One Piece – Smiley Sounds Like a Real Nuclear Weapon Name

Even when a biological weapon is turning people into statues, this series can still be funny.

I’m constantly being impressed by the real-world themes that can be inserted into this series. Not long ago we saw a villain using drugs on children to keep them under control, and now we get to see a bio-weapon being put to use. It still managed to show the impact such a weapon would have even when it came from a goofy looking creature like Smiley the Slime Lizard. Of course I doubt any real weapon would have the effect of instantly petrifying all those caught in it, which may be one of the big reasons why this kind of attack could be shown in a shonen magazine. As long as there’s that small bit of disbelief, the level of terror is manageable.

This spectacle also gives us the chance to see just how dangerous a person Caesar Clown really is. We’ve had villains with powerful weapons before, but in those cases it felt like something the character had, not something the character was. You get the feeling that this person’s mere existence could potentially fuel events like what happened with Spandam and the Buster Call, which makes him seem one step above that because people like him are the ones who permit earlier villains to become dangerous. So by letting this weapon go off, we get to see how far things have come since then.

Now one of the most noteworthy effects of Smiley’s attack is the one which most likely won’t be explained for a long time. Smiley being given the giant candy somehow caused a nearby apple to turn into a Devil Fruit! As someone who has put a lot of thought into the mystery of the fruits – possibly more than any other mystery in the series – this was something amazing to witness. Looking online, it seems like most people have come to the same conclusion, which is that the Fruit powers transfer to the nearest normal fruit of the same type upon the death of the current wielder. It makes sense to me, since I personally believed the “transfer on death” part for a while now, though the exact method by which the power transfers has yet to be seen. We don’t even know if Smiley is dead yet, but at least that information should be coming soon.

In summary, we managed to get quite a lot from a chapter devoted mostly to a bomb hitting an island. I could imagine some other series would just use the attack as a display of brutality and gore, but it’s good to see that One Piece is above that. I just hope everyone can get to safety in time, but it sounds like Luffy and Law have some sort of plan in the works already, so that’s going to be fun to watch.