Ashita no Joe Pilots

Two pilots for Ashita no Joe. They set up the main plot points and lead characters along with displaying a future boxing scene that really shows the theme of this show well. I got into this series from Megalo Box, and I can see why that show was so good. The foundation for it are found in Ashita no Joe, and it's great boxing narrative. I can also appreciate the apparent upgrade in quality from the pilots into the show, and the art holds up surprisingly well for today's standards. I also wonder if Joe inspired Jotaro from JoeJoe's, because they have the same weird ... hat hair thing.

To start with the watch order, I recommend watching the Rikiishi pilot before the Aoyama pilot. It flows better that way and while both are standalone, if you're going to watch both, I think that's what's intended. As for quality, they're pretty good. I recommend them.

More words to be long enough to post even though this is all I have to say. Not sure why there's a minimum requirement, I'm really just posting this to inform people about the watch order. No BBCode either which sucks because I'd have wanted to bold the names of the pilots. Welp, hopefully that's enough.

Two ten-minute introductory episodes to the classic anime series, Ashita no Joe, or "Tomorrow's Joe". If you want to get a good feel of what the series is about, this is a good way to do it in just ten minutes - if after watching one of the shorts you are still interested, then it's worth watching the whole series. In modern-day anime parlance, this might be considered a "PV".

"Tomorrow's Joe" is about a young, wandering, scrappy kid, on his own in down-and-out Japan of the time (late Sixties). He's a street brawler without purpose, who catches the ... eye of a former washed up boxer named Danpei, who makes it his life's mission to turn Joe into a real boxer.

Joe can be considered an analogous stand-in for the whole country of Japan, which is still suffering from the long-term after effects of a generation of poverty and suffering. Yet through the relentless hard work in the face of excruciating hardship and adversity, he (and Japan) can one day emerge victorious! The classic underdog tale that fits the time and the difficulties Japan was facing.