Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in Winter, Miracle Sakura

Arriving in March 2008, this 113-minute picture is the ninth entry in the film line and the second title in Toei's Episode of series. It recasts the Drum Island Arc as a standalone what-if narrative that intentionally departs from the source by folding in the Thousand Sunny along with Nico Robin and Franky, plus an original villain called Musshuru. During 2008 the movie was put forward for an Animation of the Year nod at the Japan Academy Prize, a contest it lost to Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo. A 2014 special edition carrying new footage would later screen to celebrate fifteen years of the anime.

An opening sequence recounts the Blackbeard Pirates' assault on Drum Island and how King Wapol abandoned it, running off with the nation's twenty best doctors rather than mounting a defense. In the present day, Nami buckles under a raging fever, and the crew steers for Drum in search of a healer. They find that a single doctor lingers, the mountaintop woman branded a witch, Kureha. Bearing Nami up the slope, Luffy and Sanji are pounded by Lapahns and an avalanche, while Zoro and Franky trade blows with Wapol's returning men aboard the Bliking.

Luffy scarcely endures the icy ascent before Chopper saves the party and Kureha mends Nami. Chopper's history then comes out: cast aside for being unlike others, he was taken in by the fraudulent doctor Hiriluk, a man who trusted a Sakura tree to cure any ailment and who perished after Chopper unknowingly poisoned him in a bid to help. Wapol and Musshuru arrive at the castle bent on reclaiming the island, and the crew rallies to guard Hiriluk's banner waving above it.

Musshuru's spores overpower both Luffy and Chopper until Usopp sets him alight and Robin delivers an antidote. Luffy shifts to Gear Second to master Musshuru, but Wapol swallows his own underling with the Baku Baku no Mi and merges into a grotesque final shape. Chopper hurls him aloft, Luffy closes out the fight using the Gigant Pistol of his Gear Third, and Franky burns away the drifting poison spores. Talked into it by Robin and Nami, Kureha permits Chopper to leave, driving him off with fond scolding before igniting Hiriluk's Sakura mixture, which showers the mountain in pink snow as the crew departs. The 2014 cut recasts the whole tale as a dream Chopper experiences aboard the Thousand Sunny after the timeskip.

Being the second Episode of retelling and the first what-if reimagining in the franchise, the film relies on Luffy's post-Enies Lobby Gear moves to hint at its alternate footing. Its plot parts from canon in several respects: Robin assumes Vivi's job of slapping Usopp back to consciousness, Dalton's Zoan powers never appear, and the avalanche results from Musshuru's cannon fire instead of the Lapahns. The opening montage flashes a swift run of wanted posters bearing previously undisclosed bounties for numerous anime-original characters. The 2014 anniversary version folded in animated takes on the Drum Island bonus chapters from Oda's Decks of the World shorts and signed off with a note from the Straw Hats to their fans.