One Piece / Superpower Lottery

In One Piece, while Devil Fruit powers that in other series would be mostly worthless are quite useful, the Logia Fruits are still absurdly stronger, and appropriately rarer. They're able to become and reform from their element at will, which gives them extraordinary power, grants some of them Not Quite Flight (especially useful given that falling into the ocean is the most dangerous thing that can happen to anybody with Devil Fruit powers) and very fast travel, and makes them Nigh-Invulnerable Blobs anytime they're able to see a blow coming (some are even able to over-step this by changing reflexively).
- Above even the standard Logia Fruits are the powers granted to Admiral Kizaru: As a being made of pure light, he is nearly massless, can move at the speed of light, can kick with near-infinite force, and has no clear elemental weakness. It's no wonder he tends to treat combat as an absolute joke and makes small talk with his enemies.
  - Caesar Clown as well. He ate the Gas Gas Fruit, which allows him to transform into, generate, and control gasses, including deadly poisonous gas, highly explosive gas, and oxygen. Yes, he can (and has) removed all the oxygen from around himself, easily defeating Luffy, Franky, Nico Robin, Smoker, and Tashigi through this by suffocating them.
  - Former Admiral Aokiji is also a clear winner, as his Freeze-Freeze Fruit grants him the power to freeze even the ocean, which negates the biggest weakness he has. And in this world, Harmless Freezing is very much NOT in effect.
  - Fleet Admiral Akainu is one of the strongest characters in One Piece, and it clearly shows. He not only singlehandedly defeated and killed Ace himself, but also survived a wrathful Curb-Stomp Battle from Whitebeard himself, with not the worse for wear. He also defeated the above-mentioned Aokiji after a 10 day long battle. He's so strong that Oda himself has revealed that if he was to be the protagonist of One Piece, he would have become Pirate King in 5 years. ^note
  - Admiral Ryokugyu joins his fellow admirals by having a pretty terrifying Logia in the case of the Woods-Woods Fruit which makes him a living plant man. While being a living plant may not have destructive powers as magma and light or a potent freezing ability like ice, Ryokugyu's powers is a lot more terrifying in a lot of other regards. Ryokugyu can sprout an endless amounts of plants that can bind the strongest of foes and can most likely produce any type of poisonous plant to hinder opponents. Another big advantage of Ryokugyu's powers is that he can drain the liquid out of anything to make himself stronger. He can even drain the blood of other people to render them into hollow husks making it even more effective than the Suna's draining ability since that always requires direct touch. Ryokugyu has even trained himself to fly to far away places such as Wano (as his Devil Fruit is more solid and cannot turn into his element to fly around). And you think that being around pollution or fire will be enough to stop him right? Wrong!. Not only Ryokugyu turn even the most polluted of places into a lush forest with his powers, but he had even trained himself to become fireproof negating yet another weakness of his powers. It's safe to say that Ryokugyu is shaping to be one of the strongest admirals to have ever existed.
  - The main three criteria for a fruit to qualify as a Logia are that the user can become, generate and control whatever substance. There are some Paramecia that allow the user one or two of these things (usually either become, or a combination of generate and control), but never all three. That is, with the (so far) sole exception of one - the Mochi-Mochi fruit, eaten by Charlotte Katakuri, which is known as a "Special Paramecia" on account of this. The reason it's not considered a Logia is due to a hidden fourth requirement which is that the substance needs to be naturally occurring, which mochi ostensibly isn't. This does however still mean that Katakuri functionally has all the abilities of a Logia user despite not actually being one.
- This trope is played quite literally with the Devil Fruits, as it's entirely possible to LOSE at the Superpower Lottery, since most of the time nobody knows what power is bestowed on the users before they eat it, leaving it up to fate as to whether you're Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck. Blackbeard is a pure example of both, since though he can pretty much neutralize all opposing Devil Fruit user's abilities and can suck things into pure darkness, he does have one slight problem — he can't dodge anything. Since his powers are partly gravity based, he pulls in all attacks, and is unable to avoid them like other Logia users. Considering most people in the Grand Line have great fighting strength — Devil Fruit or not — this is not at all convenient.
  - But then, a very useful ability appears later: A complete Power Copying of a second Devil's Fruit. To note, he chooses Whitebeard's power below. Though anyone other than Blackbeard, who happens to have a special kind of body independent of the Dark-Dark Fruit, would be killed by a second Devil Fruit just the same as anyone else.
- Meanwhile, Marco is a Phoenix (Mythical Zoan), so he gets the rare flight ability, and regeneration (which works even on wounds inflicted while the power is nullified, as long as he can come out of contact with the Power Nullifier in question), in addition to the three Zoan forms. Then, there's the other reasons he's Whitebeard's First Division Commander.
