Romance Dawn refers to two stories written by Eiichiro Oda before One Piece but set in a similar world. While a first-year junior high school student, he began sketching out ideas for a pirate-themed manga in a notebook, in pencil. Years later, as an assistant to Rurouni Kenshin author Nobuhiro Watsuki, he began refining his ideas into what would become “Romance Dawn”, and later, One Piece