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Introduction:
Note that this is the 'review' for how I in particular consumed the Ashita no Joe series; that being reading the first 8 or so volumes of the manga, then episodes 51-54 of the anime's season 1, then finally this, the anime's season 2. I may later read the latter 12 volumes of the manga and reevaluate. Ashita no Joe is a classic for a reason, it's written around the beautifully tragically written protagonist, who many have said to be constructed in a Shakespearean fashion and level of quality, and I'd be inclined to agree. The introductory 8 volumes beautifully establish who Joe is as ... a person and as a character, a concept, carefully sowing the seeds for his development to come. The latter stretch of the story systematically pays this setup off, each new boxer and corresponding fight challenging and exploring a slightly different aspect of his development, and every story beat in between fleshing it all out and stitching the series together.

Character Analysis:
Joe as a character is constructed very nicely. He's one of those figures who toes the line between being a human for us to relate to and a hero for us to look up to, and it uses the latter expectations to allow his downfall, subverting certain Shounen tropes surrounding our and the cast's view of the hero in a similar - and surely inspirtational - manor to one of my favourite characters, Gon Freecss. He's slowly failed by everyone and everything around him, and himself as a result of others' ill nurture; initially by fate, abandoned by his parents, and then more subtly by Tange, who is a very effective example of a present but irresponsible father figure, unknowingly yet relentlessly building up Joe's reliance on boxing as a measure of his self worth merely for his own self-satisfaction. Further he is failed similarly by Yoko, who pushes his obsession in order to satisfy her regret over Rikiishi while ironically performing the exact same shallow enabling that gets him killed in the first place, and he's failed on a large scale by all the others around him who rely on him as an inspiration, even more so establishing boxing as something that makes him bigger than he was before, redirecting his newfound life satisfaction away from the happy family life that he's ultimately striving for internally and towards the self-destructive celebration of what he thinks is human satisfaction, but is also a representation of his clinging to the immature self-abandoning solitude that was his coping mechanism for so long.
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His is the story of a traumatised child who fails to adjust to the fortune that has at last been bestowed upon him, due to the ignorance of those now responsible for him in favour of satisfying their own boredom within the confines of a safe society. When he meets Rikiishi they meet from opposite sides; Joe channelling his newfound worth into challenging the embodiment of betterment after hitting rock bottom, Rikiishi attempting to face his own baser desires by challenging the embodiment of abandoning oneself to said desires in order to survive. Significantly Rikiishi wins (showing the correctness of that self-betterment) but dies (showing the danger of abandoning the safety of civilisation), which sets Joe onto the path of maturation, grounding him to the beliefs and understanding of the danger of what he's been doing until now. From this point he's given many chances to quit, and we're subtly told constantly that this would be the best path for him; playing with the kids, getting a job at the shop, relaxing on the beach or in the mountains - there's happiness all around him but it's not enough now because of how intrinsically tied his self worth is to boxing. When Yoko goes and fetches him Carlos the damage is more than done. He finds something more worth living for than ever before, and when that disappears he struggles to ever have a purpose again. Jose is the ultimate embodiment of comfort of life, something that Joe clearly respects and envies, but challenging him to boxing is all he can do to strive towards it. In the end he traumatises Jose with his grim resolve and abandon for his own life, and after all that still loses. He dies defeated and smiling sadly, burnt out. He couldn't even become Rikiishi in the end, his last actions gave nothing but negativity to himself and all around him. As humans, we can't live unexamined, boundless and hedonistic. We need to understand ourselves and others, or we'll lose our others and ourselves. Nobody is happy when the outcome is fruitless death

