Spring 2021 First Impressions: Megalo Box S2, Thunderbolt Fantasy S3, Sayonara Watashi no Cramer

Megalo Box S2

Short Synopsis: Seven years after his victory at Megalonia, “Gearless” Joe has become a shadow of his former self.

Lenlo: My biggest gripe with the first season of Megalo Box was that it was just a retread of Ashita no Joe. The entire narrative between Yuri and Joe was just Rikiishi and Joe but in the future. Instead of weight management it was shedding gear, instead of Japanese Championship it was the World Championship. Small changes but overall the anime commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ashita no Joe was, shocker, a mimicry of it.

So imagine my excitement when Season 2 gets announced and it breaks from the Ashita no Joe mold. Gone are the championship bouts, gone are characters such as Sachio, Yuuri and Shirato that are just renamed and reskinned versions of older characters. Now we get Joe’s story and what a sad one it is. The bleak desert landscapes, the dimly lit backroom rings and empty parking lots. Drugs, alcohol and suicide. A lot has happened in 7 years for Joe and Nomad doesn’t shy away from that. I’m engaged, I’m intrigued, I want to know what happened. How did we get here from being at the top of the world? Will we ever get back up? If Nomad can deliver on that then I expect it will be even more successful than the first season.

As for my gripes? Well the weird upscaling is back. I seriously don’t understand why they do this. They downscale the show only to upscale it back again, trying to fake that “older” anime look but all it does is make things fuzzy. It’s a Megalo Box aesthetic but I wouldn’t call it a good one. At least the OST is still fantastic.

Potential: 90%

Armitage: I liked Megalo Box’s first season. It was an exciting albeit by-the-books underdog boxing tale with some crisp animation and a killer soundtrack. From what I can surmise after this premiere, Nomad is more of the same but better. Gone is the hype for an ominous fight, the engaging hook of a climactic battle, the thrill of hard-fought victories. All of that was lost long ago. Now, the place is just sad. Everything dies here. A wolf that refuses to move forward eventually gets trampled on by someone speeding on. You stop running and eventually your past catches up with you. Just like everyone else who lives in this place, Gearless Joe is also tired. His is a journey that has no end-goal in sight and he is unable to let go of all the baggage he carries. A tragic fate. As that seems like such a heavy weight.

Megalo Box is forging its own path away from the one laid out by its previous season and it’s one that I personally believe to be the natural progression for Joe’s story. The only thing about this premiere that had me very briefly concerned was the slight over-reliance on still images outside of the scenes not featuring a fight. I mean, we even get a song performed for a minute to nothing but stills panning about. But there seems to be no signs of the production as a whole being anything less than competent. The world of Megalo Box has always been an utterly fascinating one and something I absolutely felt transported to the first time I watched it. If anything, this premiere reminded me of what I have missed. Welcome back, Champ.

Potential: 95%

Thunderbolt Fantasy S3

Short Synopsis: Ornately-dressed warriors journey through a cavernous lair in search of a sentient sword.

Mario: That was a rushed start up. Even I, who have been following the franchise from the beginning, found it difficult at first to follow the storyline. This third outing still feels like a “Best of” collection as all the favorite characters from previous seasons return, with some fresh faces right at the beginning. For me, the fun of Thunderbolt Fantasy is the set-up stage where big-ass characters get introduced, then seeing how they get to the main thread and witnessing them bouncing off each other. That fun was cut short in this episode as I felt it rushed through the plot. In addition, the grey morality of these characters is undermined as in this season (and season 2), there are clear divisions between the good guys and bad guys. I’m still following this but I really hope it does something different, something fresh like its usual self.

Potential: 30%

Wooper: I’m not caught up on Thunderbolt Fantasy, but even if I were, the amount of exposition in this premiere would have been a slog. Gen Urobuchi still hasn’t taken that screenwriting class, I guess. Not that he needs one to find success – the man has an army of fans who will defend dialogue along the lines of: “Remember when I told you about [W]? Specifically, the three obstacles surrounding it?” “Oh, the three obstacles surrounding [W]? You mean [X], [Y], and [Z]?” That was the gist of over half of this episode, including a five minute explanation of what was essentially a video game’s fast travel system. Just as my sanity was about to expire, though, we cut to a kickass fight scene featuring flashy effects, impossible acrobatics, and a talking pipa who transformed into a sword. The fast cuts and dramatic zooms during these brawls give Thunderbolt Fantasy a style like nothing else on TV, but the question each viewer must answer is whether they justify the show’s copious dialogue. For me, the answer is “not quite,” but hey, at least the show looks cool in motion.

Potential: 50%

Sayonara Watashi no Cramer

Short Synopsis: A high school girl looks for other girls to create a soccer club.

Lenlo: Cramer is such a weird show. On one hand it’s a very interesting subject. Women’s soccer, and women’s sports in general, are indeed looked down on by many, wrongfully so. There’s this belief that the competition is less fierce, that the difference in physicality makes it a “lesser” version of the sport and Cramer seems intent on challenging that. Yet on the other hand the whole premise is that our lead isn’t “good enough” to play with the boys and so should raise the level of girls soccer higher. It reinforces the idea that women’s sports are at a lesser level compared to men’s while at the same time trying to combat that. Cramer is written by Naoshi Arakawa, who also created Your Lie in April, so my hope is that it will find its emotional core before too long.

As for the production I don’t have much nice to say here. Lidenfilms clearly isn’t able to support Arakawa’s designs the way A-1 Pictures did for Your Lie in April and it shows. In close ups they look fine, I especially like the way Arakawa designs lips, but in medium and wide shots they look scratchy and flawed. Similarly the animation is rather lacking. They go for these quick soccer movements, and they occasionally work, but by and large they feel like the ball is magnetized when going from point A to point B. Like it’s snapping into place. Maybe the production can stabilize as it goes but for now I don’t have much hope for Cramer.

Potential: 40%

Mario: Despite being one of the shows that I most anticipated this season, after the first episode I am mixed about Cramer. Writing-wise, Cramer is both daring and contrived in equal measure. It’s a show that tackles women’s sports, a topic that I care about, but then its message towards the participants is that “strong players are allowed to be selfish” and I’m at loss. For every “join the girls’ team because I don’t want to see your talent rot in the boys’ team”, we have conflicting arguments like “if you don’t like the girls’ team you can always leave.” Sigh… The story so far is gathering the core team so there’s nothing about it that stands out. Production-wise, I also consider Cramer as both a beautiful and an ugly show. It keeps the characters’ designs akin to Your Lie in April (a big plus), but the choice of having the fence blurred to highlight the girls’ faces backfires as it looks really off (see one of the screenshots). The animation is sloppy, too – it’s at the level of a slice-of-life show, which has me worried. I will keep watching but there are many elements that I don’t think will work out too well.

Potential: 30%