 Devil Fruits are certainly one of the greatest mysteries in the series, and as much as this video is going to attempt to, there are some things in this world that simply are not possible to explain. Much like that force, it is just now suddenly compelling you to subscribe to the Grand Line Review with that promise of sweet, sweet, one-piece content, to live it straight into your YouTube feed. No one knows how it's there or why it exists, all you can do is let go of your free will, push that button, and enjoy. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one-piece, and today it's time to talk about fruit. What is it, and where does it come from? Well, according to Wikipedia in Botany, fruit is a seed-bearing structure in flowering plants, which doesn't actually correspond to the common term fruit, but to make things even more complicated, I want to discuss what happens when fruit becomes, quite possibly, literally cursed, providing its consumers with great power at a tasty price. Devil Fruits, I suppose, will call them, which form a core aspect of appeal in regards to one-piece, a series that you may have heard of. And one of the more enduring mysteries of said series is that as much as we continue to learn about how Devil Fruits function and their various classifications, there is still one incredibly huge question hanging in the air, which is, where did Devil Fruits come from? Now, it's easy to forget in this day and age, because Devil Fruit powers have become fairly commonplace in one-piece, which does make sense because we keep delving into more and more powerful areas of the world. But I want to start by mentioning that at the dawn of one-piece, these items were almost legendary in nature, so much so that a very early trend of the series was the base civilians were seeing Luffy's rubber abilities and becoming simply aghast at the very idea that Devil Fruit powers did indeed exist. It was like seeing a leprechaun or a Loch Ness monster, or even me stepping foot outside of my house. No one knew it was possible, but here it is. And maybe that's just an East Blue thing, but it's kind of weird in retrospect because these fruit powers are not exactly a secret, given that they are commonplace amongst the marines and the abilities of top-tier pirates tend to be quite well known. And while this may have been the first of such an occasion, the marines were even bold enough to broadcast the paramount war, which proudly displayed an incredible pool of Devil Fruit abilities all over the planet. With that said, an early explanation of Devil Fruits was delivered to us in Chapter 19 through the vehicle of flashback shanks, who said they say that Devil Fruit was enhanced by sea devils. Whoever eats it gets amazing powers, but the sea turns against them, which very specifically was in reference to the Barbaranomy, which Buggy would then go on to eat. Accidentally and hilariously, I might add. But this explanation presents the prevailing thought for those individuals who are not keen explorers of the One Piece world. It's the simple human thing of, well, I'm not personally capable of logically explaining this, so it must be sorcery mindset. However, I can't exactly blame them for this because even after having experienced, well, over a hundred of these fruit thingos, I can't logically explain why they exist. I mean, we know how they function via the lineage factor insight, but how Devil Fruits came to be in the first place? Well, I guess we essentially have three options in this regard. Firstly, Devil Fruits are a naturally occurring item which spawned from the majesty of nature and evolution. Secondly, Devil Fruits were specifically engineered by intelligent life forms on this planet, and I really don't want to use the word human because it could have been a whole number of different species in this series. And finally, the Devil Fruits are a supernatural existence that were conjured by beings beyond our comprehension, like the aforementioned sea devil. And there's pretty strong evidence to support at least two of those three ideas, although certainly not enough to give us a concrete path to go down. But Devil Fruits do exist and they had to come into being somehow. So let's go down this rabbit hole. And the first of these ideas is probably admittedly the least exciting one, which is that Devil Fruits are a 100% natural result of a developing world, with the idea being that I suppose there is some kind of rare tree thing out there, likely within the ground line, where this incredible creation organically grew. And we do know of some fairly legendary trees in one piece such as the treasure tree Adam or sunlight tree Eve. But since Adam Wood is a sold commodity and the location of Eve is fairly obvious, given that we've seen its roots providing light to Fishman Island, it's probably unlikely to be either of those, but we will touch again on these trees later. And I suppose you also maybe have a piece of supporting evidence of organic growth, given that smile fruits need to be produced by cultivating them on various bushes and things. But other than the fact that Devil Fruits resemble organic matter, I actually don't think there's a great argument to be made that they were just naturally spawned via the marvel of nature. I mean, the one piece world is full of some pretty fantastic natural phenomena, which is consistently on display within the ground line in terms of weather and stuff, but also the incredible wide array of life forms that one can discover in this world. With that said, Devil Fruits seem to exist on an entirely different plane and certainly veer into the idea of intervention, whether that be man-made or supernatural. And we'll go into the former first because yeah, a lot of Devil Fruits do make sense with the whole nature argument like logia type specifically, which quite literally embody a facet of the natural world. However, there are a whole host of Devil Fruits with curiously specialized powers like say Baby Five's Bukibukinomi, which allows her to transform into seemingly any weapon she so chooses, which can range from a simple sword to complex machinery like a gatling gun or even a functioning missile. And another similar illustration would be Scratchman and Pooh's Devil Fruit, which basically allows him to do the same thing as Baby Five just with musical instruments instead. These are abilities granted by a Devil Fruit that selectively focus on the developments and progress of intelligent life and lends a whole ton of credence to the claim that however they came about, these fruits were indeed man-made. Although to be fair, the true extent of these peculiar abilities is unknown, and I have made the argument before that it could be based entirely on the knowledge and psychology of the fruit wielders. For example, if you gave the Bukibukinomi to a member of a fairly undeveloped part of the world, would they instantly have access to things like missiles and gatling guns or would they only be able to turn into weapons that they are aware of like clubs and spears and maybe big, heavy rocks? Although if that is indeed the case and it complicates matters yet again by asking the question of how one embodies the general concept of weaponry into a fruit rather than pre-programming select options. Although that secondary factor is also bizarre to linger on. So we won't, but really the greatest piece of evidence for man-made fruits is that we have actual examples of them existing in this world because both