Nomad: Megalo Box 2

Megalo Box is an advanced form of boxing where competitors wear metal frames called Gear. When the first ever Megalonia tournament took place, "Gearless" Joe became its champion and known to all as a legendary fighter. However, soon after, he lost an exhibition match against the second champion and vanished from the public eye.

Seven years later, Joe now goes by "Nomad" and keeps a low profile, occasionally fighting in a few underground matches to get by. He is haunted by hallucinations and relies on a set of painkillers to numb his mind.

During a match, Joe wins against an opponent, Chief, who purposefully loses for some extra cash from gamblers. Subsequently, Joe discovers that Chief is from a community of immigrants called the Casa. Chief is gradually trying to make enough money to purchase the land where they live illegally. At first, Joe hesitates to get involved, but eventually decides to lend the Casa a helping hand.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Joe Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Chief Supporting

Tanaka, Miou Japanese

Nanbu, Gansaku Supporting

Saitou, Shirou Japanese

Yuuri Supporting

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Sachio Supporting

Murase, Michiyo Japanese

Shirato, Yukiko Supporting

Mori, Nanako Japanese

Aragaki, Tatsumi Leonald Supporting

Tamura, Makoto Japanese

Shirato, Mikio Supporting

Suzuki, Tatsuhisa Japanese

Marla Supporting

Farahnaz, Nikray Japanese

Rosario, Mac Supporting

Miyauchi, Atsushi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Abe, Kengo Producer

Tsuchiya, Junichirou Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jun 27, 2021

KANLen09

Recommended

"As the wind whirled by, a Hummingbird appeared before the Nomad as they made their way through the wasteland.

Hummingbird: Will you listen to my song, Nomad? I'm in a hurry, ask someone else.

But the Hummingbird just won't give up and pursued the Nomad.

Hummingbird: Please, I must sing my song.
Nomad: You're rather selfish. Sorry, but I' m just not in the mood. I'm on a journey to die.
Hummingbird: But that's ridiculous. Who goes on a journey to die?
Nomad: It's the truth. Why would I bother lying before I die?
...
But the hummingbird refused to give up.

Hummingbird: Then how about this? If I can make you lie, listen to my song. If I fail to do so, I will say no more.

Wanting to be freed from the persistent pest, the Nomad agreed.

Hummingbird: Why do you want to die?
Nomad: Because I lost everything.
Hummingbird: That's a lie.
Nomad: But it's not a lie. I lost my home, my fortune...and my family died from illness. I've got nothing left.
Hummingbird: No, you still have eyes to see me and ears to hear my song. You even have a mouth to speak to me.
Nomad: Yes, you're right.

Though they felt that they had been duped, the Nomad admitted defeat.

Nomad: All right, I lose.

The Nomad didn't want any more trouble, and stopped to hear the Hummingbird's song. The voice was so beautiful that it filled the Nomad's empty heart with a gentle warmth just for a moment.

After it had finished its song, the Hummingbird flew towards the ray of sunlight that was peeking through the clouds."
- The Hummingbird and the Nomad (Storybook)

Redemption. The most successful and decorated Olympian of all time, Michael "Flying Fish" Phelps, sums the one word this way: "Perseverance, determination, commitment, and courage-those things are real. The desire for redemption drives you."

Going back to Megalo Box, the prequel being a creation and a homage to the 50th anniversary of Ashita no Joe a.k.a Tomorrow's Joe, was a fun watch when the anime first debuted in Spring 2018, but quickly faded into obscurity for it being like a stereotypical Shounen anime where the underdog fights his way through all the underground boxing ring matches, to then rise up and be a formidable foe. Even I'll admit that going back to Season 1 now, just feels like the re-watch has made the experience much worse and a slog to finish this "boxing" anime.

But the sequel here, dubbed Megalo Box 2: Nomad? NOW THIS IS A 100% GAME CHANGER of anything but everything that we haven't yet seen before. And apparently the production team behind the prequel also thought of it the exact same way with director You Moriyama, whom producer Minako Fujiyoshi had to convince him to do so, thinking that the prequel by itself is an open-and-shut case. Rather than make yet another season of staying with the whole "tribute to the past" thingie-a-bob (which was what attributed to the less-than-stellar feedback in both Japan and the West at the time), the staff team scrapped that idea, and went for a more mature theme that displays the post events of Gearless Joe in a long timeskip of 7 years, where everyone has matured and Joe's fall from grace as a depressed adult post-Megalonia. Instead of sticking to the same "Ashita no Joe" guns that bullets could crack for its own niche, the production staff team went for a more independent work which incoporates real-life societal issues, while still following Joe as he travels from place to place, while simultaneously not being able to move on from his past friends and rivals. AND BOY DOES IT SHOW, I'd say this change greatly increased the impact that boxing anime fans have been craving for the longest time.

