Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
RebelPanda
Despite all the hype that Megalo Box created from its first few episodes, it became one of the biggest disappoints of the season. At first, it presents a familiar inspirational sports story with a vague setting to get you interested in the well-directed boxing matches. But by the end, the writing is still incredibly shallow. Megalo Box is just a carbon copy of the generic underdog boxing story but slightly worse than the classics it desperately tries to imitate.
Aside from the addition of Gear (exoskeletons to enhance the boxers fighting), Megalo Box tells the familiar tale of a misfortunate boxer, Junk Dog. He had long since given up his dream to become the champion of the boxing world Megalonia because he lacked the documentation to enter the tournament. This theme accurately reflects i…
Read at the sourceAbejundio419
So megalo box, an anime i have been holding off for quite a bit. Honestly, i wasn't expecting much, but i was wrong. The show does a really good job of just putting a character through and outwardly around the ringer. But thats not the focus I think. I think its how well the events occurred with the banger ost of a choice. I mean the music was a complete game changer. Without the music involved, i would not have enjoyed this as much. It was such a bop that i had to get up and start jumping around towards the boxing. With the incorporation of ears and eyes, the music illustrate these emotions and fights in real time. Honestly, im not much of a boxing type guy myself, but with just the absolute banger of a playlist, this has got to be a bang. In the middle of every three episodes, there will…
Read at the sourceHaunt88
I feel like people are unable to be critical of this show probably bcoz of nostalgia and the lack of boxing anime
Coz IMO it's very overrated, like some people already pointed out, those gear would kill people if we talk realistically, like people already dies irl boxing with just gloves, and those are metals like wth
As for the story, nobody seems to noticed the rinse and repeat patern of Joe and his coach, coach wouldn't trust Joe for the entire episode, Joe or the kid will convince the coach somehow and the coach will pull a very heartwarming speech that this is it I am definitely trusting you Joe we gonna win everything sike, rinse and repeat, this happened like 5 or 6 times in a span of 13 episodes, when drama comes the coach will be back to not trusting Joe lol, it happened when th…
Read at the sourceOmegaax
Great anime from start to finish.
The characters, introduced as a mystery and slowly unraveled, are not fully explained, but they don't have to. This anime puts the focus on what is happening, rather than on who is making it happen.
Coming from having read Ashita no Joe three times, the homage is quite clear. As a review said, you can't retell or remake AnJ in the modern age, due to it being set in its era, and many societal values having shifted ever since.
Nonetheless, Megalo Box manages to create a "modern" kind of Ashita no Joe, taking key archetypes and tropes from the original and integrating them into itself.
It is definitely enjoyed more if you know where it's coming from, and doing so makes most complaints from others lose their value.
Great soundtrack as well, it really goes w…
Read at the sourceAstraea_
Now that Megalo Box's English dub recently finished on Toonami I am finally able to watch the series. For those who don't know, Megalo Box is a homage to the classic manga and anime Ashita no Joe which just turned 50 last year. As a fan of Joe, I was of course excited to see what Box was and what it had to offer. Before starting, I would like to clarify that I'm not a super anime elitist that loves classics like Ashita no Joe to death, and believe that its the best thing to come from anime. Yes, I love Joe but it definitively has flaws, and season 2 isn't even in my top 20 anime. I will be comparing Box to Joe when I need to, but I would like to try and judge Box as its own thing.
SPOILERS FOR: Megalo Box & Ashita no Joe
Story: 5
Megalo Box sets place in a current day where a new type of b…
Read at the sourceMcNosky
When you hear the term ‘boxing anime’ there are two series that come to mind: Hajime no Ippo and Ashita no Joe. Ippo becoming a boxer out of wanting to become stronger and Joe Yabuki becoming a boxer by a chance meeting with a boxing coach that saw potential in him. I haven’t seen any of these series... but, what I have seen is Rocky; a story about Rocky Balboa, debt collector and part-time southpaw boxer, is given a chance to fight the heavyweight champion: Apollo Creed based off of his name alone. A pretty simple premise for a film that is just so effective with the charismatic Rocky, the romance with Adrian, the adrenaline pumping training scenes and the drama everywhere else. All culminating into one final fight of emotion and hype! A structure that Megalobox follows while taking in th…
Read at the sourceDietrologia
Finishing Megalo Box was a strange experience for me. I felt adequately satisfied, but looking back on the series as a whole, that feels like a weird thing to say for something that, on paper, is kind of a disappointment.
