User blog comment:Fliu/Chapter 943: The Reunion I've Been Waiting For!/@comment-7614831-20190524192044

The SMILE fruit revelation of its 10% chance of bestowing an (imperfect, with the exception of Alpacaman) animal transformation upon the consumer provides further evidence of the actual leagues between Vegapunk's work on Devil Fruits (Momnosuke's Artificial Fruit) and Caesar Clown's; I'm seriously looking forward to his proper debut in the series, which will hopefully occur in this arc, if the CP-0 make good on Orochi's demand

But the flipside of that slight percentage chance intrigues me more: what possible narrative purpose could these 'failed' SMILE users have, if not to facilitate an appearance by Peronain this arc? As in, why would you introduce a group of people into this arc who are explicitly portrayed as immune to all negative emotions without some intention to then incorporate a key member from the crew of a man with arguably the biggest grudge against Kaido, who has powers over negative emoitons? This suggestion would probably have to work in tandem with an appearance by Gekko Moriah in this arc as well, but owing to his frankly unnecessary appearance on Blackbeard's party island earlier in the arc, I don't see this as too much of a stretch. In fact, I think it would be really quite satisfying if appearances by Gekko Moriah, Perona and possibly even Hogsback in this arc showed they all possessed powers that were counteractive in some way to Kaido's crew, thus providing a vital assistance to the Straw Hat Alliance in taking Kaido down. At the very least, I think a Perona cameo would lend itself towards creating those "...and everything was okay really" endings these 'Country' arcs seem to really go for, i.e. her negativity powers prove to be some kind of antidote for the 'failed' SMILE users in Ebisu village etc.

I'm not super committed to this idea, so don't go overboard, but I like it. See what you think.