Luffy Vs Sanji

Last week, One Piece released a 2 episode special dedicated to a fight between Luffy, the main character and captain of the Straw Hat (Mugiwara) pirates, and Sanji, one of his crew members and close friends. One of the most prevalent themes in One Piece is the bond and relationship between friends. Without getting too deep, I will say that many times throughout the story, the members of the Straw Hat crew have demonstrated their unbreakable loyalty and trust for each other. Knowing how deeply they care for one another, you know that the circumstances are extremely dire for a fight, or a beating to be more accurate, to occur between crew members. These circumstances involve Sanji being forced into a marriage with a daughter of one of the most powerful characters in the story. Normally, this wouldn't be enough for Sanji to cross sides; however, these powerful forces are also threatening the life of someone who Sanji cares for deeply. That person is a man who gave up his leg and once starved for over a month to ensure that Sanji lived on and basically took him in as his father. This made Sanji cross sides in an attempt to protect all the people that he cared about. Luffy obviously wasn't willing to accept this and snuck directly into the territory of the yonko (emperor), Big Mom, who is behind all of this. After overcoming many hardships and adversities, Luffy finally gets to Sanji; but keeping the life of his adopted father in mind and feeling that it was the only way to protect all those he cared about, Sanji tries to get him to leave by putting up a facade as if he looked down on his friends and used them. Luffy didn't buy it and stood his ground which made Sanji feel that he had no other choice but to challenge Luffy to a fight and began to beat him. Luffy refused to fight back despite the brutal strikes he was repeatedly receiving. He did this because he recognized this as a facade and knew that Sanji didn't truly want to abandon his friends, and absolutely refused to give up on him. In my opinion, this scene turned out to be one of the most emotion eliciting scenes shown throughout the series.