If anything, this Nomad sequel proves one crucial thing that is missing from the prequel: character development IS KING, neither the boxing matches (though since this is a boxing anime at its core, it has to be there) nor the impact of wins or losses. As such, Nomad starts out differently than your average sequel, giving it the vibe sense that the world of the past is present, but you cannot always look back to your glory days and make the same results again. And that's Gearless Joe's re-account of his mature life being the Nomad: the one who wanders around with no goal in sight.

Need I mention that Nomad itself is more complex (as foreshadowed by the production team), but still reigniting the same flame of nostalgia? Because that is what it is: the Gearless Joe is not the same Gearless Joe 7 years later, and has largely kept to a low-profile state after losing out to Yuri's young successor Edison Liu, leading to his recluse life under painkiller drugs and earning money from his old ways of underground boxing matches. If you're wondering why I'd mention a "nonsensical" story in the beginning of this review, "The Nomad and the Hummingbird" is essentially the mature-but-depressed and delusional Joe's road from cradle to death, then riding the road to redemption, and it is a crucial pointer in the progression of the sequel. Through the same-old and new characters that are like character arcs in and of itself (and outstanding ones at that), these people will teach Joe the meaning of life, and what it meant by getting through all the trouble of being an outcast and making the most out of the new life, setting new goals, objectives and aspirations for the future. Seriously though, never have I been so captivated by a character-centric story so jarring, yet is intensely intriguing and hits at the heartstrings like a solemn foreign song played on the guitar. You can never find a better original story like this that is done through much of the production staff team's back-and-forth multiple discussions about the new Gearless Joe and his mature characterization, but fix as much as they can it did to give it an edge that I can say, is on a much higher pedestal than any typical "underdog to champion" fame kind of boxing show.

Mature being the theme of Nomad, and of course, with such a huge timeskip, Joe and the kids of Team Nowhere have matured A WHOLE LOT. We all know what happened to Joe, but in the course of events, his manager-cum-coach Nanbu...shall I say, had some life complications to the point that Sachio and crew thought that Joe was solely at fault when he "abandoned" them for his own gain when going against the former No. 1's student successor (Edison Liu). Needless to say, all of that was a recipe for disaster, as the tables had drastically turned on Joe: the loss of his Megalonia "champion" status, and Sachio with the Team Nowhere kids exiting Joe's life thereafter. 7 years later, everyone obviously grows up, but Joe's fame got so much on his head that the loss subjected him to post-natal depression. Overtime, the new characters Chief (an Afro-Latino immigrant) and Mac "The Hero" Rosario (brought in as the new technological face of boxing Gear) encounters Joe, fights him, and teaches each other about what their human values are worth fighting for, hence the symbolism of "The Nomad and the Hummingbird", which explicitly interchanges the roles between the three Megaloboxers (once in each character arc), educating them and edifying the meaning of "coming home to the family". Even if all is lost, your family will still be right beside you, even through the course of life and death. And you know that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE symbolisms in shows, and Nomad does an outstanding job at reading between the lines when it comes to characterization of the tightly packed and immaculate kind.

TMS Entertainment is back to produce this show (without the help of its subsidary 3xCube which also produced the classic Ashita no Joe), but this time, the old-school style animation is largely improved for the better. Even Joe's VA Yoshimasa Hosoya was surprised at the improved animation, and quote-unquote "was surprised by the improved animation which he felt to be more fit of a movie rather than a TV series". Season 1 wasn't bad, but the asinine tight production schedule, other than the tribute of sampling full HD to old 480p visuals, made it truly stand out in its time. Season 2 here is largely more of the same, though I'd guess that 3 years of production development is more than enough time to make this sequel work its legs to kick out wonders. It is an unique mold, all on its own.

Even the music by famed composer mabanua is back with more of the same-old, old-school style instrumentals, but incorporating with Mexican-Spanish themes. Such as the OP "The theme of the Nomad" which is meant to sound like a glorification of Gearless Joe's better days in mono, to the Latin-American ED "El Canto del Colibrí" (translated as "The Hummingbird's Song") in full Spanish Tejano "folk" style music, meant as a song of the hummingbird, seen as a messenger of the gods used to convey good and peaceful thoughts to kin about their loved ones, dead or alive. And even as much as I miss LEO Imai's hyper OP "Bite" of the prequel, this narrative shift of a sequel does not need all the barking and biting hype, and settles for the comtemporaries to add the classic punch to the impact.

