Romance Dawn is the name of two short stories published by Eiichiro Oda between 1996 and 1997, many of which served as templates for One Piece.
Both stories show Oda’s early attempts to create an interesting and appealing manga with a pirate theme. Oda gained a lot of his ideas for this in his early childhood. While still in his years as a middle school student (jap. 中学校学生, chūgakkō gakuseistudents are ~12-15 years old at this time), he began sketching ideas for a pirate manga in a notepad. Years later, while working as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki, the mangaka of Rurouni Kenshinhe set about refining and elaborating his ideas. As a result of this process, the two short stories were created, which in turn would later spawn the main story for One Piece. Both versions were published in Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump.
Despite all this, however, the later story differs from the two pilot works in a number of ways. However, it still orients itself closer to the short story.
Fittingly, Volume 1 as well as Chapter 1 and additionally Chapter 601 of the One Piece series are also originally titled Romance Dawn.
- Romance Dawn 1 (1994)
- Romance Dawn 2 (1996)
