"I’ll never doubt a woman’s tears." A quote Sanji has carried with him to the Whole Cake Island arc. They are words he proves he still stands behind. Yet this time, the result of those words earn him anything but an ally. When he bought into those tears, he also bought into the prospect that grass could be just as green on the other side. Yet he gets to see through the window with his very own eyes how wilted that grass is. He was delusional. He had deluded himself into believing that he could find happiness away from his crewmates, his friends, and his dream. If Sanji buried his dream like he once did working at Baratie, perhaps he could find new happiness with Pudding.
Yet, unlike the cooks encompassing the floating restaurant, everyone residing on this wonderland Island are nothing but enemies. It’s easy to say that this is simply a rehash of an already told character arc. Still, that opinion is only valid under the assumption that the arc had already concluded. Sanji did not leave Baratie having come to terms with his lack of self-worth. It was simply through a compromise that he even allowed himself to leave Zeff’s side in the first place. On his new journey, he proved time and time again just how much he valued everything else over his own life. He had always been fully committed to the thought of dying for those comrades that found him.
To Sanji, he has only ever been a failure. Even when he succeeds, he deludes himself into believing it’s all negligible in the long run. His mindset is warped in this way because he never did face his past. He ran away from it long ago. But now that it’s caught back up with him, he chooses to run away from something else, his dream, because his dream is not as important as the lives of all those crewmates that he has come to care for deeply. But still, when Luffy personally comes to announce himself, why does Sanji still reject him? Is it because he doesn’t trust Luffy? But hasn’t he already proven time and time again that he trusts this man more than anyone? Well, it’s not that he doesn’t ultimately trust in Luffy’s success, it’s that Sanji doesn’t even view himself as worth the risk in the first place. And Sanji foolishly abides by this idea so absurdly that he would even strike his captain to cement his death as a straw hat.
But, even still, through all those kicks, like Sanji once had when he said, “A man forgives a woman's lies." Luffy breaks through Sanji’s lies as well. And once the world collapsed on him after his delusions caught up, Luffy is the only one he can run to. After their bout, Luffy didn’t choose to find Sanji because he knows his kindness more than anyone else. The sound of a growling stomach is the only thing Sanji needs to disregard any circumstance. Luffy knew Sanji would come to fulfill his role no matter what because that’s who he is. Reiju had once freed Sanji, enabling him to run away from his past. And Luffy does the complete opposite. Instead of allowing Sanji to feel content with his reasoning as to why he can't return to the crew, effectively allowing him to run away from his position in the straw hats, Luffy disregards the semantics and aims straight for the origin of all of these lies. He says the words Sanji has needed to hear for his entire life. And Sanji, finally, puts himself in his sights.
But Sanji, even after finally letting himself express a semblance of selfishness, confides that even after all the pain and trauma that his family has caused him, he still cannot live with himself if he allows them to die. And now it is clear, Sanji was never a failure. Sora had attempted to nurture a boy with a kind human heart in a kingdom of monsters, and after her death, it seemed maybe her dream would only be just that. But as Reiju points out, she didn’t fail because the man Sanji has become is someone their mother would surely be proud of. Sora sacrificed her health and even her own life to ensure that even just one of her son’s would grow up to be human. When Sanji tries once again to twist this story into a catastrophic event that he caused, like with Zeff on that isolated rock, Reiju snaps him back into reality. She informs him that before Sora died, she smiled because she had no regrets. Her kind soul would surely live on through Sanji. And that it has.
Sanji speaks nothing but admiration for the third eye that Pudding has been scorned for her entire life when faced with the woman who crushed his entire world once before. And just like she once had for Sanji, Sanji returns the favor by crushing her entire world as well. And after both live through trauma, delusion, realization, denial, and acceptance, come together once more to accomplish a task larger than life. An effort that isn't deluded by a web of lies nor polluted by any plots to assassinate anyone. Because they are both first and foremost cooks, and that's what they will always be, no matter how much they try to be something else.
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