- Paramecia Fruits are more of a "huge gamble", as that classification means "anything besides Logia or Zoan", and thus range from "useless" to "impossibly powerful". While most of the stronger ones are Logia, many that are arguably the strongest are Paramecia: Whitebeard's (creates shockwaves which can be strong enough to cause earthquakes and tidal waves, which is an even worse threat since the One Piece world is made up almost entirely of islands) and Kuma's (paw pads on his hands... which punt anything they touch flying away faster than the eye can see hundreds of miles away, including abstract concepts like strength and pain). Big Mom also ate the Paramecia Soul-Soul Fruit, which allows her to freely manipulate soul/life force, extracting it and using it as Soul Power.
- The lottery gets better for the Zoan-type Devil powers. Zoan types were usually used for enhancing one's abilities by transforming one's body into full-animal or half animal, essentially having 3 forms (human, animal or hybrid of both). Those who got lucky got the Carnivorous Models, which were considered more dangerous than models previously shown. Now, if you really hit the lottery, you'll find yourself with an Extinct/Ancient (such as the cases of X Drake who turns into a Allosaurus, and Jack the Drought who turns into a Mammoth), or Mythical (Marco, former Fleet Admiral Sengoku^note, Kaido,Yamato, and Luffy) Zoan power.
- And then there's Trafalgar Law and his Op-Op Fruit. Literally everything inside his "Room" is his to command, and post-Time Skip he's been shown to create battleship- and even mountain-sized "Rooms." There's no known way around it once you're inside the "Room," either, apart from having sufficient Haki. His power of surgery, aside from conveniences like swapping people's bodies, taking out their heart, and personality transplants, is also later revealed to be able to grant eternal youth at the cost of his own life. Even so, Law actually has several ways to easily One-Hit Kill characters while inside his Room, whether it be through dismembering them from afar, teleporting them away, or taking away (or crushing) their organs. What keeps it from being a Story-Breaker Power are the drawbacks from its use, which include draining Law's stamina and sometimes even his own lifespan. Doflamingo outright stated that many people consider this to be 'The Ultimate Devil Fruit'.
- Shiki's ability to make things levitate may not sound particularly impressive, especially when he is limited to making himself fly and other inorganic matter. But when you see how he uses this Devil Fruit power, it becomes clear that it functions more like tactile telekinesis. And then it becomes more intimidating when you realize Shiki can manipulate individual parts of whatever is under his control, ranging from swallowing his targets in an landslide and crushing them by hardening the earth, burying them in an avalanche of snow, and worst of all, simply drowning any Devil Fruit users by throwing a lake's worth of water at them.
- The SMILE Devil Fruits are the biggest gamble of all. The only guarantee is they are all Zoan-type Fruits but there's no way of knowing beforehand what kind of ability the Fruit will grant since they are all identical in appearance. It's also random how the Fruit will express itself, resulting in appearances which border on Body Horror while active. So, the user may get lucky, like gaining wings, the legs of a fast moving animal, or the enhanced senses of an animal. Or, the user may get actively detrimental abilities like gaining a crab's ability to only be able to walk sideways or a lion's head growing out of their stomach, which has a mind of its own and attacks the user, or an entire hippo growing out of their torso. SMILE Fruits also don't properly synchronise with the user's body. So, as a result, the user may have the legs of a gazelle but still has the physiology of a human, resulting in their powers being tiring to use or body parts growing out of the wrong part of the body or the aforementioned problem that the animal parts may have a mind of their own rather than being truly a part of the user. Even worse, out of all the completed SMILE, only around 10% even produce a functional ability. The rest gain only the side-effects of Devil Fruits and lose the ability to express negative emotions even though they can feel them.
- If you're looking for a true loser of the lottery it would be Pierre, Gan Fall's riding bird from Skypiea. He ate the Uma Uma no Mi, allowing him to become a horse. The problem: he is already perfectly ridable in his pure bird form. So, all he got is a cosmetic change into a pegasus at the cost of being paralyzed in seawater.
  - For the longest time, Brook seemed like an example of one of the lottery losers as well, with his Devil Fruit giving him the power to resurrect himself after being killed one time, meaning that until then, he's just a guy with Super Drowning Skills. The abilities he shows after then are really more just an offshoot of accidentally coming back as a living skeleton than anything having to do with the Devil Fruit itself. However, events after the Time Skip have proved that Heart Is an Awesome Power after all, just with a steeper learning curve than most.