I started watching the series with a lot of anticipation; I’d never read Ashita no Joe, a manga that’s highly well-regarded within the hardcore manga community, but the idea of a new series with a gritty, early 2000’s anime aesthetic was highly appealing, especially in our current anime environment where good series still get released, but shows with this particular kind of look are hard to come by. The first episode had me as excited as seemingly anyone else in the anime community; its impeccable art direction and stellar music, bolstering a well-worn but perfectly acce…
Read at the sourceAnimeBear422
**spoilers**
Megalo Box is a somewhat formulaic anime that does a great job of pumping you up at certain points in the 13-episode streak, and had some very intense fight scenes that didn't rely on shiny lights and superpowers. Having said that, I feel that the show peaked halfway through and didn't really "knock me out" with the ending. The final moments of the show felt a bit rushed, as if I were watching some sort of abridged version, and honestly didn't really feel as satisfying as it should have for some reason. There was something about they way they handled Yuri and the final fight that left a bad taste in my mouth, although I appreciated that they threw a curveball with the "meat versus meat" finale.
Like mentioned earlier, it's a relatively formulaic anime that closely follows th…
Read at the sourceflaming-moltres
This is more like my overall opinion and reasons why I disliked the show than an actual in dept review. There are minor spoilers and could have mistakes here and there, as English isn't my first language.
Megalo Box wasn't that good. It was just ok. The main enjoyment I got from the show were the animation and the music. Other than that, it's pretty boring.
I don't even care that the ending was predictable. What bothers me is that the story felt rushed as hell. This should have been a 24 episodes anime. There's a reason why most sports anime have at least 24 episodes: characters need to be developped for watchers to want to root for them. In Megalo Box, we never learned anything from the main character, aside for the fact that he's a natural at boxing and that he has a lot of drive to w…
Read at the sourcesupersmashness
Megalo Box started off as a really cool anime. The most noticeable thing to anyone at first glance is the art, which if I remember correctly was just the art being down-scaled and then up-scaled to give it the aesthetic it has. Don't quote me on that. Either way, the artstyle was interesting and the idea of a 50th anniversary project for Ashita no Joe sounded interesting. So why did it end up like it did? There'll be spoilers, btw.
The first few episodes were great, personally. The soundtrack alongside the art made the first few episodes seem badass and hype, and I was really rooting for Joe to win his goal of...not losing matches I guess? I mean, the main "story" doesn't start until a few episodes in, but even by then you're already given several good setups at least.
-The protagonist,…
Read at the sourceWoggo
Warning this review contain spoilers for Megalo Box
Tribute is a way to celebrate old works, by taking ideas of the thing is was inspire by, try to modernize its theme, and setting. That what Megalo Box is it’s a tribute to manga that was made in 1968 known as Ashita no Joe. For those who have never heard of it, Ashita no Joe was a shounen sports manga that ran in Shounen Magazine Weekly. It spanned for 20 volumes and had 171 chapters, it got an anime adaption in 1970 that ran for 79 episodes, it later got a second season during 1980 and it ran for 47 episodes. For the time Ashita no Joe came it out nothing was like it, it was a heave drama show that covers all themes boxing had. It did a lot of things that establish what anime and manga known for, without a lot of your favorites wouldn’t…
Read at the sourceEXStephen
...I gave it a few days to think about. I cannot give Megalo Box any score higher than a 4. I really wanted to enjoy Megalo Box. While I initially did, the excitement I had for the series steadily died out with each passing week. The characters got less interesting, the fights got less intense, and it just became so predictable and lackluster.
Let’s start with the characters. We have Joe, the main character and focus. For some reason, he’s basically made of adamantium so he can take hundreds of blows, get his ass knocked to the ground, but will always magically get right back up as if it never happened. Meanwhile, his opponents almost always get one hit by Joe’s well placed punch to go down instantly. Joe wants nothing but to fight and win. Every fight, he’s essentially just a punching ba…
Read at the sourceWotakunai
Why you should watch Megalo Box?
The story is Great (9). Unlike today, anime before the age of digital advances put a lot of time into developing a single episode of 20-24 minute show for the audiences and this, in turn, makes all the people behind the anime work hard to provide at least the best story that they could ever provide to justify the amount of time and money that is invested in a project. That is why if you are looking for wonderful anime in terms of story and content I would suggest you go back to watching the classics like cowboy bebop, samurai x, detective Conan to mention a few.
Now how does this relate to Megalo Box? A lot! To begin with, this is a love letter to one of the most popular stories ever made: Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow's Joe) for its 50th Anniversary. It's a s…
Read at the sourceConsumedAM
Megalo Box has very little to do with the art of fighting itself. There is no emphasis on technique. There is no weight training. There is no satisfying payout following the arduous process of a fighter desperately trying (and often, failing) to improve their skill. There is the bizzare inclusion of gear technology that grants fighters additional strength at cost of speed - a useless consequence with speed being paramount in combat. So how can an anime that revolves around fighting, but offers none of the impertinent detail of fighting, and is decidedly worse than its predecessors Hajime no Ippo and Ashita no Joe in their depictions of fighting, be celebrated as one of the best releases of the year?
