a look at One Piece to take inspiration. You have to consider this is a good way to avoid having a copycat event in two mangas published on the same magazine.

I’ll explain briefly who Sanji is.

Sanji is the cook of the Straw Hat pirates and he was (almost forcibly) recruited by Luffy before they entering in the Grand Line making him one of the first nakama.

He was introduced with the nickname “Black Leg”, inherited by his boss who raised him like father ( “Red Leg Zeff”). Zeff tried to assault the cruise ship Sanji was working on as a kid, but they both shipwrecked. When they were saved Zeff took Sanji they met Luffy.

In One Piece names are extremely important, but back then readers really hasn’t that feeling and before Sanji, both Nami and Usopp didn’t have a family name. So no one was impressed.

The first foreshadowing something was off happens around Skypeia arc. In fact all the first straw hat pirates (Zoro, Nami and Usopp) were said to be from East blue, thus everyone thought Sanji was too. However after finding a book Nami never heard of, Sanji gave a brief recap adding casually he was from North Blue instead .

A recurring fun gag about him is that when he finally gained his wanted poster an awful drawing of him was placed instead of his photo. Later on another character was introduced: Duval, who is the spit image of the bleak drawing. As funny as it can be, Duval was persecuted for many time, guaranteeing Sanji wasn’t found.

The biggest red herring Sanji gave was around chapters 480+. In front an honourable yet powerful enemy, Sanji was ready to sacrifice his life for his captain’s sake , underlining that he is someone important due to his background.

After that many theories were edited. And this went on for YEARS.

Until, chapter 800+. Around thst arc we finally get to know his full name and backstory. Vinsmoke Sanji was the third male son of a fallen aristocratic family. He had 3 brothers and one sister, an abusive father and a mother who was locked away in a medical facilities. In fact when she was pregnant, her husband forced on her some scientific experiment to turn their kids in the “perfect soldiers” stripping out every sign of humanity from them. She, trying to save her children for this bleak fate, took a medicine to inverse the process. In the end only Sanji was spared and had a kind heart, while she had a chronic illness that few years later killed her. Sanji then was considered a failure by his own father , enough to fake his own death and putting him in a jail. He then escaped to East Blue thanks to his sister who helped him.

Now, Enji seems to be a loving father when compared to Vinsmoke Judge.

Despite Sanji and Dabi’s story being quite similar , what I want to point out it’s the timing.

Oda foreshadowed this for years and gradually. And when the time was about to come, he added even more details to build Sanji’s great revelation. Once it was declared he was a Vinsmoke there was no turning back and all of his past was known in the following chapters. Of course it took some time to develop it all, but Vinsmokes were brand new characters, while Todoroki are very well known, so I expected Touya’s past to be introduced soon after his revelation, like it happened.

My main concern is... why.

Horikoshi chose an approach similar to Oda.

He show us Todoroki siblings one after another. He hinted Touya had a powerful fire type quirk, yet his body couldn’t stand it. He hinted about his death even before Natsuo spoke about it openly, having Fuyumi praying in one panel. In My Villain Academia he inserted baby Fuyumi’s panel. When Dabi was first introduced he spoke like Shoto does and he made clear he wanted to keep his name a secret. We then were reminded that nobody knew who Dabi was, but instead he was thinking about family and hold a personally grudge against Todorokis.

And that’s was fine! It was exactly like Sanji’s and to be expected.

in chapter 267 at the peak of drama the big black balloon happened. I was both intrigued and excited about it because it was something different and new when compared with the iconic One Piece. And so I guessed that we would have to wait a lot of time before knowing the truth. Then chapter 290 happened.

Now, if you compared Sanji’s reveal with Touya’s reveal your noticed that Sanji took years since his first introduction. The most significant and last foreshadowing can be considered his wanted poster, which after Dressrosa arc finally had his picture and full name on it, with the status of “wanted only alive”.

The huge unnerving block balloon was like Sanji’s poster: the moment everyone saw it they thought Dabi said “I’m Touya” as much as everyone said “Sanji’s theory about being some sort of prince/ son of an important family it’s true”.

And it works! Because the moment we knew Touya was Dabi we would have wanted to know how Touya turned into Dabi, as much as what happened to Sanji.

What it doesn’t sound right it why hiding that dialogue with a black ballon in chapter 267 to give us the truth only 6 months later when One Piece took his own sweet time with Sanji.

To me this makes absolutely no sense at all.

But Horikoshi decided differently than One Piece. And illogically.

The only way this would actually makes any sense is if Dabi said something else to Hawks. Or rather: what if he said he was Touya but with another meaning? With last chapters we were overloading with new informations about Dabi/ Touya. So the black balloon isn’t that interesting to us anymore. And conveniently Hawks is out of the games for the moment, so we don’t expect him to say something about it. It might be argued that we don’t need to, not anymore.

However after that sentence which took and entire panel Hawks should have something to say, and he can’t bothered the reader with something we already know.

This comparison ties perfectly with Anakin
Skywalker’s: in fact after years it was Sanji’s turned to be talked about. His identity moved One Piece’s story one arc forward.

Instead about Anakin... audience didn’t really need his backstory. It was something you wanted to know, but the story could have worked just fine: you just needed to know Vader was Luke’s father to understand why he saved the Jedi at the cost of his own life.

I thus expect we’ll dig up more into Dabi’s past in the following arcs; no, I’m not delusion: Dabi being Touya won’t move the plot much forward aside from the hero society being totally ruined. And neither will end the Todorokis drama.

The situation is dire, of course, and heroes will have it hard. But still, society needs heroes so they can’t just give up on them. Things will change and won’t change at the same time cause even in the worst case scenario, in which Endeavor and Hawks will stop working and all heroes are fired someone needs to take a stand against Shigaraki.

Touya’s death instead might give another push forward, giving the Todoroki arc a deserved ending.

Bear in mind that this doesn’t mean Dabi can’t die. He totally can. But if into Touya’s death a secret lies this can be useful for upcoming future arcs, even if I doubt Dabi will die here and now.