Megalo Box
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Yuri a true boxer who cherishes his sport and respects Joe as a worthy opponent, or a masochist whose obsession with Joe leads him down a path of self-destruction?
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Among the fighters, by far the most acclaimed is Pepe "Spider" Iglesias, the Mexican boxing champion, for his charismatic performance (with surprisingly good Spanish), cool Mexican aesthetic, and an absolutely kickass entrance.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: In early 2018, "Low-fi Chill Anime Study Beats" became a minor sensation (and a subject of memetic mockery) on music streaming platforms due to their ubiquity along with its association with the anime aesthetic. Along came this series, which boasts a critically acclaimed soundtrack in that exact subgenre of hip-hop.
- Ho Yay: Joe and Yuri. The two share intense gazes whenever they meet. After having his Gear removed, Yuri sounds downright warm as he describes his desire to fight Joe.
- Magnificent Bastard:
- Yukiko is the beautiful and brilliant CEO of the Shirato Group, organizing the Megalo Boxing tournament, Megalonia, to promote her gear used by her champion Yuri. Ruthless yet honorable, Yukiko is willing to bend rules to her standards, such as arranging a rematch between Gearless Joe and Mikio leading to her brother's defeat, having people in her company "dealt with" upon learning of their role in the death of Sachio's father, and letting Yuri fight Joe gearless, while withholding Joe's criminal past from the public. Forming a business partnership with ROSCO, Yukiko has their technology, BES, investigated where she learns of BES's flaws. Gathering the evidence and witnesses she has against ROSCO, Yukiko brokers a deal with their CEO, Sakuma, allowing for the continue development of BES only if he hands over his rights of BES to Shitaro Group before stepping down as CEO and let her company thrive under new leadership.
- Fujimaki is a cultured and ruthless mob boss that arranges fixed matches that Junk Dog would lose to. When Junk Dog decides to win a match, Fujimaki makes a deal with his coach Gansaku Nanbu where he would clear their debts to him if Junk Dog wins Megalonia, while threatening to kill them if they fail. Creating the fake ID, "Gearless Joe", for Junk Dog to use to enter the tournament and win boxing matches, Fujimaki reveals his true plan of having Joe throw the match against Glen "Bloody Lion" Burroughs, exploiting the people placing bets against Burroughs to swindle them of their money. With his plan failing only due to Sachio's intervention, Fujimaki decides to clear Joe and Nanbu's debt to him after Nanbu stabs his remaining eye out as compensation. Years later, Fujimaki allows Joe to replace Sachio for a match, letting Joe retrieve back the restaurant deed for Sachio's friend if Joe loses the match. Fujimaki would then clear Sachio of his debt after he loses to Joe, while pouring himself a drink to the deceased Nanbu.
- Mikio Shirato is the older brother of Yukiko matching his sister in brilliance while having the ambition to replace her as CEO of their company. Becoming a Megalo boxer, Mikio creates the ACE gear which contains an AI that reads his opponents moves, allowing Mikio to easily counter aand win. Preparing for his match against Gearless Joe, Mikio uncovers Joe's criminal past and manipulates Nanbu into knocking out Joe before their match and let Mikio win by default by threatening to expose Joe's true identity. When Yukiko allows a rematch between Mikio and Joe, Mikio uses his gear to remain ahead in their fight before Joe discovers ACE's flaw by sheer luck. Gracefully accepting his loss against Joe, Mikio forgoes his ambitions and becomes a professor, later helping Yukiko uncover the flaws of BES, before writing a thesis about the negative effects of BES and releasing it to the public. Mikio's thesis convinces test subject Mac, his family, and an ROSCO employee to go against ROSCO and gives Shitaro enough evidence to take down ROSCO and obtain the rights to BES.
