Inokuma Yawara is a teenage girl who wants nothing more than to be normal. She loves fashion, wants to learn how to cook, and someday get a boyfriend, but secretly, she's a judo prodigy, something she takes no pleasure in being. Taught by her five-time national judo champion Grandfather, Jigoro, since she was about four years old, she's now been put through rigorous, daily training for over a decade, but her Grandfather feels this grueling practice behind closed doors will only push her abilities so far, and so before he reveals her abilities to the world and announces his plans to send her to the Barcelona Olympics and earn the People's Choice Award, he proposes a slightly unusual plan; he wants to find her a rival, a professional athlete good enough to crush her and in the process, teach her just how high of a summit the top of the world is to surmount. Enter Honami Sayaka; a rich heiress, roughly the same age as Yawara, and hailed as an all-round athletic genius, being an international champion in tennis, horse-riding, and gymnastics among a litany of other sports, to the point that shes become completely disinterested in her achievements and regularly trashes her trophies and medals for fun. Yet there is one sport shes never dipped her toes into, namely judo, and when coaxed by Jigoro's abilities, witnessing him toss her bodyguard twice his size and half his age in a split-second, and his teasing that he has a pupil capable of taking on the world, she knows immediately what her next sports venture will be. Thus begins the story our main character, Yawara, and her heated rival Sayaka, a judo prodigy versus a jack of all trades but master of none, as they and a large cast of judo players of all sizes and backgrounds vie for the titles of national and world champion in their respective weight classes. Since this is quite a lengthy series that also covers a lengthy span of time, at 124 episodes, an hour long special, and a 90 minute sequel film, I'll try to hold back but there will be some spoilers.
Going into a series all about judo, I was more than a little hesitant, since I've absolutely no experience with or knowledge of the sport, and they certainly don't hold your hand either, only allowing you to learn all the terminology, rules and moves by paying attention to the matches as they occur, with no info dumps or long explanatory dialogue scenes to get you up to date. It doesn't pose much of an issue though, as there's enough consecutive matches particularly towards the beginning for you to get caught up on how points are earned and such. Once I bought into the hype, especially as the series goes on and the stakes continually rise, I found myself really getting excited with the matches. They're fast paced, and limited only to grapples and throws, making it a rough and tumble, yet deeply strategic game. Yawara's signature move, the lightning fast Ippon Zeoi, an overhead shoulder throw, is such a simple yet mesmerizing move that leaves both the fans and the viewer stunned, with her opponent being flung at such a startling velocity that they look as if they're being brought to light speed. Sometimes you could even hear a pin drop with how her flawless moves leave the spectators with bated breath. Her Grandfather's idea of judo is "The gentle way wasn't built in a day", or in other words, "The flexible command the strong; The small command the large", and Yawara is the embodiment of this style of judo. She's short and slim, completely unassuming, yet she's always entered into the open weight divisions, meaning the players aren't separated by weight classes, and she's often facing challengers who tower over her, making it all the more interesting seeing how unstoppable she is. Another great inclusion is not only having multiple angle shots of some of the finishing throws, but they'll occasionally have the commentators watching the slow-mo action-replays to see how the move was performed inch-by-inch. It's not just Yawara that's a treat to watch either, I was engrossed in the matches fought by all of the biggest players, and was torn several times in who to root for, not just because I'd like to see them as characters succeed and have their hard work pay off, but I also simply want to see more. More of their unique fighting styles, and more crazy match ups too. Even off the mat, Yawara is still a treat of a main character. She's lovely, bubbly, and always lending a helping hand, even to her opponents. Even though she knows full well that Sayaka wants nothing more than to flatten her, she'll still tell her how much fun she has playing against her, not to mock but encourage her, in her own way. She does have a strange naivety that prevents her from reading the room, but it plays into her innocence. Regardless of the fact that she's a girl who's touted as the worlds strongest, she's still gentle in every sense of the word, and a rather unique trait of hers is that even though shes on the fast-track to becoming the Queen of Judo, she doesn't feel a drop of pressure to win. Rather, she outright wants to quit by any means possible, to leave it all behind.
