One Piece, Vol. 61

One Piece, Vol. 61: Romance Dawn for the New World collects chapters 595 through 603 and marks the turning point of Eiichiro Oda's series — the two-year time skip that divides the voyage in two.

In the aftermath of the Paramount War the Straw Hat crew is scattered, and Luffy's message to them is not a rendezvous but a delay: train for two years, then meet. The volume follows that decision outward.

Zoro asks Dracule Mihawk to teach him; Luffy trains under Silvers Rayleigh, Gol D. Roger's former first mate, on the island of Rusukaina; Sanji and Chopper stay where they landed to do the same.

Glimpses of the eleven Supernovas and of the World Government's agents fill in what the wider sea has been doing in the meantime, including Jewelry Bonney's defeat at Blackbeard's hands.

Two years on, the crew reconvenes at the Sabaody Archipelago, where a band of impostors has been trading on the Straw Hat name. Slipping the Marines, they take their coated ship down toward Fish-Man Island and the New World beyond. Oda restages the cover of Volume 1 with the crew as they are now, which is the volume's argument in a single image: the same voyage, begun again.

First published in Japan on 4 February 2011, and in English by VIZ Media on 6 March 2012.