User blog comment:Ghmorello/Chapter 921: Rock The Dragon/@comment-2607:FB90:B427:EE0C:A7F6:5011:E409:AFD4-20181019061441/@comment-24850639-20181022170807

I apologize if I come off as "downplaying" Sanji, but I'm just speaking on what I see. I love Sanji, but I feel I can objectively say that his feats during Whole Cake weren't as impressive as other things that we've seen from him. I WANTED Sanji to blow my socks off the entire arc, and it just never really happened. Me viewing Sanji's feats as less impressive isn't a result of me liking him less. If anything, I blame Oda for just not putting Sanji in positions where he could shine. Not Sanji's fault. He had some great character moments, like telling Judge off, or his cooking acumen with the cake, but nothing that really made it blatantly obvious that Sanji has grown strength wise. He's matured, which is always great, but people want to see his power grow. Whole Cake didn't really give us that, which made it feel like an even bigger kick to the nuts when Sanji gets offered a Raid Suit. Feel free to name any Sanji feat you'd like from Whole Cake, and I will objectively explain to you why it doesn't translate to us perceiving Sanji as any stronger than he was in Fishman Island or Punk Hazard.

Just to toss a few out there:

1st demonstration of Buso Haki - Never really uses it again in a blatantly obvious way for the rest of the arc to show his actual proficiency with it. Armament Haki is a pretty big frickin deal when it comes to combat ability for the rest of the series, so him using it more could have really helped us gauge his growth. This was our first time seeing him actually use it since we found out he even had it in Punk Hazard! But Oda says, "Nah bruh."

Dodging Katakuri's bullet - Until we see these kind of feats in an actual combat scenario, they kinda ring hollow without anything else to go off of. Speed doesn't translate to strength. So again while it's cool that Sanji is that fast, and that good at his own observation haki, it doesn't tell us much about his growth as an actual fighter.

Speed-blitzing Oven - We got to learn just how Strong Oven is, so while it was cool that he could move faster than Oven could perceive him in that instance, it tells us next to nothing about who'd win in a fight. Oven gets back up completely unfazed, and angrier than before. You have NO IDEA how badly I wanted Oven to say something about the power of Sanji's attack so that we could get some kind of validation of Sanji's improved power. "Nah bruh".

One-shotting Raisin - Oda never showed us just how strong Raisin was, so we can't really make any inferences about Sanji's strength either from the fact that he overpowered him. I don't so much buy into it being a cheapshot, because Raisin was clearly prepared to engage Luffy. But in either case, it's the only body Sanji caught for the whole arc, and we don't even know how strong the guy was, since it wasn't a fight.