aiyo, so having finally finished megalo box, i can honestly say it's the best thing that aired last season. it was well paced, the soundtrack was pretty on point, the characters were all at least compelling enough to support a season, the fact that it's very 80s in the right kind of way(it's an 80s boxing media pastiche, but it captures the emotional broad strokes rather than wallowing in references) is really amazing since i'm not a huge 80s person, and the fights all have a satisfying emotional arc to them.
the series was commissioned as part of the 50th anniversary of ashita no joe, but it's definitely it's own thing and i think comparing the two is dumb since they both have separate ideas that they're trying to get across(megalo box has a lot of themes of finding your place in the world, second chances, wealth disparity, companionship and creating a sense of self-worth, all with a spicy core "lel let's just do a reverse post-modern thing" premise, whereas ashita no joe is more straightforward), and megalo box shares a lot more in common stylistically from samurai champloo than ashita no joe. it has some references and some of the characters have direct analogs in anj, but it's both much shorter and...i dunno, it's just plain more interesting than either ashita no joe anime.
but yeah, part of that is the whole spicy post-modern reversal is tied in with the core...gimmick of the series, that being that while ostensibly being a boxing anime it's also got mecha elements. that comes from the fact that megalo box is set in a grimey near future, where boxing got boring so everyone now boxes with these robotic exo-skeletons called gear. the big boxing event that our heroes are aiming to bust into is a giant "proof of concept" that these "gear" have military applications, high quality gear is usually a sign that you're going to win, and...well our protag shits on all of that by boxing without it for the majority of the series. instead of a "mankind being replaced and feeling inadequate in the face of modern machines" post-modern story, we have a literal john henry story of one man pushing his body to the limits against the thing that threatens to make him obsolete in the world of boxing.
it's a really solid showing, i'd say it's an 8.25/10. i'm dressing some of the story up with my own analysis, the actual anime is very straight forward, but there's a lot of stuff you
can dissect after the fact because the writing is consistent with it's themes. in a lot of ways, megalo box is the anti darling in the franxx.
Megalo Box Theme Song - MEGALOBOX by mabanua / メガロボクス Main OSTThis post was edited by its author on .
