One Piece Vol. 61: Romance Dawn for the New World
- ISBN
- 9781421541440
- Publisher
- VIZ Media
- English release
- Pages
- 208
- Chapters
- 595–603
- Anime
- Season 14: Marineford ep. 457–516; Season 15: Fish-Man Island ep. 517–578
Chapters 595 to 603, and the one volume in the English run with the two-year time skip inside it. Season 14 ends at chapter 597, the third chapter here, and episode 516 is the last episode before the skip. Season 15 opens at chapter 598, the fourth chapter, two years later. So a viewer arriving from Marineford starts three chapters into this book and not at the start of the next one, and jumping ahead to Vol. 62 skips everything the series does immediately after the skip. The book is the last of the old story and the first of the new at once, which makes it the hardest volume in the run to shelve and the easiest to buy wrong. Nine chapters, 208 pages, $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Two years pass between chapter 597 and chapter 598, and the series restarts without having ended. The crew had agreed to regroup in three days; the message Luffy sends through the newspapers changes that to two years, and each of them spends the interval training where Kuma had sent them, which converts the defeat in Vol. 53 from a rout into an apprenticeship. Luffy trains with Rayleigh and learns the three forms of Haki. The last chapters bring the crew back together on the archipelago where they were taken apart, set a Marine force on them of the kind that beat them the first time, and have them leave without trouble. That comparison is the reason the volume exists. It is also why a viewer who jumps from Marineford to Vol. 62 loses the payoff rather than a recap: the reunion is here, in chapters 598 to 603, and Fish-Man Island is only the destination it sets.
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