Chapter 1: Romance Dawn

Having gathered every scrap of fame, riches, and power a pirate could hold, Gold Roger met his end before a public crowd, and his parting words lit the world on fire: his fortune, he declared, waits out there for whoever dares search the whole sea for it. That announcement set the Great Pirate Era in motion. Years later the Red Hair Pirates settle for a stretch in the sleepy port of Foosha Village, where a local boy keeps pestering captain Shanks for a place aboard. Shrugged off again, Luffy drives a knife beneath one eye to prove his grit. While snacking in the bar he then bolts down a spiral-marked fruit lifted from an enemy vessel, which turns out to be the Gomu Gomu no Mi, a Devil Fruit that renders his frame elastic but strips away his ability to swim for life.

When the mountain bandit Higuma humiliates Shanks in the tavern and the captain declines to retaliate, a disgusted Luffy storms off. Higuma later returns, captures the boy after he attacks, and hauls him out to sea in a small boat. A towering Sea King, the Lord of the Coast, swallows the bandit whole and then turns on Luffy, but Shanks reaches him just in time, snatching him clear and routing the beast with a single glare, a rescue that costs the captain his left arm. Moved by the sacrifice, Luffy accepts that he is not yet fit for the sea. As the crew prepares to leave the village for good, he vows to assemble his own band, outdo Shanks, and claim the title of Pirate King. Impressed, Shanks settles his prized straw hat on the boy's head and asks for its return once Luffy has become a great pirate.

Ten years on, a teenaged Luffy pushes off from that same harbor, swats the Lord of the Coast aside with a punch he calls Gomu Gomu no Pistol, and proclaims his ambition to the open horizon, picturing a crew of roughly ten and a flag of his own. It stands as the series' opening chapter, the start of the East Blue Saga and of the Romance Dawn Arc alike. In keeping with Weekly Shonen Jump's custom for a premiere, it far outruns a normal weekly entry and stays the longest chapter to date, carrying unusually heavy color work. It is now and then called Romance Dawn, Version 3, a nod to the two earlier one-shot prototypes, and Nami appears on its cover yet not within the story, a remnant of Oda's abandoned plan to cast her as Luffy's first recruit.