I initially wanted to approach this from a perspective of someone who hasn’t read the manga and judge the anime on its own strength but I couldn’t make it through beyond about 30 something episodes before dropping it and having a blast reading through the manga.
There’s two very big reasons behind why I strongly dislike this anime. For one, AnJ has terrible pacing. In 79 episodes it adapts merely about 11 and a half volumes of the manga. That’s roughly 7 episodes per volume. Anyone watching the anime will likely notice the many ways in which Dezaki padded things out. Awkward pauses in dialogue, long scenes consisting of a few still shots, reused animations shown over and over, animation loops that are held for way longer than they should be.
That stuff is all relatively innocent compared to the second big problem, the way it constantly pads out content with anime original material AND at the same time they manage to cut out some scenes and dialogue from the original. More often then not the stuff they cut is not some unimportant rubble but rather scenes that add nuance to the work as a whole, it removes teeth from a story that bites. I know anime was being produced roughly at the mid point of manga’s publication but they also only adapt about half of it so I don’t believe there’s any excuse to alter so much. Some might say just skip the filler and here’s what makes this even worse. AnJ doesn’t just have filler episodes, some of them are relatively self contained and can be ignored but those are tiny minority. For the most part original material mixes in with canon, at times completely ignoring the way plot unfolds for the sake of filler coming in more smoothly. However hard they try though, there’s always a clear contrast, because whoever wrote the filler didn’t have an ounce of writing talent compared to Asao Takamori. Filler is meandering, pointless, it moves nothing forward and at best reiterates previous material instead of moving forward. It downgrades character to acting like generic archetypes, it dumbs them down by trying to make their cold conclusions seem like the most shocking revelations. I strongly believe that there’s no alteration that had a positive impact and there a fuckload of alterations that build up until a shittastic climax that is Carlos vs Joe arc.
When you do get to see the canon though, AnJ shows what it could’ve been. A story that still has few analogues in anime, a realistic and sincere story about a dregs of society fighting for a better tomorrow despite their tragic yesterdays. It’s not a drama that makes you feel good, because there’s no escapism to it. It doesn’t round off the edges of the real world, instead slamming you right against those edges and showing you how heartbreaking and hopeless things can be. However it does this not to make you feel depressed but to motivate you to push on forward, to improve yourself, to strive for better things instead of wallowing in the problems or trying to ignore them. Joe and many other characters constantly have to deal with problems, one worse than another and none of them are exactly equipped to handle them. Joe himself is a delinquent like no another. An orphan who constantly moved around and had to defend the only thing he had left, his pride, with his fists. The result of his upbringing is that he’s terrible at normal social interactions. Compromise is not in his dictionary and he lives his life scamming others and spending his nights wherever he can. When Danpei, an ex pro boxer and now pro alcoholic notices him in the slums it’s a starts of a very interesting co-dependent relationship. Joe sees Danpei as an opportunity to get stronger and beat the first opponent he can’t overcome while Danpei sees in Joe an opportunity to get into the world of boxing and climb back up the ladder. While Joe is most definitely the highlight, other characters still get developed into complex human beings with their own personalities, lives, goals and ideas.Unfortunately filler considerably undermines the journey characters go through cause while in the manga every volume is a difficult journey that shapes the characters, in the anime there are too many sideway shifts that significantly downplay the arcs people go through.
Another occasionally strong point of the show is its presentation. One of the biggest advantages anime has over manga, is that you get to hear the characters and you get to see their acting and movement in more detail which in right hands can add a lot of intricacies. Voice actors in particular have to be the highlight of the entire anime in terms of presentation. It’s incredible how much passion comes through in their dialogue, how they manage to capture emotion with such sincerity that I can’t help but feel for them. One thing that always stood out to me is just one scene where the rarest thing happens and Joe actually cries, it feels like he’s genuinely sobbing while trying to hold himself. You get to HEAR that this is a man who’s used to putting up a tough front crying himself after possibly the first moment of genuine happiness in his miserable life. Tange similarly is just fantastic, it’s a travesty that both his and Joe’s VA never participated in voicing any anime other than AnJ.
Yet, while I will praise voice acting for managing to depict emotional outbursts with rare sincerity, I can’t help but feel that Dezaki’s overly dramatic presentation often hurts the story. When it hits, it’s great, Dezaki has a sense for dramatic flair and it helps the moments that are meant to be exaggerated or shocking but sometimes you need the opposite of that. When seemingly dreadful things happen with little flash, it makes a point. Bad shit can happen anytime, anywhere and to anybody. You’re not special and there’s nothing to say that tomorrow you won’t become just another number in a small box on a piece of paper showing how many people died this year. It’s this kind of quiet dread that and insignificance of the individual in the big picture that can make tragedies all the more depressing and AnJ manga excels at that. When anime exaggerated everything tenfold it makes a common problem seem like a unbelievably cruel twist of fate. Overall it’s part of why anime ends up feeling so cartoonish and immature in the end.
It’s hard to say how much the flaws I mentioned will impact one’s experience of watching the anime but it’s my honest opinion that as an adaptation it’s a travesty that tramples over excellent while simultaneously only surviving thanks to the strengths of said source material. As its own show I had to drop it due to how damn slow and stilted it is so take that as you will, I only managed to make it through out of morbid curiosity of how bad they’ll screw up the things I love. I know many people managed to genuinely fall in love with this show and maybe if I didn’t read the manga I’d be able to like it more but really hope that anyone who wants to experience this fantastic story choses the manga instead of a lackluster anime.