Review: With that done, let's talk about the actual qualities of the series. The manga's art is awesome, bold-lined and with multi-panelled movement, with a really nice art style that delivers expressions decently well. The anime visuals are really good too, super smooth animation that holds up today and some really nice colouring too (nothing notable about the camerawork), however the expressions aren't perfect; some of Joe's are good, but Yoko's in particular caused me to massively misread what the show was trying to tell me (though I'm sure that's largely due to her character being a lot worse than I'd hoped). I liked the splash visuals at the end of each episode and before some breaks, those were seriously beautiful and one of them in particular was the only reason I caught on to the right and left eye motif (right eye = base hedonistic desires [e.g. Tange only ever sees through his right eye] left eye = grounded analytical perspective [Joe's hair often covers his right when he introspects but covers his left when burning with fighting passion]).
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The characters other than Joe were *mostly* good; obviously all of the opponents served well for Joe thematically but only Rikiishi, Carlos and Jose stand on their own (maaaaaybe Kim as well), Harimau however is one of the most ridiculously racist caricatures I've ever seen; Danpei was frustrating to watch and I really hated him but I can't deny he's a pretty good character that way; Goromaki Gondo was really solid actually; Yoko could've been better, I really liked her dynamic with Joe in early S2 but the romantic twist was cliche and stupid; Nishi was good for what he was, as was Noriko and the kids (though they were a bit annoying sometimes), and Kiyoshi was a cool addition too. The story and progression was mostly very good, but there were persistent stretches in which I kind of lost interest. Idk if that was just a me problem because I can't think of any tangible dramaturgical reason for it to fall off in these places other than losing my patience with its nitty gritty shortcomings, but they were there and killed the flow a bit. For criticisms such as that though, you have to bear in mind that I'd effectively been spoiled on the ending of AnJ long before ever starting it, so many lapses in investment can be specified as being because I essentially already knew where the character was going.
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Now for the more surface-level problems it has. First of all, the dialogue is quite bad sometimes. It does that typical Shounen thing where it painstakingly overexplains every little detail of the events unfolding, and that seriously bothers me. On a similar note, the Engrish is comically awful. It's blatantly obvious that they didn't run the English lines past a single person who's actually fluent, it's very hard to take seriously for a large number of important scenes. On the bright side, it's very funny, and I got to make a game out of reviewing every English speaker on their line delivery. Finally, of one the most noticeable problems with the anime is the soundtrack usage. Now the soundtrack itself is very good (especially the song with a lot of bass and the one that's starting accompaniment sounds like a cool remix of Mamma Mia) but it has like 10 songs max, including the OPs and EDs, so naturally it has to milk every one of them dry over its 16 hour runtime. That makes for a tiring watch sometimes, and frankly aside from writing more songs it should've made much better use of silence. Btw it also gets a bit tiring how every other episode ends with Joe running somewhere and Danpei shouting "Joe! Joe! Jooooooooeeeeee!!!" after him. Largely though, I really like the voice acting performances (excepting the Engrish), though similar to the expressions of the characters it's not necessarily remarkable. You get a good idea of the emotions and struggles of the characters, but after recently reading Nana I can't in good conscience say AnJ does that particularly well.

Conclusion: Ashita no Joe is a classic for a reason. It has a legendary protagonist with a movingly told journey, and its influence can be found everywhere in manga and anime released since. As clever as the writing is however, a lot of the finer details could have been handled better (in both mediums, I know I made it seem as if many of the faults were localised to the anime, but my biggest problems with it remain to be those with the dialogue and story beats rather than the anime's occasional instances of dodgy execution amongst what overall seems like a worthy adaptation). 9/10 may well be too generous a score, but what it achieves despite its shortcomings is well worth the hype

Aria is a very pretty manga, by most meanings of the word. The art is gorgeous for one, the detailed backgrounds and endearing setting design of Neo-Venezia is attractive to say the least. But beyond that, so too are its themes and ideals “pretty”; optimistic and pleasant to behold, but overly optimistic and consequently a little shallow. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, there are different ways a story can present itself. While some favour having as close to realism as possible, with grounded settings and relatable characters, series’ like Aria prefer to embrace the fact that these characters aren’t real, but are instead ... “dolls” for us humans to look upon and draw out the qualities we find most appealing.

