Ashita no Joe

[Scourge]

Description:

Joe, a teenage orphan in the slums of the Doya streets, meets Danpei, a homeless, alcoholic ex-boxing coach. Danpei, seeing Joe's boxing talent, decides to train him. When Joe is sent to a terrible juvenile home for petty crimes, he meets Rikiishi who becomes his boxing rival. Danpei arrives at the home to help Joe to train in order to defeat Rikiishi. When Joe decides to seriously pursue boxing, Danpei cannot get a coaching license because of his reputation as a drunk.

So, I keep looking for older anime - usually 80's - ...something to glom on to... I recently discovered crunchyroll.com where a ton of fansubs are, and am using Anime News Network's index of anime by date to look up stuff I might be interested in.

Ashita no Joe is a boxing anime from 1970, and yes it has those 70's looks that are kind of iconic now with the thick lines and such, and it's gritty as hell. I've only just watched the first episode, but the fight scenes (which were all street fighting scenes vs. Yakuza in this ep) are brutal and awesome.

A google search for images from the show turns up nothing that does it justice, unfortunately.

crunchyroll.com let's you watch a few files without joining, but after five or so you can't watch unless you join, which is just a simple sign up process where you pick a screen name and provide your email address whereupon you receive a verification email with a link to click on which activates your account.

Most videos have three options to watch: Low Quality, High Quality, and H.264 HI-DEF, plus you can watch it in the browser window in small size or larger size, or right click and watch it full screen. You might have to update your flash to use their player, or use their older player.

There have been several video games made from this series for the arcade, Neo Geo, SNES, PlayStation 2 and GBA.


Some interesting trivia about the show's influence (from wikipedia):

* In episode 8 of Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO), a couple of thugs dress like Danpei and Joe Yabuki and re-inact one of their famous training scenes.

* In episode 63 of Urusei Yatsura, Ryuunosuke Fujinami cross punches her father, just like Joe did against Wolf Kanagushi. Ataru Moroboshi mentions the name of that attack, which Rikiishi thought to himself as Joe had countered Wolf in that locker room scene.

* The character Dudley from Street Fighter III has a special move called the "Cross Counter" which is a tribute to Ashita no Joe.

* The character Takeshi Sendo from Hajime No Ippo is an homage to Joe- his hairstyle, fighting style, and brash image are all particularly reminiscent of Joe.

* In episode 19 of Ah! My Mini Goddess titled Kitchen Fighters, In the ending of the episode, Ganchan who was named Bruce Ganchan for that episode also sat in his corner's chair and was also colored gray after the decision of the boxing match. Very similar to what happened to Joe in his last fight. The winner of the bout was also named Jose Mendoza, but in this anime, he was just a mouse dressed in Mexican hat and coat, and was only a spectator.

* In episode 65 of the anime Sonic X, there is a scene in the original Japanese version that heavily references to Tomorrow's Joe. It features Tails and Cosmo, a pairing throughout the series' third season, in a scene that directly parodied the Tomorrow's Joe series, in character design and appearance.

* In Chapter 806 of Hajime no Ippo manga, Joji Morikawa created a splash page depicting Ippo Makunouchi shaking hands with Joe Yabuki.

[rezo]

Best comic ever. About boxing. From the late 60s/early 70s. I love it so much.

The anime glosses over key parts of the story(I think something like 800 pages of comic are summed up in part of a single episode) and has some unnecessary filler though, so if possible follow the comic first. I know there's a translation project out there somewhere but don't know how far along it is currently.

[Scourge]

Why did I have a feeling rezo would come in here and say "the manga's better". Let me tell you why the anime is well worth watching in place of the manga, which average joe can't read anyway: the animation, the soundtrack, the voice acting, and it's easy to find. So please, join me in celebrating a great anime series.

[rezo]

Why did I have a feeling rezo would come in here and say "the manga's better".

Perhaps you saw me say "the Kodocha comic's better" and then saw me say "the Yu Yu Hakusho comic's worse" and thought you discovered a pattern.

But like I said, if possible read the comic. If it's impossible then don't obviously. People here are capable of realizing there's no point in pursuing options not available to them.

It's seriously my favorite series though. I want to be a fanboy and post the full video of Rikiishi's theme song right now but it has a major spoiler in it. The animation/art quality is real high in the second series which came out almost a decade after the first. The first has a roughness to it that was common back then though I haven't seen all of it and from what I've seen of other shows it's likely that it drastically improves over a short period of time.

I was watching a documentary on it a while ago and they went over how it was made, and apparently they had a machine that converted pencil drawings into cels. Occasionally the artists did some shading with the pencils too which gave a look to some scenes that has pretty much disappeared as animation has changed over time. They also mentioned how the animators had no character guides when they started out, so they just had copies of the comic lying around and eyeballed everything, and as a result the way characters look often changes.

[Rem]

I've wanted to read this forever, but could never find any scans.

[rezo]

I just looked up the old site I found and there are a few chapters there:

http://starbruin.com/ashitanojoe.html

Unfortunately it looks like the project never got very far =\

[Rem]

Thanks dude, now another thing to add to my pile of shame.

[Scourge]

Yeah, the sequel series from 1980 looks awesome. How is the movie? Is it kind of a recap of the series or is it standalone? Oh, and thanks for the manga link; I'll check it out when I get home. And everyone should watch this and read the manga while I do so we can talk about how awesome it is.

[rezo]

Yeah, the movies are just recaps of the TV series so I never watched them.

[Konketsu]

I've been meaning to watch this series ever since I watched Hajime no Ippo a few years back. Ippo is one of my favorite series so I look forward to checking this out. I DL'ed a few eps that were available from a group that is subbing it and slowly releasing the episodes. I was aware of crunchyroll but never really searched for anything. Thanks for the update Scourge. I will definitely watch Ashita no Joe from the site.

On the topic of manga vs anime, in the case of Ippo, I watched the anime first and read the manga up to its current chapter. It is still going which is great. I can relate to Scourge in the factors he mentioned that make the anime great. In Ippo's case, reading the manga after watching the series was a treat because I could imaging the voice actor speaking the dialogue in the manga along with where the soundtrack would be placed. If a series has a great voice acting and soundtrack, it does alot to bring the characters and their world to life. If you haven't watched Hajime no Ippo, I highly recommend it.

I will watch Ashita no Joe first and then read the manga second. Again, thanks for the info. Thanks Rezo for letting me know about the movies.