Is Sanji a Lunarian in One Piece?

After running for more than two decades now, One Piece is finally ending. With the series reaching its finale, fans are getting served some good quality content, from truths being revealed to amazing fights. Everything is wonderful!

Moreover, the characters’ development in its final stage is something fans are hyped up about over time.

Starting from just Luffy and his dream of becoming the Pirate King, The Straw Hat crew has come a long way since they were formed.

Even with the two-year time skip, all the crew members got stronger independently. Since most of the story got interesting after the time skip, fans were really looking forward to all the characters’ powers and skills that they developed.

Everyone on the crew got stronger, and fans were seriously impressed by this. However, many had mixed reactions to Sanji as his powers were not showcased much after the skip.

However, almost a year ago, when the manga  Chapter 1023, “Two Peas in a Pod,” was released, more about Saanji and his powers were revealed to the fans.

This was a very important chapter as many fans got more curious about Sanji when Queen the Plague, an All-Star of the Beasts Pirates, questioned what Sanji was and how his powers worked.

Sanji’s most recent ability to play with fire raised some eyebrows here and there, and with such remarks from Queen himself, many speculated him to be a Lunarian.

Now, we know Oda likes to play with our minds a lot, and with little twists here and there, Sanji being a Lunarian would certainly be a massive plot twist.

So, is he a Lunarian? Well, that is exactly what we will discuss in this article. But first, let us know a little about who the Lunarians are and why they are such a big deal in the One Piece world.

Who were the Lunarians?

Lunarians were the race of people from the Red Line capable of creating fire from their bodies. The race was generally thought to be lost, with Alber, better known as King the Conflagration, as the only known survivor.

They used to be known as the tribe of “gods” when they resided on top of the Red Line. As stated by one of the most powerful men in the world, Whitebeard himself said that there existed a Kingdom of Gods (神の国 Kami no Kuni)  on the Red Continent. 

The Lunarians were one of the only three races that weren’t present in the nation of Totto Land, where almost all the races of the world united.

They looked like humans but were known mostly for their distinctive pairs of black feathered wings on their backs and silver white hair with brown skin. Along with such distinct features, Lunarians had a massive fire visibly, nearly constantly burning on their upper back.

What was so special about Lunarians?

Already being a rare race in the world of One Piece, the Lunarians were undoubtedly the talk of the town. On top of that, even the World Government seemingly hunted them, rewarding anyone with information on them with a surprising amount of 100,000,000 Berries.

If that doesn’t make you memorable, we don’t know what will.

However, in all seriousness, the Lunarians were actually an exceptional race that nearly went extinct with only one survivor left. They were such people, who possessed the ability to “ignite” (発火 Hakka) their bodies and manipulate the fire they created,

They also possessed high resistance to physical harm, which allowed them to thrive in any natural environment. Using Flames to boost their attacks and wings to swiftly travel great distances, the Lunarians were indeed one of a kind.

Even in the series, King, the only known survivor of the race, appeared to take on the consistency of magma but the drawbacks of such powers were never really revealed.

Another thing the Lunarians were noted for was their incredible strength and physical resilience, which was why they were called the Gods.

King also survived powerful attacks without even shedding a drop of blood. The flames that made the Lunarians so distinct were not permanent as they did go out but for a short amount of time.

Yet the loss came in exchange for a drastic boost in their mobility, allowing them to reach speeds only met by the Gods.

So, now that we know all about the Lunarians and why they are so special, it brings us back to why Sanji was believed to be one of them.

When Kaidou discovered King, then known as Alber, on Punk Hazard, he noted that the Government would never give him up.

Why Sanji was believed to be a Lunarian?

So, exactly why fans thought and wanted to make a connection between Sanji and the rare race came to existence because of the mention of his abilities similar to that of the Lunarians.

Vinsmoke Sanji, better known as Sanji, was the cook of the Straw Hat Pirates. Throughout their journey, they went on many adventures together and decided to separate to get stronger on their own.

Now you might be thinking, what would a cook do while training? Become a head chef? Not really, turned out this mere cook was not your ordinary chef but was a prince.

Born in the North Blue into the Vinsmoke Family, which was the royal family of the Germa Kingdom, Sanji was the family’s third son, making him the third prince of the Kingdom.

So, what happened to him that made people think he was a Lunarian? Here’s a little backstory to it.

Sanji’s Backstory

In the recent episodes of the series, Sanji was shown to use his fire abilities to fight off the only survivor of the Lunarians race, King.

