Welcome one and all, to the real start of Joe’s boxing journey. This week Megalo Box’s starts to show its first cracks and gives us more fights than we can shake a stick at. Lets jump in!
Overall, this was a good episode in every respect but one. The music, story and pacing all do wonders. The one sticking point for me this week though was the main fight and its animation. For the most part it works, having Joe struggle with fear as his main opponent was brilliant. With both Joe and Nanbu caught up in it, Sachio had to be the one to save the day. The kid needed to be more than the plucky sidekick. However the fight animation itself worried me. It feels slow, delayed in places. Not smooth and snappy, nor working with the music like previous fights. In addition, ending the whole thing with one punch after all that buildup felt like an anti-climax. It wasn’t a bad fight by any means, let me make that clear, but I was hoping for more in our first big match.
Next up I wanna talk about “Gearless” Joe. I thought this was just going to be a few fight gimmick, but apparently I was wrong. Nanbu intends to push this as far as it can go. It should make fights interesting, so long as Megalo Box doesn’t skip past them. We saw what a single punch did to Joe this week, and saw his footwork, so its clear he’s going to be an outboxer. Fits with how skinny he is to. The most important part of this though, is this is just how Joe Yabuki from Ashita no Joe fought. Yabuki was famous for his cross counters and ability to take hits. Seems this is exactly what Megalo Box is going to do with Gearless Joe. Makes me wonder just how much Megalo Box will follow in Ashita’s footsteps. What will be the final fate of “Gearless” Joe?
As far as Joe’s story and his pacing goes, I think its moving a bit fast. Its far to early for a Rocky style montage on my opinion. Joe hasn’t earned it yet. I get that Sachio and Nanbu are doing everything they can to advertise Joe, to get him up the ranks faster. But he has had barely any fights, and we only really got to see one of them. This kind of montage is something you save for the last one or two fights. It builds hype, it lets us revisit all the character we met along the way and it shows us just how far the hero has come. But 4 episodes in? We haven’t gotten anywhere, we are barely past the starting line. Least it feels that way, considering we skipped two whole fights. Lets hope this next character is Megalo Box’s Rikiishi, eh?
The last bit I want to talk about is how limiting the seasonal cour format is. Megalo Box has to get us to Megolonia by episode 8 at the latest, so we have time for the last fights and the ending. They have to go from nothing, to the top of the world, in that time. I want to say Megalo Box would be better served as a 2 cour anime, but I don’t think that is true either. This story doesn’t need 24 episodes, it isn’t complex enough for that and that would just bog it down. It needs maybe 16 episodes at most. Time for each fight to have its time, but not to much so it isn’t stretched out. More than one anime has been hurt by the limiting 12 or 24 episode format. I just hope Megalo Box doesn’t end up being one of them.
So yeah, all in all, a good episode but we have seen some chinks in Megalo Box’s otherwise sterling armor. Might just be me being overly critical, or expecting to much, and I really hope it is, because I love Megalo Box. But only time will tell. See you next week!
P.S. Yes, I know Megalo Box has 13 episodes. I still think it could do with one or two more, so each fight can be more than a 5 second clip in a montage.
