Only one in ten SMILE fruits gives the eater an animal power. The other nine still take the ability to swim and take the ability to show anything except a smile. CBR published a ranked list of the 4 weakest SMILE users on 13 November 2026, and the ranking reads better once you know what the fruit does to the person who ate it.
What a SMILE fruit is
A SMILE is an artificial Zoan Devil Fruit made from SAD, a chemical Caesar Clown created by mixing the Lineage Factors of many animals together. He made SAD at his lab on Punk Hazard. The chemical then went to a factory in Dressrosa, where irrigation canals carried it under apple trees and changed the fruit growing on them.
Donquixote Doflamingo ran the trade. Kaido’s Beast Pirates bought the output and sorted the crew by what each member got. Gifters held a power that worked, Pleasures held nothing, and Waiters were still waiting for a fruit.
Why only 1 in 10 SMILEs works
The factory ran on Tontatta dwarf labour. The dwarves were forced into the work because their skill with plants was the only way to grow the fruit, and they could produce one viable fruit for every ten they grew. Trafalgar Law explained what SAD and SMILEs were to the Straw Hats in chapter 698. Chapter 943, the chapter named after the fruit, is where the success rate and the side effects are finally laid out. The SMILE entry on the One Piece Wiki carries both chapter references.
Nine failures out of ten is the part a ranked list skips. The people who ate a dud are still in the crew and still carry the cost.
The forced smile applies to everyone who eats one
Losing the ability to swim is the standard Devil Fruit cost and SMILEs charge it too. The extra charge is the face. Every SMILE user becomes unable to express a negative emotion and is stuck smiling and laughing, through pain, through battle, and through the death of someone they care about.
Ebisu town is the clearest picture of it. Orochi handed out failed SMILEs as a punishment, and the result is a town that laughs through grief because the fruit left it nothing else to do.
There is one more detail that separates a SMILE from the real thing. A real Devil Fruit loses its power after the first bite and becomes an ordinary fruit that tastes terrible. A SMILE that has already failed keeps its side effects, so the next person to eat part of it also loses the ability to swim and the ability to show sadness.
What a SMILE cannot do that a real Zoan can
A real Zoan user gets two forms, a full animal form and a human-animal hybrid. A SMILE user gets body parts, and where they land follows no logic.
Sheepshead turns his hands into ram horns. Alpacaman’s head becomes an alpaca’s head. Daifugo has scorpion legs and a stinger where his hair should be. Fourtricks looks less like a man with a rooster and more like a rooster with a man growing out of it.
Some Gifters carry a whole animal on their body with a mind of its own, and Holed’em’s lion can inconvenience or attack the man it grows from. The strength boost is real but uneven. Gazelleman runs at gazelle speed without gazelle endurance, so the speed exhausts him.
Because a SMILE is built from the Lineage Factors of ordinary animals, it also carries one weakness a real Zoan user does not have. Tama’s Kibi Kibi no Mi tames them with a kibi dango, and the same trick does nothing to a genuine Zoan user.
The copying problem shows up elsewhere in the story too. 5 Sun Gods exist in the story and 3 of them are copies of the original, which is the same confusion between a real thing and a manufactured one.
Vegapunk called his own dragon fruit a failure
Vegapunk built an artificial copy of Kaido’s Uo Uo no Mi, Model: Seiryu using Kaido’s own lineage factor. He decided the result was a failure and left it on Punk Hazard. The reason came out years later. The dragon came out pink instead of blue.
Momonosuke ate it, and he can turn into a pink dragon and make flame clouds that hold his weight in the air. The fruit works. The label was about the colour.
The method behind it is why Vegapunk could go further than Caesar. Vegapunk started from the lineage factor of a Devil Fruit user, so he could copy a Mythical Zoan. Caesar started from ordinary animals, so his fruit could only ever produce Zoan powers and never an Ancient or Mythical one. Vegapunk rates SMILEs below his own artificial fruit, and the pink dragon is the reason.
Awakening is a separate problem, and chapter 1198 used 3 rules of Zoan awakening that a SMILE has no answer for. Vegapunk was unsure whether an artificial fruit could be awakened at all.
The factory is gone and no new SMILEs are being made
Law and the Straw Hat Pirates destroyed the SMILE factory and the SAD supply. Production has stopped permanently. Every SMILE in the story is one that was already made, which makes the Gifters a fixed set that cannot be replaced once they fall.
That is the part worth holding on to when a list ranks the weakest of them. CBR’s 4 picks are the weakest of the fruits that worked. Nine in ten never got that far.
More on the fruit system sits in the One Piece explainer hub, including the 4 time powers and what each one cannot do. The anime hub collects the rest of the series coverage.