the smile fruits as well as Dr. Vacapunk's artificial fruit are indeed a thing, although neither of those brands were considered a success, really. The smile fruits for obvious reasons given the abomination that they are and the abysmal success rate upon consumption. And Vacapunk allegedly believes that his fruit was a failure, although at the moment we're not quite sure exactly why that is. But it does go on to show that creating devil fruits is not a complete impossibility. Although it does raise a bit of a red flag when someone like Dr. Vacapunk who is said to be roughly 500 years into the future in terms of his knowledge and advancements cannot successfully reproduce them. That's quite problematic because for the man-made theory to work, it would mean that someone would have had to exist in the past with a mind and resources that could surpass that of even Vacapunk. Which seems like a bit of a tall order especially given that such a character would have had to exist hundreds of years ago maybe even thousands. Like say void century days or even before then. We really could be looking at thousands of years ago with something deeply rooted in perhaps say, I don't know, an ancient kingdom. And it's very hard to pinpoint anything along those lines at this stage. However, due to one key character introduced in Mono, we do know for a fact that devil fruits existed during the void century because Lady Toki had eaten the Toki Toki no Mi. So we do know that they must have been in this world for at least 800 years or so although I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean every individual devil fruit is that old. It could be a situation where new devil fruits were gradually developed over the course of various centuries especially if a civilization made the same breakthrough the Vacapunk and Judge did by discovering that all important lineage factor in living beings. The knowledge of which could simply have been lost during the black hole that is the void century. But even the concept of devil fruits being completely man made does run into a lot of fascinating issues. I mean firstly, if they were all artificial then why does only one of each power exist? Like why weren't super powerful fruits like the Marga Marga No Mi just mass produced or even more handy utility based things like the Hana Hana? I mean an entire civilization of beings who could just sprout extra hands at will could do wonders. But this is really where we dive into the realm of supernatural creation because there is quite a lot that doesn't add up such as the whole idea that devil fruits curse their user because it's not just a simple endeavor to manipulate the DNA of a being it also comes at a cost which is losing the ability to swim in all types of water not just sea water. And maybe that could be quote unquote scientifically covered by stating something along the lines of well the only part of the lineage factor that is susceptible to manipulation just so happens to coincide with the part that handles the bodily reaction to mass amounts of water for reasons which actually you know sure why not I'd be willing to accept that because smile fruits do come with this detriment as well so we actually do have a man made example of this curse in action I suppose. What I find much harder to explain though is the concept of devil fruit reincarnation the idea that after a fruit user passes away that ability then quite seemingly super naturally goes on to house itself in the nearest appropriate fruit in order to respawn into this world that is something that currently has nothing even approaching a sound explanation for especially since we haven't seen it exhibited in the artificial fruits as of yet and also I said that we would go back to the Adam and Eve trees again which I can't ignore because the story of Adam and Eve is pretty well focused on fruit forbidden fruit that is which granted great knowledge at a great cost very similar to the general concept of devil fruits and that forbidden fruit just so happened to be created by a God like being so as much as this may not really seem like it fits one piece there is something to be said for a deity like individual to have conjured devil fruits into existence because it's easy to forget but the supernatural aspect of one piece is actually pretty strong as well I mean yes it's mostly a world based in fictional science but at the same time we do have confirmation of the existence of a soul thanks to Brooke and Big Mom so there is certainly some form of afterlife and thus existence that does span beyond our basic comprehension plus here's a really fun thing in the prototypes of one piece between Romance Dawn versions 1 and 2 there is a distinct magical presence specifically in the second that even features a literal sorcerer and in both of these incarnations Luffy's devil fruit is said to be the product of a mystical or devilish tree indicating that there is a fairly powerful sense of the supernatural at play in this world although that could very much be akin to how we were introduced to devil fruits in one piece with most characters we encounter believing that they are supernatural powers granted by the sea devil it's pretty hard to say although once again having at least one character in these prototypes who was a sorcerer does reinforce that idea pretty heavily so much so that I have very little doubt in my mind that in these early super prototypy days Oda more than likely did plan devil fruits to be explained by either magic or some other supernatural aspect the question then becomes how much of this actually carried over into one piece because Oda then made a decision to eliminate raw magic from the series as well as make the intriguing choice to omit any discussion regarding a tree that devil fruit spawned from so that may very well show the intent to move into the man-made realm and to get rid of that mystic quality as an explanation but still keep it as a question and point of interest in one piece in the end I guess we just don't have anywhere near enough information the only thing I feel slightly confident about saying is that devil fruits are almost certainly not a natural occurrence there are far too many bizarre qualities and inconsistencies about them to have just evolved in this world however even then we can never be 100% sure but that does leave us with two stronger ideas either they were engineered by an incredibly advanced society or individual that history has forgotten or that there is an even more expansive and supernatural layer to one piece that we have yet to properly explore and as for my personal opinion I honestly think it would be hard to be satisfied by either of those explanations because that's kind of just the conundrum of creating a great mystery the only time a mystery is captivating is when we don't have the answer to it as soon as it's solved it all of a sudden feels like something of an underwhelming issue unless of course it comes with a new accompanying question which to be fair Oda tends to be very very good at so look I do eagerly await the day where we do discover the conclusive origin of devil fruits but in the end I almost hope that we never quite fully answer this question but what do you guys think please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my discord server and if you'd like to see more videos like this then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds but for now this has been the ground line review and I'll see you next time