The driving factor of the series, initially coming as quite a surprise given her immense talent, is Yawara's struggle with wanting more than anything to become a regular girl, not unlike Usagi Tsukino's reluctance to go back to being a sailor senshi and give up her everyday life in Sailor Moon R. Yawara feels that if she continues down the path her Grandfather has locked her into, she'll never be able to live a normal life, or go to her dream college doing a Home Economics course. On the other hand, her Grandfather won't even try to see it from her perspective, and while it's understandable that he'd be so adamant she doesn't stray from his teachings after all these years under his wing, his approach isn't to talk to her one-on-one and convince her to get back at it, instead resorting to constant schemes that back her into a corner or guilt her to the point that she feels forced to take part in her upcoming matches. This formula is repeated multiple times through the majority of the series to an exhausting point, and is only really interesting the first or second time; Yawara doesn't want to do judo anymore, he guilts her into playing, she feels the love of the sport again, before quickly finding another reason not to participate anymore. It gets pretty stale, pretty quick. This is where Sailor Moon greatly differs. While Usagi steps up to the plate and accepts her fate, winning over the viewer with her bravery in choosing what she must do, not what she wants to do, Yawara never makes the distinction right to the end. She never fully commits to the sport, yet she never permanently drops out, and I'll commend her for begrudgingly choosing to play regardless, but it doesn't mean much when her heart is never in it. The other repeating pattern is with Yawara's love interests. There's two romantic partners presented, the third-rate reporter from the third-rate sports newspaper Matsuda Kosaku, and the rich womanizer Kazamatsuri Shinnosuke, with the former being the clear one to root for, and the latter being being the one to worry about. While Shinnosuke says time and time again he's in love with her, he sleeps around on a regular basis, on top of having a fiance, yet Yawara always seems taken in by his silver tongue. On the other hand, Kosaku only has eyes for her, but can never find the time to get the right words out, or regularly falls victim to misunderstandings, and here's where the second issue arises. Every time Shinnosuke is about to finally win her over, his fiance magically appears. Every time Kosaku is about to get the words out, his camera-woman and admirer Kuniko says something to give Yawara the wrong impression and Kosaku does nothing to clear up the misunderstanding, prolonging the "Will they? Won't they? Who will she choose?" ever more. It gets even more stale than her inability to quit judo, as at least in that aspect, her Grandfather is sneaky and creative in how he goes about tricking her, while on the romance front, several times its only prolonged because Kosaku refuses to speak up and clear the air, leaving Yawara feeling like it'll always be a one-sided love. I genuinely like all the characters named, except the shrill and spoiled Kuniko, but I can't get past the glaring issues that they present, as this series already has mild pacing issues with the down-time between tournaments, and the prolonging of these two central points only drags it on longer, not to mention that its rarely stated how much time is passing episode-to-episode. A certain a block of about 10 episodes takes place over the course of a year, a far quicker pace than any other point in the series.