- Nomad: Ryugo Sakuma is the eccentric CEO of ROSCO and creator of the Brain Encoding System or BES and convinces Maya Rosario to let him use BES on her husband by promising to pay for their son's life saving surgery; BES allows Mac to recover from his disabilities and continue to box, but has the side effect of causing Mac to goes unconsciously berserk and brutalizes his opponent, with his fight against boxing champion Liu being one such example. By the time the Shitaro Group learn of this, they were already in a partnership that Sakuma convince them to form and it was only due to a employee of ROSCO deciding to side with Yukiko that allowed her to get ahead of Sakuma, with Sakuma accepting his defeat gracefully and handing over the rights of BES to her company, content that BES will continue to be developed.
- Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Quite a few Hispanic communities admitted to loving the series, both for its grit and for its rather nuanced and symapthetic portrayal of a Spanish-speaking community throughout both seasons.
- Narm: Glen Burrough's pre-fight taunt towards Joe in the Japanese version of episode 11. Though he speaks in English, it's evident that his dialogue was written by someone who isn't fluent in the language. Glen Burroughs: You chicken. I will smash you into junk, together with your sleazy gear.
- Special Effects Failure: This is how the Retraux look of the footage by T2 Studio can come off as, with the animation, and in particular the backgrounds, looking more like an early-2000s anime that's been poorly re-scaled rather than the '90s aesthetic they're going for. This article goes into additional detail about it.
- Spiritual Adaptation: The show can be described as a gritty anime adaptation of ARMS.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Being limited to thirteen episodes and having three of those spent setting everything up for starting to compete in Megalonia is an understandable limitation, but the whole "Gearless" part of the Gearless Joe gimmick is thought to really not get enough focus in terms of what Joe has to fight through and work up towards to qualify. Instead, the fights between Samejima and Aragaki are limited to a quick montage to keep the plot rolling, as Joe quickly zooms up the ranks by simply skipping a large portion of them (he starts out at 257th, but quickly jumps to 185th and then 17th by challenging or being challenged by people ranked way above him), and the power of the Gears gets somewhat underplayed as a result by implying each of Joe's opponents up to that point were nothing but chumps with steel fists attached. It can make half of Joe's entire underdog setup feel somewhat undermined when the story focuses more on putting foes on his level, rather than having to go past his limits against implausible odds to beat theirs.
- Aside from that, the fact that the show was promoted as a boxing show with mechanical augments, yet Joe loses his very early on and has to fight his way to the top without them has left some disappointed and feeling that they were a wasted concept. Joe already has an underdog status even with his gear as it's noted to be rather crappy. It's certainly a far cry away from Yuri's extremely fancy gear.
- Tough Act to Follow: To many reviewers, the question is not whether Megalo Box will be good or not; it's whether it will top Tomorrow's Joe, which has been a Cult Classic for 50 years and is considered one of the best Spokon of all times. Not helped by its Everyone Lives ending, compared to the original's tragic deaths of several boxers which inspired two real-life funerals.
Anyway, to finally end this entry, just about any version of this song is amazing. It serves as a kickass final boss theme and its use seems to have a lot of symbolic aspects to it if you look into things. Anyway it was quite interesting to write this and I hope I can write more pieces that go into detail about themes of a story in addition to putting more pieces out about Video Game Music.
Since I do believe that Agumon/Gabumon has the most digivolution variety, I would rather pick them over the others. But Kunemon could a variety of kickass attacks, and just spamming Megalo Spark would more or less gurantee you a win in 95% of battles. Kunemon was more or less supposed to be my next rookie, and the video kinda proved why I wanted to get him.
Megalobox is a boxing anime that takes place in a far-off future. This is not typical boxing, however. The sport of 'megaloboxing' adds mechanical harnesses that increase fighter's speed and power in the ring. The dystopian backdrop provides this anime with drama and tension as joe fights his way up toward the championship.
Instead of the cute girl, he finds a messed up dude who turns out to be a megalo. Aikawa reminds us, he can kick ass too and punches the now-squid monster a few times. Haruna shows up out of nowhere and wishes to join the fight, but her magic is still insufficient and Aikawa has to assume the form of the masou-shoujo (an obvious parody of mahou shoujo) to kill the squid.
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