Now I personally don’t find this type of storytelling as moving as others, I find the messages of “enjoying the detours” and “anything can be happy if *you’re* happy” to fall somewhat flat when paired with the aversion of perspective from the grittiness of real life in favour of idealised settings, and this is definitely the case in Aria, because as I say, Neo-Venezia is an objectively beautiful place with objectively friendly people and objectively accepting culture. However, this manga perfects this kind of storytelling, to such a degree that even I was moved by it for the last 5-10 chapters, and even throughout I was always having a relaxed and good time. It helps that it does acknowledge the shortcomings of this style too, and if you’re more open to it than me than I guarantee you’ll love this manga as much as I know many others do.

Nana is a manga which has a premise which doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest, but I chose to read it because it’s praised extremely highly. As it turns out, the reason for this praise is that it’s one of the most all-round transcendently brilliantly created manga out there. I wish something with an insane premise was written this well, but more than that I wish this manga was actually finished. It must be some curse on me that all of my favourite stories seem to be doomed to eternal incompletion via hiatus, and Nana is another of its kind; it’s author, Ai Yazawa, ... got ill with some undisclosed illness way back when, and hence this masterpiece remains unfinished to this day (though she claims she may continue it at some point it wouldn’t be wise to stake your hopes on it). The fact that an incomplete work such as this gets the acclaim it does speaks more of its quality than I ever could, but I adore this manga so I’m more than happy to rise to the task

Most will tell you the story is the best quality of this manga, and I’m somewhat inclined to agree, but there’s so much more to it than that statement would imply. What makes it so incredible is that it’s meticulously and intrinsically sewn together by all of its aspects; the characters, the symbolism and theming, and the art. The way its characters are written is through a method I like to call “Hunter x Hunter cast”, wherein every character is a foil for one another and you can’t go 2 panels without noticing a parallel between this dynamic or the other. It knits the cast together through the controlled use of themes and motifs, and strengthens said themes tenfold every time it does it. This isn’t the end of the connective flow either; it does that great thing where it interweaves conversations and monologues with completely separate scenes, both as they’re occurring and as we transition to the next, and it gives the whole thing such a beautiful flow.

Dramaturgically, I must say, it threw me for a loop. For the first few volumes it plays a slow buildup and introductory tone and pace, before kicking quickly into high gear and dropping the reader into the deep end with some of the best handled drama I’ve seen in a while. Now this plays out intensely and masterfully, but where you might expect the ‘arc’ to end it hits a mildly conclusive wrap up before flowing straight on into the next section of the story. The tension never relieves, it just ebbs and flows carefully yet unpredictably, and that threw me off at first, but it becomes clear quite quickly that this method perfectly encapsulates the ‘real life’ type of story flow it’s trying to accomplish. Rather than having a collection of synchronised arcs collected together that open and close simultaneously, there’ll be varied lengths of arcs for any character or group of characters, and they’ll weave about one another; rising and falling at different times, never a point where everyone’s at a plateau. It works beautifully, and makes it feel like you’re truly living the life of these characters.

The comedy is an interesting topic because I can definitely see someone finding it obtrusive, finding it to take away the sense of drama and break immersion, but oddly enough I feel it not only meshes well with the work as a whole but somehow enhances the realistic tone. Humans aren’t good with tension, and in real life we don’t all seriously brood about with each other like in a BBC drama, even when going through serious situations. Not only is the banter funny, but it’s always in character, and characters who might in other series’ be reserved purely for dramatic moments get an impressive dose of humanisation through the comedy.

The themes of Nana are thoroughly intertwined with one another, and make for one of the strongest cores of any story I’ve read. The concept of determinism not being dictated by a merciless fate but in fact by our own uncontrollable desires and urges from past and present is thoroughly explored; including the idea that said desires are borne of past lapses in nurture, of traumas or neglect or anything from our past that left us dissatisfied then or dissatisfied now, and that such dysfunctional catalysts are born again by the ‘fate’ controlled by our uncontrollable egos. It also explores the nuance of responsibility and self-care; the struggle to find a balance between keeping yourself in check so as to keep yourself safe and keeping yourself happy. More than anything, Nana is a story about trying to learn how to care for yourself through caring for others, and so there’s constantly a mess of projection and self-deceptive conflict ever present, as the characters try to navigate their complex interpersonal relationships in order to find some semblance of satisfaction in their lives.

