One Piece: The Simple, Yet Elegant Devil Fruit

Remember back in January when I said that I wanted to make a series about the different elements of One Piece in depth and talk about how they all come together to make one of my absolute favorite anime? I'm actually following up on that promise with a part 2. Over two months later. Hooray!

Last time, I ranted for 13 paragraphs about the geography of the One Piece world and how it feeds into the political climate, character dynamics, and core themes that make the series appealing. Now, world design and lore are collectively an undeniably important component of writing any story, but while pedantic nerds on the internet like myself tend to overstate the importance of having a cohesive world that makes perfect logical sense under the most intense scrutiny from every angle at all times, it doesn't actually have to be that complex. The average viewer isn't even going to think about the implications behind an aquatic setting as much as I do, after all. Now, more detail is obviously appreciated and usually enriches the experience, but the more you add, the easier it is to mess things up. Obviously, I don't think there were any substantial problems with One Piece's world, seeing as how I spent hours writing a miniature essay about how great it is, but I bring this up because this awkward situation between creating more detail while still trying to keep everything as seamless as possible is exactly the balancing act that Eiichiro Oda had to approach when it came to creating the super powers of the story, and his solution was simple, yet elegant: the Devil Fruit.

Devil Fruits are probably the coolest thing about One Piece and I am so excited to talk about them. For those that haven't seen One Piece -- and if you haven't, I really wonder why you chose to read this post -- allow me to enlighten you. Devil Fruits are these mysterious, um, fruits with swirling patterns on them that bestow incredible powers upon whoever eats them. Each fruit grants its own unique power and only one person can ever have any power at a time. If someone with a Devil Fruit power dies, the power is passed on to the nearest fruit, which is actually a plot point in the story where the villainous Donquixote Doflamingo secretly brings a fruit to a public execution in order to steal the Flame Flame Fruit from the incredibly powerful and infamous Fire Fist Ace.

And Devil Fruits have a TON of variants. According to the One Piece wiki, there are approximately 130 named characters with Devil Fruit powers, not counting non-canon characters or the recently introduced characters with artificially created Devil Fruits. Now, to be fair, a handful of these characters have overlapping powers thanks to the whole death mechanic I mentioned earlier, but still. That's a LOT of variety. You have basic elemental abilities like fire and ice and electricity, called Logias, abilities that let you transform into different animals, called Zoans, and more out there abilities such as rubber body parts or controlling shadows, called Paramecias. 

With so much power at their disposal, this just begs the question: why doesn't everybody eat the Devil Fruits right away? And actually, there are actually a few reasons, most of which are thought out and work in the narrative's favor. I say most, because there's a running gag in One Piece that Devil Fruits are apparently the most disgusting food on the planet. 

Seriously, this is mentioned like three or four times over the course of the 20+ years of story. It has nothing to do with anything and always comes out of nowhere, but it never fails to make me laugh and it's a nice bit of world building, so I love it. As far as more substantial justifications go, the first thing you need to consider is that Devil Fruits are incredibly rare. I know that it's hard to believe when I already said that there are over 100 of them confirmed already, but consider that there are over 7 billion humans in the real world. With the sheer amount of nameless civilians and henchmen that are shown and the laundry list of locations that are mentioned that haven't even been visited yet, its not that much of a stretch to infer that only a handful of people in the One Piece world will ever have the chance to eat a Devil Fruit. And with the existence of a World Government trying to keep all sources of power to itself AND the erratic weather patterns and sea monsters and such restricting the ability to travel, the scarcity is artificially increased, and it all comes to the point where some people from the more isolated East Blue -- which is where Luffy's story begins -- don't even believe that Devil Fruits are real.

But let's say that you get your hands on a Devil Fruit somehow. You still wouldn't necessarily want to eat one. For one thing, you won't even have a guarantee that you'll get the power that you want. There aren't a lot of visual clues on any individual Devil Fruit that would indicate what power they would grant, especially since some of the powers are as weird as transforming into a giraffe or creating clothing from thin air. Yes, those are actual canon Devil Fruit powers. 

The nature of Devil Fruits, including how they work and where they came from, is a mystery even in-universe, and is the subject of much intense study from the top scientists of the World Government, which led to the creation of an in-universe encyclopedia that catalogs all the known variants of Devil Fruit. Which is great, if you have access to such a resource. But the World Government keeps that book to themselves because they're power-hungry jerks, and only powerful factions like the Whitebeard Pirates or the Vinsmoke Family manage to steal copies of their own. So, unless you're a member of one of these powerful groups, the Devil Fruit is a bit of a gamble. The lore states that only one Devil Fruit can be eaten by any given person in their lifetime or else they die, so the question becomes: are you willing to take a chance and eat a foul-tasting fruit and possibly get a super power that you don't even want?