  - Buggy, ironically, is both a winner and a loser of the lottery. He's one of the weakest ones, he's pretty much a gag villain, with his ability being to split himself into pieces without harm. He's too lazy to truly take care of his power (which is implied to have some immense potential if he actually bothered trying), but as shown when used as a shield by Luffy against Dracule Mihawk, not even the world's best swordsman can injure him with a blade.
  - This trope is later subverted that even the lottery losers can become very strong if they train their Devil Fruits powers. Luffy himself has a lackluster ability, which while still powerful and very useful pales in comparison to other Devil Fruits. He, however, trains his ability, effectively allowing him to create stuff like his Gears. Kaku with his Giraffe powers seems to be a loser at first, but he learns quickly and uses his power very effectively by combining it with some Supernatural Martial Arts. This is later subverted again in a different way in Chapter 1044 when it is revealed that Luffy's devil fruit actually gives him the power of the Sun God Nika, with its real name being the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika. The real reason Luffy initially had issues with his devil fruit power is because he was misinformed about what it actually did thanks to the propaganda of the World Government, who did everything they could to cover up the fruit's existence. Luffy thus had to spend most of his childhood figuring out its abilities on his own and learning how to control them properly with the unintentionally faulty information he was given. In short, it doesn't matter if you won the lottery if you aren't told you won the lottery.
- Chopper, who ate the Human-Human Fruit — which would be useless for humans — is a lottery winner with his Rumble Balls (drugs which give him additional, stronger forms), and the significant intelligence boost needed to figure them out and manufacture them in the first place (which also makes him one of the smarter crew members and an excellent doctor).
- One Piece as a whole is a subversion of this trope. It is outright stated by Lucci that there is no such a thing as a bad Devil Fruit, just bad users (though Oda himself has stated before that there are Fruits out there so useless as to be a joke). Anyone who finds a Devil Fruit is seen as a lottery winner in-universe. Even powers that appear worthless on paper like Kuma's Paw-Paw Fruit or Doflamingo's string powers can be turned into deadly and effective weapons in the hands of a master. Just as Buggy who has a fairly powerful Devil Fruit is considered weak since he doesn't use it to its maximum potential. Some Fruits are more powerful than others, but the true power of a Devil Fruit lies in the imagination and dedication of the user. It's also pointed out near the end of the Fish-Man Island arc that in the New World (the second half of the Grand Line where most of the strongest pirates operate), Logia users tend to have the lowest survival rate, because so many of them have been just coasting on the offensive and defensive power of their Devil Fruit... which will no longer be enough in a region where the powers and skills to negate Logia intangibility are common. Pirates with Paramecia or Zoan Fruits, or no Fruit at all, aren't likely to have such complacency because they would've had to work hard to be strong enough to even reach the New World. Indeed, the original Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, was one of the pirates that did not have a Devil Fruit power.
- Devil Fruits can potentially become even more of a lottery winner through a phenomenon called "Awakening". With Zoan Devil Fruits this grants their users more powerful enhancements in general, while the only exception is currently Luffy's, whose Awakened Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika allows him to use Toon Physics in combat, and on anything around him. Awakened Paramecia Fruits can also apply the effect of the fruit to the user's environment instead of just the user:
  - Doflamingo's Awakened String-String Fruit lets him turn entire buildings into strings he can control at will as opposed to just his own body.
  - Eustass Kid's Awakened Magnet-Magnet Fruit lets him apply magnetic properties to other objects including other people.
  - Trafalgar Law's Awakened Op-Op Fruit lets him create "Rooms" around other objects such as his weapons. This grants these objects intangibility properties allowing them to ignore any defense.
The real lottery winners are those with "Haoshoku Haki", or "King's Ambition"; only one in a million are born with it, and it's powerful enough to knock out scores of Elite Mooks, such as the Kuja warriors, who are already well-accustomed to the effects of the regular variety. And this was done by somebody who didn't even realize he had any sort of Haki (or even what Haki was). Currently, nineteen beings (possibly twenty depending on whether Douglas Bullet canonically exists) are confirmed to possess this type of Haki, all of whom are leaders in some way (despite four notable exceptions): Luffy, Shanks, Boa Hancock, Silvers Rayleigh, Whitebeard, Portgas D. Ace, Donquixote Doflamingo, Don Chinjao, Big Mom, Charlotte Katakuri, Eustass Kid, Kozuki Oden, Sengoku, Kaido, Yamato, Gol D. Roger, Monkey D. Garp, Roronoa Zoro, and Saint Topman Warcury.

Superpower Lottery / One Piece

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