I mean, I barely kept up with it at all, I would only watch certain fights during certain sagas on youtube and try to piece together the plot from what they say during those fights, and the only time I actually sat down and watched it was when Funimation aired their dub on cartoon network before it getting canned. and the last time I "Kept up" with One Piece, not counting times SHINE tells me about something that happens in the manga over AIM (which means nothing to me cause I have no idea who the characters hes talking about are), was before thriller bark
well anyways, My favorite character was Sanji
His attitude, his style of fighting aka Capoeira\breakdance fighting, I loved everything about this dude
has he retained his awesomeness after all of this time?
Sanji is always awesome, yes. His fighting style has improved quite a bit and it also seems like he learned the CP9 ability of Geppou (stepping in the air to keep moving after a jump IIRC). He seemed to have a problem with women after the time skip, like, he would nosebleed to death everytime a hot chick appeared to him, but seems like that has been resolved now.
[/spoilers]
Non-spoilers version, yes, Sanji is still awesome.
-- SuperNiceDog won the Guru contest super nicely!