Welcome back to Nomad! This is a bit of a late post, I apologize for that. Busy busy weekend. So how about we skip the preamble just jump right into it!
This is a weird week for Nomad all things considered. There were no huge revelations, no big game changers, it just sort of… happened. Effectively acting as a check-in for the rest of our old cast so to speak. This isn’t bad! It’s all useful and important information. Nomad uses it to remind us who each of these characters are with their new designs and to remind us of their relationships with each other. The only person we haven’t yet seen is Yukiko, and technically Yuri I guess since he hasn’t talked yet. We get to spend some time with Oicho, Sachio, Santa and Bonjiri as they hang out and discuss Joe. Mulling over how they feel about him, how they still care for each other, etc. This is all good stuff but I wouldn’t say any of it was amazing or standout.
Still while the episode was neither earthshattering nor thought provoking it was still nice to get the kids side of the story. Their feelings on Joe after everything that has happened are really interesting. The way Oicho, Santa and Bonjiri still remember him fondly despite everything that happened. They don’t blame Joe for the fight. They understand now that he was grieving, fighting against Gansaku’s death, the only way he knew how. It’s a level of understanding I wasn’t expecting. I figured Nomad would go the more melodrama route of everyone hating Joe for what I thought was a perfectly natural reaction. Instead the only thing they resent him for is leaving, running away after everything that happened. Yet even that isn’t without complications. If there was one thing that could be called the “revelation” of the episode it would be this: Joe didn’t leave, he was kicked out.
Sachio kicking Joe out of the family, demanding he leave, makes perfect sense. But I’m not sure I like it. Sachio’s side makes sense, Sachio was the closest with Joe and Gansaku. He no doubt felt the most attached and I totally understand where he’s coming from. But the idea that Joe left just because a grieving child demanded he leave? Thats… pitiful. And not even an understanding sort of pitiful. I can’t help but think that this excuse for leaving for 5 years is worse, in the narrative. He should have known how much Sachio was hurting and that these words were designed to hurt him, Joe, to. It was better when we thought Joe had left because of his own insecurities instead of this. Maybe it will turn out to be a mix of the two as we learn more. But I wasn’t a fan of this.
Speaking of Joe he also had some interesting character moments this week, thought what they mean we can’t be sure. I’m of course talking about the fight and the fact that he threw it. And once again, this one kind of miffed me. Joe swore all the way back in Season 1 of Megalo Box to never throw a fight again. It was an important part of his personal pride and to see him throw that away here felt… wrong. Once again, I completely understand why. He threw the fight to help Sachi and Bonjiri and it once again opens up this issue of communication and ignoring how others feel. Joe doesn’t ask permission, he just does things he thinks are right. That’s cool! But I can’t help but think there was a better option here: Joe becomes Gansaku.
Let me know down below what you think of this but in my ideal world Joe wouldn’t have fought. Instead I wish Nomad had made Sachio fight but forced him to accept Joe’s coaching or lose. We already knew he wasn’t cut out for the ring so watching Sachio win would have been satisfying. Meanwhile Joe could have carried over his experience from Chief and reconnected with Sachio the same way Gansaku connected with him. Nomad could have used that to not only bring the two together but to help Joe fully process what Gansaku meant to him. To fully embrace and appreciate that time in his life while reconnecting with the gang. The only downside I can see here is it being repetitive from the first season. But I think having Joe, our main point of view character, as the coach would have been suitably new and engaging enough.
Once again though while I disagree with the decision to have Joe fight, and lose, good stuff came out of it. Namely: The intercut flashbacks to the Liu fight. This was some great directing by You Moriyama. The way the two fights mimicked each other, swapping back and forth with blows as jump cuts and the matched final scenes of Joe laying on the canvas. The stark difference between Joe’s young and healthy body to the scarred husk it is today. It’s a testament to how long of a road Joe has had getting here and I think the sequence does a great job depicting that. Once again it overuses the greyscale a bit in my opinion, but hey it still works. And we got some great footwork and boxing animation in the fights themselves so I would call it a success.
So yeah, all in all I would say this was another good episode of Nomad. Nothing special. At least not compared to the episodes that have come before. But it’s the periods of calm before the storm, the setup episodes, that really make the finale’s worthwhile. And because of that I don’t think we will really know this episodes worth until Nomad is over. When we can see how all these plot threads connect and resolve. I hope its good, I really want it to be and Nomad is still my favorite of the season. There’s nothing I would hate more than to come back in 2 months and call this episode a waste of time because the finale didn’t properly utilize it. For now though, just like the fight, ill call it a success. See you next week to see if it pays off!
As others have said elsewhere, Joe throwing the fight was probably due to the influence of Chief: when Joe called him out on that, he defended himself by saying that there is nothing to be ashamed of in using whatever means are available to you to survive, and Joe seems to have applied that same lesson here. This was his big comeback after many years of absence, but instead of prioritizing honor and pride like before, he put the kids’ interests first, did what he needed to do for them to survive, exactly like Chief would have done.
I do agree that seeing Joe coach Sachio would have been interesting, but honestly, I think that what actually happened is a lot more realistic: there was a huge gap between Sachio and his opponent that he realistically couldn’t have overcome even with Joe helping him a bit; the underground boxing ring guy can make a lot more money by making Joe throw the fight; and looking to the future, Sachio doesn’t have the talent to follow Joe’s path, so there is arguably little point in him being coached by Joe for an episode when he’ll inevitably be pushed into a supporting role for Joe again. Maybe it could have worked somehow, but I think what we got made a lot of sense, and was a good way of showing how Chief has changed Joe.
You know what, that’s a fair point. I hadn’t thought to relate that part of Chief’s talk to Joe and the kids. I was to focused on Joe trying to find his home and move on from Gansaku that I hadn’t considered how it could also relate back to Joe’s old fighting philosophy as well.
I think it was perfectly in character for Joe to leave “just because” Sachio told him so. It’s not like he’d been thinking particularly rationally during those times anyway, and it makes perfect sense that rather than facing the kids’ pain and disappointment in him and his own crushing regret and self-blame, he decided to just do what he’d been doing all along, and run the hell away from everything.
Besides, Joe has always had a thing for self-destructive behavior. In the first series that’s pretty much his basic MO until he meets Yuri and Nanbu, who give him a goal that makes his life worth living.