One Piece 3D: Straw Hat Chase

Positioned before the crew's two-year separation, the movie holds the distinction of being their earliest outing rendered through three-dimensional computer animation. Following the third feature, the Chopper-led adventure set on an island of strange animals, it was likewise only the second Straw Hat picture to screen as part of a paired program. Its companion on that bill, a Toriko stereoscopic short titled Gourmet Adventure, was marketed alongside it under the Jump Heroes Film label, and both opened together on March 19, 2011.

An opening scene shows Schneider wandering a town after dark with his dog Buzz. Coughing up blood, he concludes his end is near and tries to send the loyal animal off so it will not have to witness his death. On the Sunny that same night, Usopp glimpses an open door and a bird passing overhead but pays it no mind. Come morning, Luffy realizes his straw hat has disappeared, panics, and nearly drowns himself before Zoro drags him free. Remembering the bird, the crew scatters over the water in their smaller boats to search, and during the hunt Usopp and Chopper board a drifting ship where they find Schneider collapsed.

Just as they prepare to carry the sick man back for care, a massive bird settles nearby with Luffy's hat clamped in its beak. The revived captain instantly orders a pursuit. A Marine warship soon joins the chase, and the crew tails the creature through glaciers, past a blockade, into a cavern, over a waterfall, and among a nest of Sea Kings. Chopper eventually revives Schneider, who explains that his companion Buzz had eaten an Eagle-model Tori Tori no Mi. To spare the dog the sight of his passing, Schneider had set it an impossible errand: to steal the hat belonging to Monkey D. Luffy. When Buzz and Luffy's brawl spills into a Marine base, both end up caged in seastone, and the commander taunts Luffy by firing the hat off the barrel of a gun.

Zoro breaks in to assist, and the pair grapple with three giants until Schneider slams the Sunny into the base and reconciles with Buzz. Luffy shifts to Gear 3rd and destroys the gate, flooding the compound and driving everyone back aboard as he shrinks to fly after the hat. Buzz snatches him from a fall, and Luffy at last recovers his prize. Chopper then names the real source of Schneider's illness: a fork lodged in his stomach, accidentally eaten during a spaghetti dinner. Relieved to learn he is not dying, Schneider laughs it off, and the Straw Hats return the two to their vessel on warm terms.

At only half an hour, the picture is the shortest of the crew's theatrical features, and it also carries the tightest interval on record between a cinema run and a home release, a stretch of roughly five months. Viewers noted that Zoro slices through Seastone here, something never shown in the main storyline. Fans further observed that once the crew slips past the Marines, the Sea Kings they run into share designs with the beasts first met when the ship strayed by accident into the Calm Belt.