Kodansha USA Publishing revealed on Wednesday that TMS Entertainment will stream the anime of Ikki Kajiwara (pen name Asao Takamori) and Tetsuya Chiba's Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow's Joe) boxing manga for the first time in the U.S. on its YouTube channel starting on Friday. The first three episodes will stream for a limited time.
The manga ran in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1968 to 1973, and it had 20 compiled book volumes. The series has remained a mainstay in Japanese popular culture for decades. The manga has inspired two television anime in 1970 and 1980, as well as two anime films in 1980 and 1981. The manga inspired a live-action film that opened in Japan in 2011 starring Tomohisa Yamashita. A stage play adaptation ran in Tokyo in 2015.
Ashita no Joe revolves around an orphan named Joe Yabuki who rises from the Tokyo slums under the tutelage of a former boxer. Takamori and Chiba's original manga is among the most critically acclaimed stories in Japanese popular culture, and Osamu Dezaki's television series added to the story's iconic status. The manga would later influence two generations of sports and shonen manga, including Hajime no Ippo (Fighting Spirit). A crucial twist in the Ashita no Joe television anime's plot made headlines in Japan as people marked the occasion with public ceremonies.
The manga's story was re-imagined in a new sci-fi setting with new characters in 2018's Megalobox anime, which credits the original manga as its origin. The sequel series for Megalobox, Megalobox 2: Nomad, premiered in April 2021.
Source: Press release