Megalo Box season 1; zero mistake?
WHEN I THINK OF THE SPORTS GENRE PERFECTED, I think of Megalo Box. Even with some of my all-time favorite manga/anime, I can usually nitpick one or two factors I had a problem with. Megalo Box season one is the exception. So why is it perfect? It's science fiction married to boxing.
Gearless Joe
At face value, the protagonist, Joe, might seem like a classic Shonen protagonist, hotheaded, and determined beyond belief to achieve his dreams (excuse me, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Jujitsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man...), and guess what? He's exactly that. So, what makes Megalo Box unique despite this?
It's the how. In the world of Megalo Box, boxing has evolved such that it's dependent on gear. And the higher level the gear, well, the better the boxer. Joe, who comes from the dirt-poor side of town, can barely manage to scrap together two screws, let alone an entire gear. And so, he does what any shonen protagonist would; he fights gearless.
The anime revolves around a three-month tournament hosted by one of the world's biggest corporations. The champion, and favorite to win, in this tournament is Yuri, who wears a new kind of iconic gear. Basically, the company is trying to advertise to the military that this new skin-engrained gear is worth a defense contract. What better way to advertise that than to have the greatest boxing tournament in history?
Gearless Joe gains popularity as he embarks on his journey to climb to the top ranks of Megalonia where Yuri awaits. The parallel between Joe and Yuri is part of the reason Megalo Box is such a masterpiece.
Both Yuri and Joe are fighting for the same reason: the soul of boxing. While they are in the tournament for different reasons, their inner drive is for the sport itself. Yuri challenges the idea of gear, and to what next level human synergy with gear can go to. Joe on the other hand abandons the idea of gear and sticks to the belief that it's skill that makes or breaks a boxer and nothing else.
Joe however, challenges the core premise of the tournament itself. He risks calling into question the entire reason Megalonia exists. This leads me to my next point.
Nambu, the Coach
By far my favorite character, Nanbu, Joe's coach is the cornerstone of why this story jumps from a, to s tier. Nanbu is a gambler by trade. Before Joe joins Megalonia, he fixes fights, forcing Joe to throw matches so that he could make a quick profit. He is cynical. He doesn't trust hope.
And so, when Joe comes to him, asking to join Megalonia, Nanbu comes to an agreement with the local crime boss such that Joe will throw the match when the bets are stacked high.
Nanbu's slow character transformation over the course of the anime is what makes Megalo Box worth watching. More to the point, there's an undercurrent of this concealed conflict between Yuri's sponsor, Yukiko Shirato, the organizer of the tournament, and Nanbu. Both, intrinsically, want the same thing: for their boxer to win. But they go about it in different ways.
Nanbu believes the way for Joe to truly win is to make as much money off his career as possible, prestige be damned. While Yukiko on the other hand, believes prestige is the key to making as much money as possible.
This dichotomy continues over the length of the story. That's not to say this dichotomy is static, however. That couldn't be further from the truth. The audience really empathizes with Nanbu when he begins to realize that the opposite is true. When Nanbu begins to accept that Joe is the real deal, his character arc changes. The opposite is true for Yukiko. Due to Yuri's growing respect for Joe, and drastic steps he takes in preparation for the final, Yukiko's stance flips from prestige to milking Yuri as much as she can. Joe is the catalyst behind the changes in attitudes in characters around him.
What Megalo Box does so well is that it gets the little things right. And over time, those little things add up. That leads me to my last point. The biggest selling point of the story is consistency.
Gym Nowhere
To this day, Megalo Box is the model I look to on how to end an anime (second only to Code Geass). But it's not that the ending is perfect, it's that it's consistent.
While this may seem simple, it's actually the hardest thing to get right in an anime. Look at Death note for example. The underlying reason the masses hate the ending isn't because Light lost, it's because the ending is inconsistent with Light's character arc.
What I mean is, over the course of the story, Light's character arc is established on the premise of his intelligence. The way Near ended up winning felt more like a band aid type solution in which Light was outsmarted.
The problem was that there was little evidence to show Light would have been outsmarted by Near and Mello. That's why most people have a problem with the ending.
Megalo Box doesn't fall into that Mouse trap. What I loved most about the last fight scene is that little to none of it is actually shown. Sounds confusing? Well, you're going to have to watch to find out. But to sum it up, by then, the audience already expects the conclusion, so, the animators did a great job of playing the final fight scene like more of a flashback.
Gym Nowhere is an appropriate title for this section because, after the fight, Joe returns to the gym he helped build. This is also symbolic of the anime as a whole because the story does not go where either of the competing background forces wanted it to go.
Nanbu's crime boss doesn't get the wealth of money he had planned for and Yukiko's tournament ends up failing to deliver on its promise. So, objectively, the story went nowhere. Which is the beauty behind Megalo Box. It's an experience. And definitely one worth watching.
Thanks for reading today's post. As always, if you've enjoyed this, hit that subscribe button to get weekly reviews on some of the most popular manga and anime (as well as my favorites). Stay tuned for a review of Megalo Box Season two coming up soon. Can it live up to the hype?