Megalo Box succeeds in three areas that usually manage to garner an overwhelmingly favorab…
Read at the sourceTakaCode
If there was one anime that I would love to get a remake it would be Ashita no Joe. I really series especially the manga for its great boxing matches, amazing rivalry, and wonderful and realistic character development. The series also had great darker portrayal of boxing as sport where not all matches will not end pretty as boxers can potentially get injured to a point where they get they lives destroyed. Thanks to these elements that the show offers as well being a great realistic coming of age + underdog story Ashita no Joe is currently my favourite sports anime/manga series period even beating the likes of Haikyuu and Chihayafuru even thought I adored them but personally they don’t compete the absolute greatness that is Ashita no Joe in my opinion. So when I heard the Ashita no Joe 50th…
Read at the sourceIsvi_Berserk
-Note: English is not my native language, I apologize for possible mistakes. (Review in English and Spanish)
Megalobox is the sports anime of 2018 surely, this presents us with a world located a couple of decades in the future, in which boxing probably suffers even more support than it receives in our world. In this reality boxing has been transformed into something called Megalo Box, thanks to the technology that Shirato has created, the box has evolved due to the incorporation of a kind of exoskeleton known as "Gear" which provides its user with greater resistance , strength and performance. Of course, this technology was not only created for the sport, but it seeks to use this as a kind of springboard to reach the governments and the military.
The first episode shows our protagonist t…
Read at the sourceWalleyeSauger
Spike Spiegel retires from bounty hunting and decides to become an underground boxer! Reel Steel meets Hajime No Ippo!
Megalo isn't mega-awesome in any facet of the game, but it does provide enough entertainment for me to consider it a good show. Our protagonist is similar to any deadbeat, wannabe protagonist in the history of anime except for the fact that he has cool scars and rides a motorcycle to get his mind off of spicy tentacle porn.
"Joe" is tired of being a boxer who has real potential, yet continues to throw it all away by partaking in fixed fights within the underground boxing circuit. But hey, it's the only thing he can do for actual money, right?
Wrong! Megalonia comes along and that changes everything. It's a special tournament for ultra rich boxers who have access to enh…
Read at the sourceKrunchyman
Art, in its purest form, is a catharsis of imperceptible cognitive entities onto a “canvas” for the purposes of provoking reactions from others. Sometimes that reaction involves laughter, other times it is sorrow, and on rare occasions, profound enlightenment, in either case, it is the responsibility of the artist(s) to determine the desired reaction, and how best to achieve it through their intended medium. As one would expect, it permits a copious amount of creativity to take place, yielding unexpected outcomes that one would rarely see in the real world. Antithetical to this branch of human intrigue, is the world of binary results and conventional outcomes, otherwise known as: sports. That is not to say that all sporting events are replicas of past events, but in the grand scheme, one t…
Read at the sourceDarthInvader
*Minimum Spoiler Hidden Gem Review*
TL;DR: If a young Hajime no Ippo made an illegitimate baby with the sexy cougar, Cowboy Bebop, in an 80's themed love hotel with Samurai Champloo music blasting in the background, then Megalo Box would be the gorgeous mixed bastard child that will emerge from the Redline ambulance nine months later. Such a hidden gem but packs so much hype. "JOEEEEE!"
[Story: 6/10 , Characters: 7/10, Art: 9/10, Sound: 9/10, Enjoyment: 8/10]
"They don't make tombstones for stray dogs" - JD
Yes Yes Yes. This is that shounen sports anime this season badly needed to remind what real anime is all about. You don't need bad CG. You don't need blended CG. You don't need Ufotable level CG. What you need is a good mindblasting underdog story, eyegasmic hand-drawn visuals and ear…
Read at the sourceStark700
There’s an infamous quote in the wrestling community that was said by the legendary Ric Flair. “To be the man, you gotta beat the man!” While Megalo Box is not wrestling, there’s definitely an iconic meaning that can be applied here. As I was watching Megalo Box, it reminded me the excitement of fighting. A few years ago when Hajime no Ippo returned on television, it became a glorious showstopper that lived up to all expectations. For Megalo Box, this was like a feeling of deja vu.
The premise of the series involves Junk Dog, an underground Megalo Boxer. He participates in a popular sport in their world known as Megalo Boxing. What is Megalo Boxing? It’s basically a sport that involves boxers fighting with metal gears. Think of it as boxing but with more lethal and brutal consequences. Ju…
Read at the source