Rock Lee vs Sanji
The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 32
Prediction 11
Rock Lee vs Sanji
Aw man.
Ninjas vs Pirates, Ben, really? That was old when I was young. What’s next? Numa Numa guy vs All Your Base guy?
Well, I can’t say we weren’t warned. Rock Lee vs Sanji was on the VA leak we got way back in Wally vs Archie Sonic. Still, there was hope that they would have shelved it for the next season.
So much for hope.
The Comparison
Shonen is my blind spot and then some, but bear with me and I’ll try and make sense of this match based on what info I’ve managed to gather.
Alright. Here’s the thing…
…But let’s say the OST didn’t leak.
Sanji and Lee are both superpowered kickers who have studied how to kick people since they were kids. Lee has a slight edge in training as his passion in life is kicking people and learning how to kick them faster and with greater force while Sanji’s passion isn’t actually kicking people, or even being a pirate, but cooking.
I’ve never seen an episode of either Naruto or One Piece, but I already like Sanji better just because he seems like a guy that has a purpose in life and not a shallow imitation of his parental figure. Sanji is his own man.
Lee may have the edge in training, but Sanji has the edge in everything else.
Speed vs Speed
Sanji can kick so fast he sets his leg on fire and walks on air by creating a series of micro-sonic booms beneath his heels. Through the use of a capsule loaded super suit which acts like a cross between a Dragon Ball capsule and a Flash ring, Sanji can also turn invisible, and it’s the good kind of invisibility–the HG Wells kind where you’re completely transparent and not the crappy Halo/Predator kind where you can still be spotted if your opponent looks carefully enough.
Lee can reach speeds where his punches are so fast they ignite the air through a technique called morning peacock, but only when he hits his sixth gate power-up, and using the sixth gate rapidly drains him of his vitality and strains his body the more he fights while using the sixth gate. He also can’t walk on the air or turn invisible, and while he’s very good at using ninja magic to kick people, he sucks in using ninja magic in other ways like detecting people through their aura, so Lee isn’t going to be able to scan Sanji while he’s invisible, thus Sanji has the advantage in mobility and speed.
Obnoxious “totally as fast as light lasers” arguments also favor Sanji. He’s kept pace with Luffy who has dodged “lasers” while the most notable “laser” dodging feat in Naruto comes from Naruto dodging laser spit (…yeah, I know…believe me, I know…), and Lee can’t hold a candle to the ninja Jesus that is Naruto.
Power vs Power
Sanji smokes Lee in power as well. Sanji is comparable to Zoro, who I like because the “wields a sword in his mouth” thing is the coolest kind of stupid and because he killed an obnoxious woman from an obnoxious series in a Death Battle match.
(How the hell is One Piece becoming my favorite anime when I’ve never seen it?)
Zoro sliced apart a meteor. Lee karate kicked a meteor, but he did it in his sixth gate power-up form and with eight other ninjas helping him, and even then a giant chunk of the meteor had to be destroyed by Sasuke (you’ll remember him as the dude Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho made STOP, AND GROW UP AGAIN) before it flattened their ninja village home.
Advantage Sanji.
But What About The Eighth Gate?
It’s not over yet.
In the show, Lee has only been shown using six out of the eight gate power-ups that exist in the setting. If he’s only allowed to use gates 1-6, Sanji slaughters him. During Might Guy’s big fight with Madara, Lee says that he’s only able to go up to gate 6…but you see, they did a whole Naruto: The Next Generation thing and according to the Naruto wiki, Lee finally mastered all 8 gates in his adulthood.
Gate 8 dramatically increases the user’s power at the cost of killing them in a few moments as the technique cooks them alive (how appropriate for a fight against a chef!). It allowed Might Guy to fly by kicking the air in a technique similar to Sanji’s air walk and if Lee could use the same technique he could close some of the mobility gap between him and Sanji. Might Guy was also able to use gate 8 to (almost) kill Madara, one of the biggest baddies of the Naruto universe by using the technique night Guy (though in Lee’s case, I guess it would be night Lee), and (fully) kill dollar-store Superman in Death Battle’s All-Might vs Might Guy.
The presumptive night Lee technique would probably be able to do in Sanji if it connected, especially if he’s already weakened by a long battle. It’s a space-warping karate kick that prevents the opponent from moving once they’re lined up. If Lee locks-on, Sanji is frozen and has to eat one of the strongest attacks in the Naruto universe.
But that’s the thing. You have to get in the path of the big ki-construct dragon running at you before you get caught in the space-warp. Madara set himself up for it because he was willing to take the attack head on. Sanji doesn’t have to do that.
If you’re familiar at all with the common Luffy vs Plastic Man debate, you’ll know that One Piece has something called haki. Haki are chi/life-force based powers that come in several varieties. The kind Sanji has is called kenbunshoku haki or mantra. This haki gives esp abilities and allows one to sense the presence, strength, emotions, and intent of those around them. It’s the last one, the intent sensing, that is probably the most useful in a fight as in practice it works sort of like spider-sense. It allows a person to know what an opponent is about to do–such as whether or not an opponent is about to throw an all-or-nothing dragon kick.
Sanji’s haki combined with his invisibility gives him the perfect counter to the night Lee. When Lee goes through his CHARGE bit, Sanji will know exactly what he’s planning to do and will peace out with the invisibility which Lee has no way of countering. Sanji just needs to run the clock at that point to win.
Sanji has just the right abilities to avoid the otherwise unavoidable doom-kick, which is why he wins.
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