Reviews

Megalo Box is a 50th-year-anniversary rehash of the very popular (and a personal favorite of mine )Ashita No Joe. The anime's art was gorgeous, lending a bit of authenticity to a long-gone era of hand-drawn animation which is scarcely seen in recent animes. The soundtrack written in collaboration with a Hip-hop artist was pretty good but can't be compared to that of Devilman Crybaby and Samurai Champloo. The characters were mehish at best, the fights were lackluster and didn't do justice to the original source material at all. Because in Ashita, Joe was a really strong boxer with a killer punch, in this too Joe does indeed have a killer punch but he wins fights mostly on his luck or his final punch, most of the time he is left sprawling on the mat. Everybody's motivations were also not fleshed properly like" Oh you are the real deal? I will fight you". The nominations to the top 4 were arbitrary too. The execution as in the direction and the CGI use was minimal and used to its full extent. They all leave us in the dark about who won the final battle but I will take it. All in all, it had all the potential to be a great anime because of having such a source material but it turned out to be average at best. It is still a decent watch. Don't watch this if you wanna satisfy your boxing appetite, because boxing scenes are pretty scarce and unsatisfying for a boxing anime. You would be better off watching the OG Ashita no Joe or Hajime No Ippo.