Sue me I’ll come out of my hiding to yap about ZoSan again. The Wings dynamic is such a revolutionary spin on the “Shounen rivals” trope and till this day I have not yet found another example in anime or manga that matches it. The fundamental thing that makes Zoro and Sanji’s rivalry refreshing is that they clash not because they’re different from each other, but because they’re similar to each other. All of their opposing traits are superficial. When you boil them down to their core they are two sides of the same coin. It’s like fighting a shadow of yourself. Every serious conflict (and there’s only like, three, if you think about it seriously) between them reveals more about their inner struggles than it does about the actual “rivalry” between them. They challenge each other because they challenge themselves. And if they do fight each other someday, the only true enemy they face will be themselves.
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