So, where did these fire creation and manipulation tricks come from? As a child, Sanji was a part of an experiment that was performed to modify the lineage factor of the individual to give them heightened abilities.

The Vinsmoke family formed and ruled the kingdom of Germa. Even though they no longer had the kingdom, they still had the authority and privileges of royalty and had the power to directly influence the bounty system.

When their empire crumbled and their sovereignty was confined to the Kingdom of Germa, Judge dreamed of restoring the empire and dedicated his life to achieving this very dream.

Trying to restore the empire, Judge worked with Vegapunk in illegal research. In the research, he used his children. In the experiment, his daughter Reiju received genetic manipulation.

Later on, he had quadruplets, among which Sanji was the third one. Unlike their older sister, they were modified in Judge’s wife’s womb to become incredibly strong military commanders.

Why did Judge use his children?

Now you might be wondering why Judge used his children for the experiment.

Well, we aren’t sure about this either, but the closest explanation we can give is that; because for such an important experiment, the subjects had to be his sons, his lineage and DNA would’ve been important.

Remember! he performed such an experiment to restore his lineage. So, of course, his flesh and blood would have been required.

With the modification, they possessed incredible superhuman strength and electric powers and even were resistant to poison. While getting the modification, except for Sanji, the rest of the children lost their ability to feel emotions.

It was believed that Sanji’s fire powers must have been a recessive trait because the other children weren’t allowed to express emotions like Sanji, so they never really awakened their abilities.

Many fans believed that given Sanji’s father, Vinsmoke Judge’s enormous size, the Vinsmokes of One Piece could have been descended from the Lunarians. With the abilities like that of the Lunarians, it was highly doubtful that Sanji could have been a full-blooded Lunarian.

So was he really a Lunarian?

Well, turns out he wasn’t.

During the experiment, Sora, Sanji’s mother, objected to such an absurd idea, but eventually was forced to undergo the surgery.

However, to save her children she consumed a pill that was supposed to counter the surgery, which made her severely weak. The pill did work but only on Sanji.

Because the modification didn’t really work on Sanji, he was soon left behind by his siblings as they were being severely trained by their father to unlock their genetic modification.

Sora later died but she was happy that Sanji was able to feel emotion, unlike his other siblings. Yet his own father, Judge decided to kick Sanji out as he believed that he was just another normal human being.

Since Sanji was not like his other siblings, he was an outcast and locked in the dungeon. Even his death was fabricated and he was given a burial.

But little did they know, Sanji would go on to become one of the strongest pirates ones had ever seen and would go up against one of the strongest warriors, King.

Judge genetically modified his sons when they were still in their mother’s womb so that they acquired superhuman power, but Sora took the drug to subdue the effects of the experiment, and it worked on Sanji.

Therefore, Vinsmoke Sanji was neither a cyborg nor even a Lunarian. He was just a normal human who was able to showcase his ability which had to remain hidden until he trained himself to properly use it.

Even in chapter 1023, Queen, who was also a former member of Judge Vinsmoke’s MADS group, believed that every one of Judge’s children was a cyborg and Sanji was just another result of Judge’s experiment until Sanji himself clarified his own physiology.

So was Sanji a Celestial Dragon?

The Celestial Dragons were the descendants of the founders of the World Government. They were of royal lineage and considered themselves to be untouchable, declaring themselves as God.

Sanji did belong to a royal family making him royalty but he really wasn’t among the ones who deemed themselves as better than the rest like the Celestial Dragons thought of themselves.

So, no, he wasn’t a Celestial Dragon. If the theory about him being a Lunarian somehow becomes true, he could be very close to being referred to as a God. However, till now nothing really is known regarding this topic.

The Celestial Dragons held a lot of power as they were directly related to the nineteen kings who created the World Government.

Is Sanji a normal human?

Yes! he is very, truly, and incredibly a normal human. Not normal in a real-world sense, but his extraordinary superhuman strength, resiliency, speed, and agility were quite “normal” in the world of One Piece.

Furthermore, the drug that his mother took, affected only Sanji making him a normal human at birth but until recently when he awakened his genetically repressed powers during the raid on Onigshima.

Sanji only later discovered his true powers when he realized that his body abilities and powers increased because he wore the raid suit.

If we were to look at this in a more logical way, he could’ve very likely been plugged with Lunarian DNA. So, many still question if it was such a conceivable lineage factor, and why it became a recessive gene as growing wings and fire were definitely dominant.

Well, whatever the theories and views on this topic are there, we must wait until Oda himself says something about it. The only work left for us to do is to enjoy the show and wait.