When I first read whole cake island, I thought they looked cute together and it didn't even occur to me that some people would find pudding's age problematic. I was flabbergasted to see the comments of some people just because she is 16 and sanji 21.
Just look at Pudding:
Does that look like a child to you? She has the same exact character model as all adult females in the series... Sanji is turned on by all of the other girls but he is supposed to magically feel nothing towards her? Last time I checked, physical attraction is visual.
When Sanji saw her for the first time, he reacted like he usually does, of course he would be attracted to her.
I saw lots of people calling him a pedo.... Do these people even know the meaning of the word they're using? Pedos are into kids. They get turned on by the appearance of a prepubertal child's body. If they saw pudding, they would feel nothing. Meanwhile most normal men who are attracted to the appearance of a grown woman, would be attracted to pudding, because that's what her body looks like.
As far as personality wise, she was far from innocent. She allegedly seduced and tricked countless men and got them assassinated before Sanji. Are people forgetting those details? Not to mention that these people are also severely lacking in historical contextualisation. One piece is believed to be set between 1300's and 1500's. Age of consent wasn't even a thing at that time, if you looked grown up, you were seen and treated as an adult by society. Most were seen as adults at 14-15 ish. People were already working, fighting wars and getting married as teenagers in this historical period. Applying modern logic and morals to the past is ridiculous.
Also let's not forget that not every country is America, culture and laws are different everywhere. In the vast majority of the world, the age of consent varies from 14-16 as you can see:
In my country, guys in their early twenties dating older teen girls (16-17) is pretty normal. So I didn't bat an eye until I saw Americans going crazy over it.