Director: unknown
Writer: unknown
Yet again we have a collaboration short, Infiltration! Thousand Sunny, born out of a deal with Nissan (yeah, the car company), and sold as a limited edition DVD exclusively in their japanese stores to obliquely promote the Nissan Serena model.
The DVD also included a making of the short film One Piece 3D Straw Hat Chase, not only because it’s animated in the same style of 3D CG, but because it’s main point it’s to advertise Straw Hat Chase, Luffy outright says that at the end, and it serves as a 8/9 minutes preamble to that movie.
I was kinda expecting to hear Mayumi Tanaka say “Also, check out this sweet ship with wheels in the Nissan showroom near you!”, but this is a japanese style collaboration, so it’s just marketing but doesn’t fully bleed into the product. Like the japanese release of Zombieland: Double Tap that featured characters from Zombie Land Saga in theathrical posters, without having Woody Harrellson faces off against a pack of zombie idols.
If anything, it’s directed as a car commercial, with emphasis on the rooms of the Straw Hat second ship (so much many of the shots stand still for more seconds so you can add extra information via text), the characters appear mostly as small cartoon portraits talking over the room they belong or work in, like a showroom tour but for the Thousand Sunny instead of the model of Nissan car it allegedly crossed over with. Is this a Keroro situation all over again?
Really, the “plot” is that Brook is giving us a tour of the Sunny, presenting his fellow mates to the viewer, using Luffy panicking around the ship in search of his characteristic (and dearly treasured) straw hat as an excuse for the tour itself, with some very quick jokes thrown in, and a lot of info that One Piece fans most likely already know. But it’s good to be reminded only Luffy doesn’t have a small personal collection in the ship’s library room. Yeah, even Zoro has more texts in the library.
It’s basically an infomercial for One Piece and the Straw Hat Chase movie that came out the same year, 2 weeks later after the release of Infiltration! Thousand Sunny!, it’s exactly what it sounds like, and at least serves its purpose, odd as it may be to have a marketing collaboration featuring Nissan and a manga series taking place in a fantasy world devoid of cars. XD
Wise Cafe (International) 