Megalo Box episode 13

Paul

Paul

Ghost of Animes
Administrator
Who else watched this series? What did you think?

I must admit, I felt a bit... underwhelmed by Megalo Box as a whole. Hajime no Ippo/Fighting Spirit is one of my favourites, so I was bang up for another boxing anime but I never felt like I understood Joe or his reasons for fighting and this probably undermined any emotional resonance I should have felt during the fights. The fights themselves were stilted and lacking in physicality as the animation didn't have the ability to pull them off convincingly.

It's disappointing because I really wanted to love Megalo Box and it was the first in my queue at the end of the season so I probably went in with my expectations tweaked a little too high anyway.

Yuuri was a cool character that I wish had more screen time (and for him to end up in a wheelchair seemed totally unfair), drawn like an anti-hero from Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust/Ninja Scroll/Any other Yoshiaki Kawajiri anime. I love the tough vintage aesthetic that Megalo Box was going for. I just wish I liked anything else about it as much.
 
It was pretty interesting at first and I liked the retro feeling, but once he had had a few fights on his way to the Megalo Box championships in which he went down loads, but still won it set a pattern that they never deviated from. If he had lost at least one fight it would have been a bit more interesting knowing that there was that threat.
 
I liked the series overall, but I did think it died off a bit in the last few episodes. After the war verteran, the other fighters Joe came up against didn't seem especially interesting, the story held few surprises, and the finale wasn't the full on gar slugfest I was expecting. I was very surprised, however, that not once did they try to emulate original Ashita no Joe director Osamu Dezaki's trademark 'postcard memory' freeze frames; I'd have put money on them ending the show with one.
 
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