It can look quite dated at times, most evidently in the beginning, as the series began in 1989, but after running for three years the quality certainly rises, to the point that I was a little taken aback comparing just how much it's changed from episode 1 to episode 124. It's certainly the kind of anime I'd love to see a remake, or at the very least a remaster of, because there's some truly stunning scenes that still hold up even to this day, but I'd like to see them do more than just hold up. There's some good camera work too, with the transitions between a lot of scenes keeping things fresh, and a lot of the backgrounds are well detailed too, but its pretty clear where they cut corners, particularly at tournaments when you can see the crowds blurred or out of the shot altogether. Yawara! is based on a manga written by Urasawa Naoki, famed mangaka for monstrously popular works such as Monster, 20th Century Boys, and Pluto, all of which are high-tension, psychological thrillers full of suspense and embroiled in mystery, yet the only real sign he had any hand in this work is his signature character designs, which I've always loved. Everyone looks uniquely styled, and Madhouse did a great job in animating them, especially with Yawara undoubtedly being, as the title suggests, a fashionable judo girl. She's pretty, petite, and certainly prioritizes being fashionable above being a judoka, cycling through plenty of outfits and hairstyles as the series goes on. Most notably in each of the OPs we see slideshows of Yawara modelling dozens of different styles, almost unrecognizable at times with how she's dolled up. Fashion in anime is something I've always had a great interest in, and it goes beyond simply visual appeal. While that is a major factor, it should also serve to tell us more about the characters from one look, like how Kosaku rarely ever changes clothes due to his poor paychecks, while Sayaka is draped in the latest and most expensive dresses and jewellery at all times, never wearing the same clothes twice. Even while throwing people through the air, she and Yawara still manage to portray an image of beauty.
The special hour-long episode wasn't much to talk about, a simple story to be watched roughly toward the end of the series or afterwards. Slightly higher quality in terms of animation, but barely any of the usual cast of characters as it primarily follows Yawara as she teaches judo to a group of kids. Not much happens but it's a nice little side story, so if you enjoyed the series you'll enjoy this too. More noteworthy is the 90 minute finale film, made to truly and definitively finish out the story. Episode 124 was honestly a little lackluster and left me wanting far more than we got, but I at least still liked how open-ended it was. If you use your imagination you could easily picture how things play out in the future. Then comes the finale film, which sets out to tie up every loose end, which I wasn't opposed to, but the execution was a little jarring. It's seems to be set several years after the series finale, but it becomes evident early on that they've done a light retcon. From what I could tell, they just moved all of the previous events forward so that the main series ended in 1996 instead of the actual year it ended in, but everything else was roughly the same. It turned out to be pretty good in the end, with almost everyone getting a happy ending, or at the very least getting what they deserve, but unbelievably they still manage to cram in another one of Kuniko's ridiculous ploys for attention, having her steal and purposely crashing a car just to pull Kosaku away from Yawara's matches. With only an hour and a half to work with, I was really disappointed that they had to drive one last unnecessary wedge from the girl who wants what she can't have between Yawara and Kosaku. The matches at least were a joy to watch, with one I wanted to see being glossed over, but all the rest being well animated and hard-fought. I also would've assumed the art would be better given that it was released four years after the TV series stopped airing, but it's of almost identical quality in terms of animation and such, which is to say while it still looked very good, it should've looked far better than it did.
As mentioned, the source material for this show is a manga by Urasawa Naoki, but I was more than a little skeptical when I realised this and really couldn't see it panning out well, given that all I'd seen of his work was the polar opposite of Yawara! It's a borderline-shoujo series, almost predominantly slice-of-life with plenty of romance in it, a mix that I wouldn't have even thought he'd be interested in writing. I wouldn't say he absolutely nailed it, but it's a definite testament to his talent that he can jump into such a different genre and still create an enjoyable story. It's unnecessarily dragged on by the recurring delays I talked about, and there's a number of characters introduced that are sort of just phased out, never to be mentioned again, but that doesn't subtract from it being a fairly original series that has plenty of exciting and suprising moments, oozing with his usual brand of reactionary comedy. There's a variety of talent that worked on it, such as the director Tokito Hoshino who worked on Touch, the sound director Urakami Yasuo who worked in that role for a massive catalogue of shows such as Detective Conan, Code Geass, and several Gundam entries, and the voice of Yawara herself Minaguchi Yuko, long-time VA who played Sailor Saturn among many other characters. Yawara! is certainly worth a watch if you like a longer series or a less portrayed sport, and certainly if you like slice-of-life, girly anime. It's got some good messages in there, like how a single photograph can capture a perfect moment in time, immortalising it forever, or just how fast life passes you by when you're always too busy to notice. Plenty of great voice acting, a great cast of characters, and a great, fashionable judo girl.