I mean, Kalifa makes it work, but would you really want SOAP to be your randomly generated super power?

Now, some people may decide that any super power is better than no super powers. And I get that. But even then, eating a Devil Fruit may still not be worth it, because there is still a major drawback we haven't discussed yet. Any Devil Fruit user who makes contact with sea water loses all ability to move. The abilities themselves aren't nullified, but the users are unable to control their bodies, so the powers cannot be activated at all under most circumstances. Let's not forget that One Piece is an AQUATIC setting, and though it isn't shown, the majority of your average pirate or Marine's time is spent out at sea. Not being able to swim or even flail if you fall overboard is a HUGE liability. One slip up, and you will end up dead. This is such a huge problem that the Red-Hair Pirates, canonically one of the strongest crews in the series, don't consider the Gum Gum Fruit they obtained to be worth the trouble to eat and they intend to sell it before it accidentally ends up in Luffy's hands.

He just steals the fruit. Who says Luffy never acts like a pirate?

Also, as an aside, the Marines have actually weaponized this weakness and created weapons from solidified water known as Seastone, which is simultaneously absurd and awesome. Seastone weapons are still rare, since the bulk of Seastone is actually used to line Marine battleships because it camouflages them from the Sea Kings. Not only does this make sense, since Seastone is seawater, but it creates an anti-Devil Fruit mechanism for non-users without completely trivializing them. I love the concept of Seastone and this is literally the only chance I'm going to have to talk about it, so I'm gonna mention it here.

Anyway, this is a lot of detail that we've gone over, but Devil Fruits are actually quite simple. A lot of these details are introduced gradually over the course of the story. The basic principle of fruits giving those that eat them super powers is introduced in episode 1 and the fact that Devil Fruit users can't swim is mentioned in episode 3, but every other detail we've gone over so far isn't mentioned until much later. This slow drip feed of information is a staple of Oda's writing style and it allows fundamental ideas like Devil Fruits to develop more complexity over time without overwhelming the audience, which is a common pitfall in writing fantasy stories like this. 

For example, a lot of people love to praise the Nen power system in Hunter x Hunter since it allows a lot of variety in powers while grounding it all in a similar set of rules, and I agree in theory, but the way Nen is introduced always bothered me. After a few arcs with the main characters just punching each other, a mentor character is introduced and talks about Nen in laborious detail. Within a few brief minutes, complicated concepts related to aura flow with special categories and terminology that all sounds very similar. Ten, Hatsu, Ren, Zetsu, and Gyo are all mentioned in the same scene, and all are a fundamental part of Nen. If you can wrap your head around the concepts, then the possibilities become endless and you appreciate what makes Nen an appealing and flexible magic system, but the barrier for entry is so steep that it affects my enjoyment of an otherwise fantastic anime to such a degree that I took a break from it and still haven't returned to finish it.

Also, if this chart is so simple, then why do you have to add additional universal abilities with obtusely similar names?

Devil Fruits skirt that issue. The deeper mechanics of Devil Fruits are unexplained, and not even the people of the One Piece world understand how they work, so you don't have long in-depth explanations bogging things down. Some people might get annoyed by this, and I understand why, but the fact of the matter is some things don't need to be explained beyond the core concept. Devil Fruits are easy to understand: you eat a rare fruit, you get a super power, you can't swim. It's easy to follow and has its own internal logic that stays consistent and makes the world feel more connected with this universal source of power. More details are added to refine the system over time, but the timing of these reveals is so precise and information is released so sporadically that they still have a certain mystique. And finally, the scarcity of Devil Fruits and the drawback of not being able to swim in a world that's over 90% ocean justifies the existence of characters who choose to rely on advanced weaponry or martial arts instead of Devil Fruit powers, creating a variety of character types and making things just a little more interesting.

Like I said in the previous post about One Piece, this is a series that is practically impossible to discuss in depth all at once. I know that having a two month gap between entries in this mini-series is a bit much, but I feel that the posts need to be spaced out like this in order to give me time to develop them properly and prevent one series from overwhelming a blog that is more about anime in general. I don't know when you can expect part 3 in this series to be published, but I can tell you that I plan on moving on from the setting and discussing characters next, first on a grander scale in regards to factions and then on a smaller scale with a few case studies of Oda's character writing. So, you know, look forward to that coming out eventually.