Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 1970
Jan. 8th, 2023 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAs history’s calendrical odometer turned over by two digits, but with TV anime that can be watched and understood without fluency in Japanese (with a different deficiency, namely of the uprightness to eschew “fansubs” in total, getting mixed up in there) still scarce, I did find myself a bit uneasy about the only title I had to hand for the year. I knew Tomorrow’s Joe is a significant title starting with its manga, but I didn’t especially like the idea of a series about boxing and its relentless battering away of health for the entertainment of others. I have to admit happening on Porco Rosso ending with an extended impromptu punchup did sort of shake my impressions of the movie. The time of Tomorrow’s Joe making, of course, could prompts shrugs about things being “different”; for that matter, there were Peanuts Sunday pages at the beginning of the 1960s with the kids (and Snoopy) wearing boxing gloves and walloping each other with the losers (or just sucker-punched) left dazed and dizzy.
For all that I wondered about winding up spinning a post out of thoughts I’d already had before watching the actual half-hour of animation, though, I suppose I’m once more in the position of acknowledging there was a bit more to what I saw than my expectations had allowed for. The first episode of Tomorrow’s Joe really leaned into “the lowest fringes of society” boxing at least might be a rough step up from; characters were sketched out in a way you could just start rooting for (while wondering just how many of them might show up again) and the artwork had a certain arresting appropriateness. Maybe “brutal street combat” is different from the boxing ring in not threatening to be so stretched out. I did get to contrasting everything to Attack No. 1, which is set on a more genteel socioeconomic level but looks a bit more awkward in general. Knowing something about Tomorrow’s Joe includes knowing how it ends, but I’m not quite sure right now if that’ll be the only factor now affecting whether this particular sample is something I end up pushing myself to take more of in.
For all that I wondered about winding up spinning a post out of thoughts I’d already had before watching the actual half-hour of animation, though, I suppose I’m once more in the position of acknowledging there was a bit more to what I saw than my expectations had allowed for. The first episode of Tomorrow’s Joe really leaned into “the lowest fringes of society” boxing at least might be a rough step up from; characters were sketched out in a way you could just start rooting for (while wondering just how many of them might show up again) and the artwork had a certain arresting appropriateness. Maybe “brutal street combat” is different from the boxing ring in not threatening to be so stretched out. I did get to contrasting everything to Attack No. 1, which is set on a more genteel socioeconomic level but looks a bit more awkward in general. Knowing something about Tomorrow’s Joe includes knowing how it ends, but I’m not quite sure right now if that’ll be the only factor now affecting whether this particular sample is something I end up pushing myself to take more of in.