The art is stunning and beautiful throughout. The style is a simple fine-lined one, with big eyes and skinny bodies, but normal enough proportions for them not to feel like cartoons. The use of black and white is extraordinary, always perfectly evokes the emotions of scenes, or the thoughts and feelings of characters which just don’t come across otherwise. It employs a vast bank of symbolism making it rich for analysis, but it’s never mandatory to stop and analyse; Nana exists on the surface level as well as many layers below.

The dialogue is excellent, realistic when it must be, comedic as it will, and constantly evocative of subtle parts of the characters’ psyche, be that the one who’s talking or someone else through clever paralleling. Some may consider the manga to be too dialogue heavy by preference, but it never feels arduous to read while still having enough density and depth to prove engaging. Both protagonists take turns monologising, and these soliloquy’s contain some of the most beautiful and poetic quotes I’ve heard in manga. Out of context some of them sound quite cheesy, but they always work brilliantly in context and more often than not have double or more meanings, as they overlap with seemingly unrelated scenes.

The only reason I can think of to not recommend this manga is its incompletion, however there’s so much utterly excellent fiction here that I think it would be a crime not to check it out. Besides, Volume 21 is actually a good conclusion (relative to not actually being the end), though there are a few extra chapters afterwards of the next part of the conflict

In conclusion; Nana is a masterpiece and you should read it NOW

Zaregoto is a messy series. Even in more modern works, NisiOisiN isn’t the best at narrative construction - leaning more towards characterisation through extensive and intricate monologues - and so in such an early series of his it’s perhaps only to be expected that it’d be at the very least a bit confused. Let’s take it arc by arc for context because a lot of its flaws only come out when examined chronologically rather than retrospectively.

Kubikiri Cycle (Volume 1) was a good mystery story, but only decent setup for the series. It has a lot of good dialogue and the mystery was well put together ... (though I did solve it hehe), but in retrospect it maybe could’ve set up more than it does. It’s clear now that Isin didn’t have a comprehensive plan for the overall story, and as such each arc is more cohesive within itself than as an entry in Zaregoto.

Kubishime Romanticist (Volume 2) was really good, though a little overrated. As far as Ii-chan setup goes it does everything that V1 doesn’t, establishing so much about his unreliability as a narrator and his various character flaws (and personal mischaracterisations). Not only that but the story is pretty damn good in this one too, and the mystery is really solid too (though again I did largely solve it, other than the X/Y thing because that’s dependent on Japanese I think?).

Kubitsuri High School (Volume 3) was… quite bad. It progresses Ii-chan’s character nicely (his character is the only constantly good thing in the series) but the story is uninteresting, the dialogue is uninteresting; everything about it just makes me yell that I don’t care at all.

Psycho Logical (Volumes 4 & 5) were GREAT and I hate how underrated they are. The most compelling storyline in the series, some of the best dialogue (Utsurigi Gaisuke’s convos), some of the coolest Ii-chan characterisation; just all round great to read.

Cannibal Magic (Volume 6) was the best arc. The chapter wherein Ii-chan discovers Hime-chan is easily the coolest chapter in the series; the turning point of his character, a surprising yet inevitable story beat mixed with some beautiful and moving monologising. And the rest of the arc is almost as good, the discourse surrounding Kuchiha is awesome and Izumu is really great. And of course it introduces Mr Fox in a really exciting and intriguing way.

Nekosogi Radical (Volume 7-9) is where it gets the messiest BY FAR. Thus far, each arc has introduced some vaguely related but mostly disconnected ideas and characters, and this arc’s job is to introduce ten times more still and then tie them all to everything up to this point. Now while I do believe it eventually achieves this in V9, before that V7&8 make an absolute dog’s breakfast of it, and fixing it afterwards doesn’t undo that. In theory I LOVE the ideas of found family this arc plays with, the ideas of the chaotic powers of fate, the ideas of bonding through opposition, the ideas of the ‘end of the world’; of closure and despair and dissatisfaction and how it all describes the unchanging yet ephemeral nature of life and its struggles; but for such a long time it makes SUCH a boring story. No, I didn’t know where it was going in V7&8, and frankly it didn’t do a good job of making me care.

