Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1989

For my final sample of anime from the 1980s, I dug out and opened at last a DVD box set of a series not quite as notable now as other titles from its time but still connected to manga, at least. Yawara! adapted a manga by Naoki Urasawa, who nowadays seems a rather respectable manga artist. Sometimes, though, “respectability” threatens to get entangled with “the sort of manga that doesn’t get adapted into anime.” I at least recall seeing comments this “judo series” acquitted itself well against Ranma 1/2’s “anything-goes martial arts” when they both got on the air in Japan around the same time. The adaptation of a Rumiko Takahashi manga was licensed over here long before Yawara!, though, and that seemed to make a difference...
( A fashionable judo girl )