One Piece might be the most popular thing in Japan right now. Forget Pokémon or Yokai Watch, the characters of One Piece can be seen all over Japan. Literally.
To celebrate over 300 million comics sold in its native land, One Piece has embarked on a campaign called “One Piece Soaring Through Japan!” These crazy pirates have sent a character to each of the 47 prefectures. And if you are prepared to pay, they will all sing for you!
Dozens of One Piece characters, minus Luffy (more on that shortly), have appeared in special collaborative posters at train stations all over the country. One character pairs with each prefecture in these special posters which combine famous foods or products of the prefecture with the well-known cast. The catch is they are making an appearance in only one train station in each prefecture! It’s a good thing they’ve chosen the busiest station in each one. And, as if they couldn’t make the posters more limited, these cool One Piece products will only be on display from now until February 8 or 9 depending on the location.
▼Sanji in Chiba!
▼Chopper in Fukuyama!
A master list of which stations the posters can be seen is below. All stations are the JR Station except for Okinawa which is on the monorail (Yui Rail).
These posters aren’t just a cool reminder to read more One Piece, each of them is promoting the character CDs that were released on January 28. Just like the posters, each character released their CD in their specific prefecture. So as before, Sanji is representing Chiba, Chopper is for Fukuyama, and so on. They’re lending their voices to songs that are specifically for that prefecture.
▼Trafalgar Law in Osaka!
▼Usopp in Kagawa!
▼Donquixote Doflamingo in Saga!
These two-track CDs are being sold for 1,000 yen (about US$8.50) each, and feature the special song plus the instrumental version. The millions of Luffy fans out there, meanwhile, will have to shell out some cash for their favorite character as customers will receive the Luffy CD for free only when they purchase eight other One Piece character CDs.
[tweet https://twitter.com/onepiece_DVD/status/561162558304821249 align=’center’] [tweet https://twitter.com/animateniigata/status/559989006222376961 align=’center’]Even if you aren’t a huge One Piece fan, you can appreciate the effort that went into this nationwide campaign. It’s still fun to see the different characters matched up with different prefectures and their unique characteristics. Here’s hoping some other series can do the same thing. They might have to sell 300 million copies first though.
Source: Famitsu
Images: Famitsu, Top Image edited by RocketNews24