Romance Dawn, Version 1

A young Monkey D. Luffy gives chase to a pirate ship in his little skiff, the Marchen, while a shoreline town panics at the approach of the feared Crescent-Moon Gally. The mayor prefers buying the raiders off, and a sword-carrying young woman called Silk urges her neighbors to fight instead, only to be waved away. When the ship finally lands, the terrified crowd discovers that Luffy has already beaten Gally and his men, and the boy wanders ashore looking for a meal.

Stepping into a restaurant, Luffy is set upon by Silk, who takes him for a raider; he calms her by explaining he is merely an aspiring pirate. Between mouthfuls he lays out his ambition to gather a crew of adventurers he dubs Peace Main, distinct from the plundering Morgania sorts who rule the seas, and he tells her the straw hat he wears is a borrowed treasure. That prompts a flashback to his boyhood beside Red-Haired Shanks: after eating the Gomu Gomu no Mi and learning he could no longer swim, the young Luffy was pulled from a shark's jaws by Shanks, who lost an arm doing so and left the boy his hat as a pledge for its return.

In the present, Gally slips free and lunges to finish Luffy off, but the rubber youth overpowers him and sinks his vessel. Luffy sails away under a fresh flag as the grateful villagers see him off. Later, aboard a far grander ship, figures resembling Silk and Gally rouse their easygoing captain to report land ahead, and the narrator promises that the reputation of Straw Hat Luffy is destined to reach every corner of the world.

Luffy single-handedly subdues the dreaded Gally before the story's first true confrontation even opens. His childhood bond with Shanks is set out, including the lost arm and the gift of the straw hat. Silk discloses that she is a pirate's abandoned child, and Luffy spells out his Peace Main creed of adventure over looting. The tale ends by teasing that Luffy will one day assemble a renowned crew of his own.

Oda has said this draft ran in the wrong magazine, appearing in Jump's newcomer special issue rather than the regular issue that Version 2 later filled. Among Shanks' crew one can spot proto versions of Lucky Roux and Yasopp, and the line-dancing scene is echoed later in the finished series. A character named Gally also makes a brief Loguetown cameo in the anime. Reprinted whole with author commentary in the Red: Grand Characters guidebook under the label Chapter 0, the one-shot was also adapted into the 2008 OVA Romance Dawn Story and released legally in America in Shonen Jump's December 2009 issue.