Kunagisa and Aikawa had a confusing thematic role and it couldn’t decide what the end of the world really symbolised and there were TOO MANY DAMN CHARACTERS popping out of nowhere and introducing their long-ass Japanese names and the story went every which direction. But as I said, Volume 9 fixed it all (with one exception imo). It explained what Kunagisa meant to Ii, what Magokoro is to Ii and Aikawa to Magokoro and to Ii and what Ii is to Fox and Fox to Ii and Zerozaki to Ii; their dynamics surrounding their various struggles with confronting life are intricate and well written, and I know because Zaregoto SPELLS IT ALL OUT for me in excruciating explicitness; it can only be too vague or too obvious, nothing in between. Regardless, the theme writing all makes sense in the end and I genuinely loved most of Volume 9, especially the last 2 chapters. My 1 exception is that I HATE the trope they used by resurrecting Kunagisa. Like I get that it still works symbolically as Ii moving on from her perfectionism and whatnot, but it’s CHEAP and shallow and would’ve worked better if he’d done a found family type thing with that also. It’s not the worst thing ever but it bothers me, especially as Kunagisa is already a character who I don’t think stands on her own, only being interesting as an aspect of Ii.

Ultimately I think it stuck the landing, Zaregoto, but it remains a thoroughly flawed series to me, emblematic of so many of Isin’s shortcomings as a writer (and a person, did he really have to have Ii GROOM a 14 year old in this LN? Like, she legitimately develops a dependency on him by the end, this is actual child grooming). Regardless, I do see why some value this as one of their favourites, even though it doesn’t quite hit like that for me. Still miles better than Medaka Box after all

Sonny Boy is NOT hard to get in a general sense. Its “confusing and abstract” reputation is earned purely out of its favour of metaphors and kaleidoscopic visuals over grounded storytelling, really its entire thematic ethos can be summed up with the phrase “coming of age”. That being given, said metaphors are ill-defined on a moment-to-moment basis and as such the show can leave the viewer grappling for a more cohesive allegorical framework. Too much emphasis is placed on the world-building of the abstract situation, especially given how clunky and unintuitive a lot of the dialogue surrounding the setting and premise can be; it would’ve ... worked a lot better if they’d cut down on the ‘realism’ a bit during the “drifting” instead of trying to make it both ephemeral and grounded, and leant more into the visual expression of the themes. The thematic core is a simple one, and simple expressionism serves it better than convolution.

All of that being said, it generally does a really good job. Each episode is paced fairly competently and each mini arc is decently clear about what it’s trying to get across, though in for example the Tower of Babel episode it bites off more than it can chew with the detail of its metaphors; it gets away with it because we all get what it’s trying to say intuitively, but in several places in the show it gets hard to care about what’s happening because it’s being too damn roundabout in its expression. The characters are solid, not the strongest cast out there but they each serve their purpose. Most of them aren’t given proper arcs (or rather conclusions to their assigned single conflict) but this is obviously meant to emulate how we view our real peers so it gets a pass on that. The story beats are done well for the most part, it feels as if it loses its way halfway through as far as tension and drive go, but again it suits its purpose so it’s not really a problem. One particular beat falls flat though (at the end of episode 9), it’s obviously supposed to be a bit jarring but it doesn’t elicit the intended accompanying shock. It kind of covers for that in Episode 10 and 12 though, so again it’s not a big problem.

*[Non-specific spoilers in this paragraph]*
Now the best thing about Sonny Boy is the last episode. In the first half it directly challenges the hopeful philosophy the anime has obviously been building to (again, this grounded people-drama storyline would work so much better if the rest of the show had been more dreamlike but it definitely works well anyway), then it pulls off THE most impressive audiovisual sequence in the show in the middle as a conclusion to the main storyline, before resolving the challenged message with a mature and sad-yet-hopeful denouement. Tied the whole show together again, really cool ending.

