SMILE

Years earlier in Hakumai, Yasuie caught a group of Oden's youthful retainers in the act of stealing coin for their lord. That band of thieves counted Kin'emon and Kanjuro, Raizo alongside Inuarashi and Nekomamushi, plus Shutenmaru, Kawamatsu, and Denjiro. Instead of putting them to death, Yasuie gave them the stolen sum plus a second purse, telling them to spend it on books and rise into Wano's finest swordsmen, since a shogun-to-be like Oden would need the very best protectors.

In the present those same men sob as Yasuie dies on the Tanishi feeds. Capital citizens try to shove out the cackling Ebisu crowd, mystified by the outburst. Hiyori explains to Zoro how the SMILEs, at Orochi's hand, have drained the people's sorrow, while the nearing Orochi drinks in the spectacle as paradise. In the mines Hyougoro confirms the same laughter is a SMILE aftereffect he has seen among convicts, and on Onigashima Kaidou snickers at the savagery.

Shinobu recounts the fruits' origins: Kaidou and Orochi swapped weapons to Caesar Clown and Doflamingo in return for SMILEs, meaning to forge the mightiest crew alive. Yet only a tenth of those who ate one gained a power, while everyone else forfeited both swimming and every feeling but happiness. Within the Beasts Pirates the Waiters have eaten none, the Gifters gained abilities, and the far larger Pleasures received only the drawbacks. Because the flawed, half-eaten fruits held onto those effects, Orochi folded them into the scraps sent to the grief-worn leftovers towns, robbing those residents of anger and sadness alike.

As Hiyori relays the same to Zoro and Brook, Toko scrambles onto the execution stand to treat her father with toad oil. Spotting her, Orochi fires at her head, blaming her for Komurasaki's death, but Zoro and Sanji smash through together and knock the bullets aside, finding themselves back-to-back after weeks apart.

A flashback depicts the young Nine Red Scabbards' devotion to Oden, and it emerges that Whitebeard's Izou was also linked to the group. The SMILEs succeed only one time in ten, strip swimming like ordinary Devil Fruits, and hold their effects even once bitten. Pandaman appears among the Gifters, and the Waiter, Gifter, and Pleasure tiers are laid out. Orochi buried the bitten fruits inside the wealthy's discarded food, which reached towns such as Ebisu, and the two cooks and swordsmen cross paths again, their first reunion since Dressrosa. The cover asks for Robin knitting using tarantula silk. Part of the Wano Country Arc.