'One Piece' Sees Sanji React to Fan-Favorite's Death

One Piece's Whole Cake Island arc has officially ended with the latest episode of the series, and many lives of the Straw Hats' allies hang in the balance as Big Mom threatens one last attack as Luffy and the others got away. But there's been one major death in the series that fans still have yet to get over, and they were hit right in the feels when Sanji finds out Pedro has died.

Now that thing have finally settled on the Thousand Sunny and Sanji has reunited with his crew, it's here that Sanji finds out that Pedro has killed himself in order to help them all escape. It's a heartbreaking scene where he and Carrot have to come to terms with their feelings.

When Sanji finds out about Pedro's death, he thinks back to their time on Zou where Pedro asks the Straw Hats to save Inuarashi and Nekomamushi. He thinks to himself that this is not where Pedro was supposed to die. But seeing Sanji so down, Carrot goes to comfort him by mentioning that it was Pedro's choice to help and that he shouldn't blame himself.

Carrot says since the Straw Hats helped the duke duo, Pedro was paying his debt and that without him they all would have died. She asks Sanji to just say thanks, and starts to break down in tears. It's here that the full weight of Pedro's death hits Sanji and he comforts Carrot by saying that he's fully aware of what kind of man Pedro was. He and Sanji shared quite a close relationship when compared to the many other allies the Straw Hats have met on their adventures, so Pedro's death comes as a big surprise.

Pedro's journey through the Whole Cake Island arc set up his eventual sacrifice, but he was prepared to die for those he believed would change the world. His life was already severely limited due to Big Mom taking away 30 years of it, and he entered the arc with the full intention to end his life there. He met a heroic end in the series as he sacrificed himself to delay Perospero, and thankfully the Straw Hats did end up getting away.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.

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