Overall this isn’t a tightly written anime, but it accomplishes what it set out to do in what I’d consider a very elegant way despite its minor shortcomings.
7.5/10, Recommended

Ah, Medaka Box. What an intriguing mess of a manga. If I were to summarise its ethos I would describe it as the embodiment of Shounen, all of the good and bad. Truly it’s a very interesting series at its thematic core, but it is just SOOOO shit sometimes and NisioIsin can’t write a story on a good day. This is a good example of why (1) he should stick to light novels and (2) he should stick to character writing when constructing his works.

The first arc is nothing, just a low-key setup with some boring Slice of Life shenanigans, but it soon transitions into ... proper Battle Shounen stuff… which is pretty much just as boring. If there’s anything good to be said about the Abnormals arc, it’s that the character writing and theming is still more competent than your run-of-the-mill Battle Shounen. How the ideals of the enemy interact with that of the idealised protagonist is decently compelling, even if it’s dragged down by dull fights and a duller plot. But then Kumagawa appears (*fan girls squeal*)

As everyone says, Kumagawa Incident is indeed the best arc. Kumagawa is obviously the best character in this series by far, and this arc is very cleverly structured to bring out his best points, even if it still suffers from some dull fights which will remain to plague the entire series. It’s such a brilliant idea to have the Shounen antagonist be the underdog, to play into the premise of the reader rooting for the villain knowing he will lose, and it’s even more brilliant to tie that further into themes of hope and persistence, the themes which such a Shounen antagonist would typically embody the antithesis of. And I thought he’d die but to my delight he remained in order to breath a bit of tolerability into the rest of the manga. Speaking of which…

Kurokami Medaka’s Successor is about as mixed as the whole manga. The first 20 chapters suck absolute dog dick, they’re honestly so awful. To be honest they’re probably not even any worse than the first 50 chapters but they taste all the more bitter after getting a brief sample of good writing in the last arc. And then it takes a sudden turn that justifies it all and gave me hope for the series all over again, playing perfectly off the meta aspects and transforming Zenkichi from a boring ass generic side MC into a genuinely compelling presence who drives the plot in an interesting way. And then 10 chapters later it’s not that interesting again. But by the end of the arc it pulls off the conclusion pretty well, and manages to make me like Medaka somehow and at this point I’m feeling perplexed and angry at the series. If it could’ve just got a hold of itself this manga could’ve been something special, and it still is in a way, but it makes me angry the amount of pure incompetence I had to sit through to now come to that conclusion. Oh also Anshin’in is pretty cool but could’ve been executed better.

Jet Black Bride was stupid, it’s sort of interesting to see Medaka develop this way but frankly it’s too little too late, and the arc was obviously boring as hell. Word play was fun, but as someone only familiar with Japanese from a beginner’s standpoint it was hard for me to be massively engaged with it. I liked the panels where Anshin’in killed those guys with all the skills and stuff.
Unknown Shiranui was actually pretty good by the rest of the series’ standards but it’s too late at this point for me to care, and it’s still a bit too stupid for me to get too invested. Still, at least this arc wasn’t so much of a slog to get through and it concluded a lot of the themes well. I don’t care about Shiranui though.
Bouquet Toss to the Future was kind of great actually and I hate it for that. It perfectly wrapped up Medaka’s character, Kumagawa’s and their dynamic as well as the former’s with Zenkichi’s, and it’s a great roundup of the messy, bullshit, nobody-cares-about-them cast and all of their gags and powers and nonsense. Epilogue was whatever but who even cares at this point.

The last couple arcs made me think about how much of a love-letter this series is to Shounen. The over-powered main character who we know is going to win but somehow find solace in the victory of anyway, the put-upon main villain who we know is going to lose but somehow find hope in anyway, the passionate normal guy who we hate-to-love because of his shallowness and uncool inspiration, the childish fan-service, the childish powers, the childish jokes, the childish optimism; who really wants to graduate from Shounen Jump, eh Kumagawa? The answer is me, because this manga is ass. Sorry not sorry, maybe you should’ve hidden your misogynistic undercurrent better.