One Piece Teases Shocking SMILE Side Effect

One Piece isn't afraid to show off its characters' emotions. Time and time again, characters like Nami and Sanji have given fans a peek into their innermost thoughts, but One Piece flipped things on their head when it went to Wano. After all, it was there Ebisu Village made its debut, and fans just learned something terrible about the town.

Or rather, it's people. It turns out the people of Ebisu cannot show their emotions, and Hiyori Kozuki blames the issue on something called Smile Fruits.

Recently, One Piece put out a new chapter, and it was there fans learned a troubling fact about the people of Ebisu. After being left to live in poverty, the townsfolk did their best to live happy life under the leadership of Yasu. However, their hope was dashed with the old man was executed for hiding his secret identity as a Daimyo, but Zoro was left stunned when the people were unable to mourn the man.

Rather than crying out in sadness, the people of Ebisu could only laugh hysterically once Yasu was dead. Even the old man's daughter chuckled while tears streamed down her face, prompting Hiyori to inform Zoro of the issue at hand.

"The people of Ebisu who always laugh can't actually show when they're sad or suffering!! They've been robbed of every expression but smiles. Laughing is all they can do anymore," she revealed.

"And it's all because of Kaido and Orochi. It's because of those things they brought here, the Smile Fruits."

Of course, fans will already be familiar with Smile Fruits as there is already such a thing in the One Piece universe. A type of artificial Devil Fruit was made way back and was famously named SMILE Fruit. At first, the items were trafficked by Doflamingo and Caesar the Clown, but it was the Beast Pirates who often bought this easy power boosts. However, it seems like there may be something more to these fruits than fans originally thought, and Zoro is surely going to get to the bottom of how these Smile Fruits so horribly changed the people of Ebisu.

So, what do you make of this shocking reveal? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.