Publisher Shueisha celebrated 1,000 chapters of the hit manga series One Piece with the launch of its first worldwide character poll and a full-page color ad in The New York Times. The website for the poll opened on Sunday and allows participants to vote for their favorite character once per day until February 28. Participants can receive an AR (augmented reality) model of the series' popular characters and different models will be added throughout the poll's run.
The full-page ad for the poll will appear in The New York Times' newspaper on January 4. This is not the first time the series has made an appearance in NYT. Luffy previously appeared in the newspaper as part of the Sanoku ThanX ("300 million thanks") campaign in 2013. Shueisha also released two commemorative videos to mark the manga's milestone and promote the poll campaign. Both videos focus on the "We Are One" slogan. Shueisha described the slogan's meaning: