Caption / MEGALO BOX
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Can today's fighting anime still touch us as much as it used to?
In the spring of 2021, the appearance of the second season of MEGALO BOX is quite unexpected.
Launched in 2018, MEGALO BOX is a 50th anniversary anime for the classic boxing manga Asuka no Shō, an original anime created based on Asuka No Shō. The anime tells a complete story and Happy Ending, with excellent production quality and super-flammable music, although BD sales are extremely poor, but it has won many hardcore fans by relying on the bloody storyline. Both in terms of plot integrity and business, anime fans believe that there should be no possibility of making the second season of MEGALO BOX.
Three years later, however, the second season, which tells a whole new story, began airing. Perhaps this spiritual sequel, like the protagonist, never fails, and only wants to continue to convey the fighting spirit that people had in the last century in this boring era.
As animation supervisor Hiroshi Moriyama said, "What I like is the longing protagonist, and the protagonist of this story is not to resonate, but to be envisioned by the audience." In recent anime works, there are many protagonists who have something special at the beginning of the story (opening and hanging), and megalo box is a story that starts from scratch like "Tomorrow's Father". ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > tomorrow's tomorrow in the ring</h1>
Serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1968, Asuka No Akira was written by Kajihara Kajihara and painted by Tetsuya Chiba, and has been called one of the most iconic and influential manga in the history of Japanese manga.
"Tomorrow's Zhang" tells the story of Yabuki Akira, a teenager who wanders in tokyo's slums and fights all day long, and begins his boxing career under the guidance of former boxer Tanishita Duanhei, determined to become a professional boxer with the goal of chasing the figure of his old enemy, Rishi Toru. After a long time, Yabuki turned from an unemployed person to a boxing superstar, and his body and mind also became scarred.
In the 1960s, Japanese society was in a period of severe disparity between the rich and the poor. Yabuki's story of his talent and efforts from nothing to fame resonated with a large number of readers, and became an idol in the minds of the working class and university students. Even when Yabuki's opponent, Rishi Shichi, completed his ideal and died, it brought indescribable shock and grief to the reader. Finally, led by celebrities such as Shuji Terayama, Kodansha held a farewell ceremony for the fictional character to appease the readership and continued the ceremony for many years.
In the manga, the scene in which Yabuki, after the final battle, sits in the ring and dies of exhaustion is even more shocking to tears. The spirit of "burning everything for tomorrow and for the present" conveyed by "Tomorrow's Father" inspired a large number of Japanese people at that time. The "never say die" presented in this work has become an important core of Japanese shonen manga in the coming decades.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="19" > the development of professional fighting events and made fighting anime a popular theme</h1>
After World War II, Japan entered a period of rapid economic development, and since the ban on content creation was lifted in the 1950s, juvenile manga magazines have sprung up, and various sports-themed manga works loved by the Japanese people have also come into being.
The fighting sport, which has gained great influence due to rapid development, has also become one of the popular themes of comics. With the development of professional events such as boxing, free fighting, fighting, wrestling, etc., a number of fighting anime works with far-reaching influence on Japan appeared in the 1960s, such as "Tomorrow's Father" and "Tiger Face Man" originally written by Kajiwara Kajihara, and the long-form masterpiece "Muscle Man" that has been serialized since the 1970s.
In January 1968, "Tiger Face Man" and "Tomorrow's Father" began serialization together, relying on high-quality plot and character development, as well as bloody fight pictures, the former quickly became a popular work.
In 1981, during the popularity of the Tiger Mask II animation, the professional wrestling organization NJPW purchased the character name and character use rights of Tiger Mask Man, and let live wrestlers play tiger face people and appear on the NJPW arena. This not only affected the future development of the Japanese professional wrestling community, but also established the status and legend of the Tiger Face man in the global wrestling world. Among them, the original Tiger Mask Man was also the founder of the later Shudou Satoshi Satoshi, whose fighting philosophy surpassed the times and had a major impact on Japanese mixed martial arts.