Overall, it's insane to see a famed sequel like Megalo Box 2: Nomad, be so shunned by the community, because other than it being a vastly superior sequel, it can also be taken in as an independent work all by itself. Providing the fact that you have to bear through the decent prequel to get to this sequel, I can safely tell you that the wait is worth the trouble.

Este es un Anime Excepcional Secuela! Realmenté excellenté.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Feb 4, 2022

ANDy342

Mixed Feelings

Well-written

Desperately tries to rid itself of the trappings of the Shounen genre but ultimately it cant.

The ideas on display here are brilliant and could have made a really fresh/exciting anime. Very rarely do we see shounen protagonists after their ultimate victory they often become essentially gods once its done. But here he falls back down to earth struggling with real issues like poverty, racism, drug addiction, even hate crimes are touched upon. But all of this is thrown away as the series progresses like an immense gravitational force is pulling it back to the its origins of shounen.

There's just so many dropped ideas. So spoilers. ... For example, the Nomad in the title doesnt make sense. 80% of the show isnt Joe travelling but instead going home, the absolute opposite of a Nomad. But its weird for the first 4 episodes it really embraces the Nomad side. A man travelling aimlessly with no home. Then its dropped. Same for the drug abuse, that is solved in one episode. The racism is again solved in an episode. The kid is commiting hate crimes then he smiles and everyone is chill again. And its even weirder but Joe isnt white but never experiences any racism, the show just ignores the non-white main character in a show with racism??? Or why does it have a south American style/vibe going for 4 episodes for it to be dropped out of nowhere. All the promotional images, trailers and a 1/3 of the show has it but then its gone.

Then the rest of the show just becomes season 1 again and ends with the fight of the century. Never mind Joe is 10 years older and his body should be fucked from years of heavy drug abuse. At the start Joe is a Nomad, no real identity since he has left boxing. The show sets up him trying to find an identity post boxing only for him to become the same man he was at the end of season 1. I guess it was nice seeing the kids all grown up.

Overall it was ok. Im going to continue to keep an eye on this director because I do think he has talent, he just needs more experience.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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May 20, 2023

Bensonas

Not Recommended

Watching Megalo Box 2 has made me want to rewatch the first season, but not on a good way. It's been over 2 years since I watched season one, and I gave it an 8. For a 13 ep season it was nicely paced, great story, thoroughly engaging and vary enjoyable. After watching season 2 however, I'm starting to question my initial thoughts. It's not great.

I've never watched an anime that I can say was rushed and really slow at the same time. Quite and achievement to be honest. There are still 13 episodes but 3 story arcs and each one of them ... should have been great, they definitely could of been great, but they decided to write all 3 to one 13 episode season.

The first arc is probably the best, but that isn't saying much. It kind of brings you nicely in from the first season, but only just. You do meet some interesting characters though. The set up is good for this arc, and very quickly the possibilities open up for a great story. You start to invest in the arcs main character, that isn't Joe, and look forward to each passing episode. That is until the story is abruptly done and you are forced to move on. You are left longing for the exploration of what could have been rather than being satisfied with what was. This arc could have easily been the entired 13 ep season if paced better

The second arc is the worst. This may be tainted however by the fact it come directly after the poorly explored first. Basically, you meet some old characters, they are older, p***ed off, and is used as a vehicle for flashbacks and filling the gaps between season 1 and 2. It's irritating to be honest, one character in particular is insufferable. It tries some character development and fails. It tries some story progression, builds to a point where you feel that it coming to an exciting moment, you take a look at the episode count and suddenly realise you are in for another abruptly ended, poorly explored arc and now, you are thoroughly disengaged. Please bare in mind, this is a 13 episode season. By episode 6 or 7 you will have already been through 2 story arcs.

The third and final arc of this 13 episode series is probably the slowest. It does however have some ok character development. Nothing great really, just OK. The focus is back away from Joe to a center focusing on 2 companies and a new Megalo Boxing star. From start to finish, this arc is again rushed yet manages to be really slow at the same time, every arc here could be explained as such, this arc however, is the shining example of this unfortunate description. By this point, I just didn't care. I didn't care about the story, didn't care about the characters. Only the always smooth animation was pulling me through this monotony. It was a massive disappointment from start to finish.

On reflection, season 1 was great. Great pacing, great character development, great story. It seems that season 2 is everything the first season wasn't. A wasted opportunity, and I believe, has now written Megalo Box to closure when we could have had 2 to 3 seasons instead of this 1.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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