I have come up with the funniest possible explanation for the existence of Sanji’s raid suit.
So first thing to keep in mind is based on Vito’s age and his claim that he read Sora, Warrior of the Sea as a kid, the comic must have started before the Vinsmoke children were old enough to go on missions, probably before they were even born, meaning the characters based on them must have been a later addition.
So imagine you are a writer for the very popular comic Sora, Warrior of the Sea, and your buddy in the Marines who gives you stories that you’re supposed to use as the basis for your storylines tells you about some new Germa commanders who have started showing up. Great, love an opportunity to mix in some fresh characters! There’s a girl and three boys, and the boys wear capes numbered 1, 2, & 4. So there is a glaring omission there, but when you ask your buddy, he doesn’t know, there just wasn’t a number 3. Well that might fly in the real world, but in a comic you can’t just leave that conspicuous absence without an explanation. So you do some brainstorming and finally come up with the perfect idea — nobody saw number 3 because his power is invisibility. Boom, entirely original character Stealth Black is born.
Pan back to the Vinsmoke family. Now, I know Judge is a religious reader of the Sora comics. This is a man who loves to spend 10 minutes reading the comic every week so he can then spend an hour ranting about how much it sucks. Then comes the introduction of Stealth Black, and Judge is genuinely pissed off this time because how dare they reintroduce that failure Sanji to the story and also secretly how dare they come up with a kick ass idea like invisibility before he did. He is so emasculated by this comic coming up with invisibility first that every time Stealth Black appears he goes on an extra long rant about how he could totally make an invisibility suit too if he wanted to, it would be easy, he could do it in five minutes, until Niji is finally like, okay so do it then. And so Judge, desperate to prove a point to Niji that Niji does not care about, creates the canister and presents to him, to which Niji is like great, good job dad, and then promptly throws the thing into the back of his closet. There is sits until the end of the Whole Cake Island arc, when Niji suddenly remembers he has it and thinks to himself, oh, I’m about to do something hilarious.