Serialized in 1979 to the present day, "Muscle Man" is also a classic in the fighting genre manga, created by the manga artist "Oyster Boy Fry" duo (Takashi Shimada and Yoshinori Nakai). "Muscle Man" is one of the first comics to start using the "combat power" system, and it is an early pillar work of "Weekly Shonen JUMP", and the funny heating Blood Superman wrestling setting has made it popular.
In the field of animation, sports works, including boxing and wrestling, are a relatively special form of content. On the one hand, the growth process of sports athletes depicted in the works is very easy to motivate the young audience, and at the same time, the outstanding works can feed back into the development of sports events. Cultural works and reality affect each other, which can be said to be vividly reflected in sports animation works.
From the late 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century, K-1, Pride and other large-scale martial arts events in China entered a period of rapid development of competitive entertainment mode, and the perfect combination of entertainment and combat became an important means to attract attention. In the 2002 Japan K-1GP Finals, a record of 74,500 spectators entered the finals, and Pride also left its rival UFC far behind, almost networking the top three players in the popularity list at that time. K-1 and Pride teamed up for the New Year's Special event to even catch up with the ratings of the Red and White Song Festival that year.
Affected by it, a large number of fighting games "Street Fighter", "King of Fighters", "Mortal Kombat", "Iron Fist" have appeared, and excellent fighting comics such as "Shuluo Gate", "First God Fist", "Blade Tooth", "College Iron Fist Legend" and so on have emerged.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > the future of fighting-themed works</h1>
In 2007, Pride lost its television rights due to its involvement with the underworld, and the powerful fighting empire began to collapse. After being acquired by the UFC, Pride vanished, the Japanese mixed martial arts industry was seriously injured, and K-1 was also in decline due to poor management.
The 2011 earthquake struck an even stronger blow to the already sluggish Japanese fighting community. During this period, although there were still a new batch of fighting comics such as "The Strongest Disciple in History", "Almighty Fighter", and "Fist Wish Asura", the number and popularity were far lower than in the previous period.
Despite this, the charm of fighting works still has a huge appeal to specific groups of people, and many content creators have cleverly blended this element into other genres. For example, "Ultraman" still inherits the "tradition" of a large number of wrestling moves when fighting, the assassination fist method that combines boxing and points in "Big Dipper God Fist", and the "Wonderful Adventure of JOJO", which combines intelligence and combat strength, so that the work has both innovative points and can better meet the audience whose aesthetics were gradually improving at that time.
Nowadays, Japan's martial arts sports market has long been gone, a large number of local event organizations have been replaced by European, American and Southeast Asian organizations, while hardcore fighting theme animation content has ushered in new opportunities with the prosperity of the Internet content market.
With the popularity of e-comics and online videos, the business models of anime works have become more diverse. Although the sales of traditional paper books and CDs are declining year by year, the overall market sales have been gradually rising thanks to the expansion of overseas markets and the rising copyright sales model.
In the face of anime fans with various aesthetic needs around the world, in the "Renaissance" wave of remaking classic Japanese manga IP, the fighting theme anime works with action dramas as the selling point have also ushered in a resurrection.
In 2016, Toei launched the sequel "Tiger Mask Man W" after 40 years, Netflix remade "Blade Tooth Most Murderous Prisoner" in 2018, "MEGALO BOX" was produced in 2018 with "Tomorrow's Father", "Fist Wish Asura" was remade by Netflix in 2019, and the second season of "MEGALO BOX" in 2021 chose to continue production after the first season BD sales died. These animation works that respond to the fans of the fighting genre in various countries around the world have also given new life to hardcore fighting animation works.
In today's social environment has changed, people's encounters are completely different from the past, can these fighting works full of blood and passion continue to carry the role given to them by the creators, to touch today's young audiences, and let them make efforts to meet the challenges in life?