The World of One Piece has a ton of powers at play when it comes to pirates and government alike. Many use Haki, but some prefer to risk their ability to swim for one of the mysterious and legendary Devil Fruits. These Fruits come in all kinds of different types and models, almost like cars these days. Coincidentally, much like cars, those that eat the Devil Fruits are unable to swim. So, what goes into this cursed fruit that can offer great power or stupid party tricks?
Obviously, the biggest drawback of eating a Devil Fruit is that anyone who eats it loses the ability to swim. The ocean curses those that eat the Fruit. It renders them weak and powerless when in any body of water, even a bathtub. It’s an unavoidable part of the Fruit’s gift, the duality of a curse, and has been shown to even make Fishmen sink. Once Jack is thrown out of Zou for instance his Devil Fruit curse makes him sink to the bottom of the ocean. His only saving grace was that he could still breathe underwater as a Fishman.
List of Devil Fruits and their power
Paramecia
Paramecia types are the most basic kind of Devil Fruit. These allow the user some level of control over certain objects or concepts. They can range quite a bit though, like Buggy’s Chop-Chop Fruit which allows him to control his dismembered body parts. Then on the other side of things, there’s something like Mister Three’s Wax-Wax Fruit that allows the user to control and produce wax.
Luffy’s Gum-Gum Fruit is initially a Paramecia type but later revealed to be a Mythical Zoan. Otherwise, there are some useful ones, like Robin’s Bloom-Bloom Fruit and Brook’s Soul-Soul Fruit. Then there are others that have been strange at best, like Alvida’s Slip-Slip Fruit which makes everything slip off of her. Even the worst Paramecia type is useful though, like Kine’mon’s which allows him to make clothes from anything.
Zoan
The most ferocious Devil Fruits turn their users into animals. Zoans usually have a couple of different stages, starting with partial transformations and hybrid forms. These are exemplified best in Chopper, a reindeer who ate the Human-Human Fruit that gave him human qualities and shifting abilities. Others are more fierce though, like Rob Lucci’s Cat-Cat Fruit, Model: Leopard which allows him to become a vicious predator.
These Zoan Fruits can be super ridiculous too, with some like the Giraffe Giraffe Fruit and Horse Horse Fruit among others. That doesn’t even get into the SMILE Fruits, artificial Devil Fruits made by Caesar Clown. These are all Zoan Fruits, but the transformation is incredibly goofy. Some end up with a gorilla growing from their wrist, another has a lion in his stomach. There’s one eventually that has an entire giraffe body, but his human body is in place of the giraffe’s entire head. His name is Hamlet and he’s ridiculous, but super lovable.
Logia
Logia can be the greatest of all Devil Fruits and offer the most danger in a fight. These Fruits allow the owner to take on whatever kind of substance the Fruit may be the essence of. These can go anywhere from Ace and Sabo’s Flame-Flame Fruit to Aokiji’s Chilly-Chilly Fruit. Every Logia is dangerous, from Smoker’s ability to become smoke, to Caesar Clown’s gaseous body. There’s no telling what a Logia type can throw at the Straw Hats.
The most troublesome thing by far with Logia types is that when they’re in their activated form, they’re nearly impervious. They were, anyway, until Haki came into play after the Marineford War. If the user has basic Color of Armament Haki, they’ll punch or kick their way right through a Logia user like it’s nothing. Luffy proceeds to do just that with those he comes across in most cases, with exceptions like Akainu.
Mythical Zoans
Zoans are already powerful but occasionally there are Mythical Zoans. Mythicals run the range from Marco’s Bird-Bird Fruit: Phoenix Model to Kaido’s Fish-Fish Fruit: Azure Dragon Model. These Fruits grant massive power beyond anything a regular Zoan could ever accomplish. Marco is able to heal allies with his Phoenix flames while hurting others, and Yamato’s Wolf Guardian form can shoot beams of ice.
Then there’s the big twist that Luffy’s Devil Fruit is the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Sun God Nika. He becomes the embodiment of Joyboy, and assumes the full form of Nika the ancient god, liberator of all. Luffy can manipulate his limbs and entire body at will, along with things he touches. It’s the ultimate ability for someone who’s already a cartoon as is. There are more Mythicals out there, like Sengoku’s Human-Human Fruit: Buddha Model, and no doubt more to come before Laughtale.
What happends when Devil Fruit Users Die ?
So what happens when a Devil Fruit user eventually dies? The Devil Fruit won’t be lost forever to the world. When the user dies, in the case of Monet and her Snow-Snow Fruit, a nearby normal fruit turned into a new one. It changes completely as her heart stops, and leaves behind a totally new Snow-Snow Fruit once stabbed by Caesar Clown.
Devil Fruit Awakenings
Every Devil Fruit has a second stage to it, called an Awakening. These take massive dedication and training to reach, but that training is hard. Not too many ever reach it though, and it’s only truly common throughout the New World when it’s first seen in Don Quixote Doflamingo. His String-String Fruit was able to turn the ground to string, thrusting pillars of threads high into the air. Then others like Eustass Kid are able to magnetize other things or people, while Law is able to set up his room somewhere else. There are a ton of variations, like Luffy’s that turns him into Gear Five, but it’s totally different depending on the Fruit itself.
SMILE Fruits
When the Straw Hats discover Caesar Clown on Punk Hazard, they don’t expect to stumble onto a conspiracy iceberg. They eventually defeat Caesar and find the SAD factory, which produced the chemicals needed to make the artificial fruits. These were in turn sent to Dressrosa, where Doflamingo had them used to create the SMILE Fruits. From there he made the Tontatta people of Dressrosa work on harvesting the fruits.
The final link in the chain was Kaido, who used the fake Fruits on his crew. The unfortunate side-effect of the Fruits, however, was that they only had about a fifty-fifty chance of working. If a fruit fails, the user is left permanently incapable of expressing negative emotions. This left anyone who ate a failed Fruit, like Otama, unable to cry in despair or anger. Now she could only laugh as tears fell from her eyes. Even for those that received working SMILE Fruits, the transformation was a mess at best and unusable at worst.
These are just the basics of Devil Fruits, with plenty more scattered across the Grand Line and New World. There’s no way they’ve all been seen yet, and Sanji mentioned a book that cataloged all the known ones. It was a massive encyclopedia, so thousands are bound to be out there at this rate. In the meantime, One Piece will sail forward into the newest Future Island arc in the manga, and the anime is set to debut Luffy’s Gear Five very soon!
One Piece is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Netflix.
