Introduction
High school student Yawara Inokuma lives a completely happy and ordinary life. She aspires to an average lifestyle as a delicate young lady with a handsome boyfriend in the near future.
Unfortunately for Yawara, she has an undesirable prodigious talent in Judo, a modern martial art that is neither feminine nor fashionable. Moreover, Yawara is the only granddaughter of the seventh dan Judo master Jigorou Inokuma, who expects her to become a Japanese Judoka superstar of the '90s.
Yawara cautiously hides her strength from everyone to maintain a normal reputation but is often pushed to situations when she must exercise her Judo skills. Observing Yawara's immense potential from the shadows, Kousaku Matsuda, a sports reporter from a substandard paper, is willing to do everything he can to bring her into the limelight.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Audience reviews
8 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
SMGJohn
Yawara! Is one of those anime series that shows up on “Top 10 greatest 80s sports anime” however calling it merely a sports anime does not do it justice.
Yawara is perhaps the most underrated late 80s anime in the western hemisphere - it even surpassed Ranma in screen views at the time, its well known in Japanese circles and for good reasons, Yawara is not merely an anime about judo, its an anime about a clumsy and emotional teenage girl journey to find herself in the adult world her frustrations with judo not for the sport but because of her family which will hit home with many of East Asian cultures.
The storyline is nothing exceptional, but its relatable, its close to home, in many ways to a modern audience its refreshing to see a down to Earth drama anime with such respect towards i…
Read at the sourceVenomtan
First, I would like to point out that Yawara is somewhat similar to One Punch Man and Mob Psycho in the sense that the main guy is too powerful, and highly unlikely to lose. Everyone in the show acknowledge her sheer talent to various degrees.
Since we already know the main guy, Yawara is too powerful, how do you make the show interesting? Naoki Urasawa does 2 things. One, he makes the show more about the reactions of others around Yawara. Since Yawara is so strong, her rivals go to great lengths to train themselves to be worthy of defeating her. Two, Yawara is also hesitant to do Judo, the thing where she is all-powerful.
A lot of time is spent on others trying to convince her to continue Judo, and it may seem frustrating as well. I have seen a lot of reviews where people dislike Yawar…
Read at the sourcerobddoo
"No, all of you taught me. You showed me how great it is... to do your best."
Inokuma Yawara is a teenage girl who wants nothing more than to be normal. She loves fashion, wants to learn how to cook, and someday get a boyfriend, but secretly, she's a judo prodigy, something she takes no pleasure in being. Taught by her five-time national judo champion Grandfather, Jigoro, since she was about four years old, she's now been put through rigorous, daily training for over a decade, but her Grandfather feels this grueling practice behind closed doors will only push her abilities so far, and so before he reveals her abilities to the world and announces his plans to send her to the Barcelona Olympics and earn the People's Choice Award, he proposes a slightly unusual plan; he wants to find her a r…
Read at the sourceorpheusbreeze
Wrote a review at Episode 33, so I'll post it below and an updated review follows right after finishing the anime:
-- [ Currently watching the show and at episode 33 ] --
I read that this was on par and even better than Ranma 1/2, so I was excited to watch this show.
However, I'm 33 episodes in and I'm kinda frustrated. This may sound like an exaggeration, but the main character, Yawara, literally says the same lines over and over. After 33 episodes, I would have expected SOME kind of development from our main character, but it's only very minor and it doesn't even last long.
The grandfather is quite manipulative, and i don't understand how he can be the 'comic relief'. The only comic relief I get is when Kazamatsuri runs away from the reporters. Other than that, nothing in the show…
Read at the sourcekekekeKaj
Naoki Urasawa's an interesting fellow. An award winning mangaka, he's probably best known in the English anime fandom for "Monster", a dark, psychological manga from which sprung an anime of the same name, an anime that critics often trot out when compiling their "Best Anime" lists. (Disclosure: it's also on mine, though whether I count as a critic is debatable.) Given Urasawa's crendentials, you probably wouldn't expect him to have also written a manga that gave rise to a bright and chirpy long running sports anime adaptation about a young girl doing judo. That anime is "Yawara!", or to give it its full title, "Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl!"
Wait! Come back! Before you dismiss "Yawara!" on the basis of its silly title and sports premise, remember this is Naoki Urasawa we're talking ab…
Read at the sourcefaisal_awesome
Hi, let's start by saying I am a big classic anime fan and Yawara is one of the best ones I watched. The review will cover all Story, Animation, Sound, Character, and Enjoyment.
Story 9/10
The Story talk about "Inokuma, Yawara" a 3rd-year high school girl, She has been practicing Judo since childhood with her grandfather. However, she never played a real judo match ever, so no one knows about her. Until one day a reporter called "Kousaku Matsuda" for the Daily Sports Newspaper discover her talent by accident, and he wants her to play judo and won a gold medal in the Olympics. In the other hand, Yawara does not like to judo, she wants to be a normal girl, having a normal friend's normal job and most importantly normal love. So the story is about Yawara's life between judo and having a norma…
Read at the sourceggultra2764
To think I've been dragging my heels over completing this one the past several months. I was surprised to discover that this was one of Naoki Urasawa's earlier works considering his work on mystery/ thrillers like Master Keaton and Monster. Yawara is a bit more lighter in mood as a sports rom-com in its focus on our titular heroine being dragged into the world of judo competitions due to her natural talent and life-long training for the sport, despite not wanting anything to do with it. The series follows Yawara from high school to her time in the working world as her natural skills as a judoka lead her to become an international sensation due to her abilities.
On the plus side, Yawara does a mostly solid job with developing Yawara's character throughout the series as she seeks to live he…
Read at the sourcelilithilk
This is not a sports anime really. The story is about a Judo prodigy named Yawara, who doesn't really like the idea of doing Judo. But it is sort of the family trade and she doesn't have the - I am going to go with the word backbone here for the lack of a better description - to put her foot down so she does Judo even though she strongly dislikes the idea. But hey, everybody else seems to love the idea that she does it, so she does it.
Story:
This is the whole plot of this anime. It is said in the description on many websites that it is a sports anime but in my opinion it is a shoujo'ish slice of life anime with the touch of sports in it. The plot moves along the same track over and over in an eternal loop, "She dislikes Judo, she is going to stop, something happens, she does it, and she…
Read at the source