【Ashita no Joe】 Sports! Story of a young man named Joe Yabuki and his boxing career as a Bantam weight!! Considered as the most influential manga ever!!

Ashita no Joe is a Japanese Sports manga series written by Asao Takamori and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba.

The manga series was serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Shounen Magazine from January 1968 to May 1973. It’s individual chapters were compiled and collected into 20 separate volumes. The manga has over 20 million copies in circulation. The series was immensely popular during its serialization and was considered the most influential manga ever. Many anime and manga still reference it to this day. The Megalo Box anime is actually a futuristic reimagining of the original made as a part of Ashita no Joe’s 50th anniversary. The story of Ashita no Joe follows the boxing career of our protagonist as a Bantam weight.

An anime television series adaptation by Mushi Production was released in 1970, consisting of 79 episodes. A second season of the anime was released in 1980, consisting of 47 episodes. Aside from that, two anime films and Two live-action films have also been released.

“Tokyo, one of the largest cities in Asia. At the outskirts of Tokyo, there exists a small place, where the winter wind blows vastly, piles of dust cover the walkways, garbage and logs pile up alongside the river and stop its flow. Have you ever seen a place like this? This story starts from such a place”.

The story begins with Joe Yabuki, the protagonist of this story, walking through the city slums. He spots some children playing in the ground and happily heads over to play, but in the middle of the road, he trips and falls over something.

From the ground gets up a drunk man who introduces himself as Danpei Tange. Danpei gets furious at Joe and in turn a fight erupts between them, but is short lasted as Joe knocks out Danpei with a single kick to the gut.

Danpei regains consciousness and immediately asks Joe to become his partner in boxing. He keeps persuading Joe by telling him how he can become a wealthy man through boxing, but Joe light heartedly ignores the question and gets on his way.

Taro, a young boy who spectated the whole encounter, starts following Joe and corners him with the help of his friends. Joe doesn’t seem a bit intimated and even mocks Taro to attack. Danpei, the drunk man from before, makes his way and takes a seat at the roof of a house to spectated their match.

Taro tries to attack Joe from behind, but he easily dodges and starts delivering a series of blows and kicks to Taro’s face, rendering him unconscious.

Just then, three grown men from the Devil Princess Gang make their way through the crowd, dragging a young girl behind them for attempting to steal from them.

Danpei mocks the gangsters for picking on a little girl and starts climbing down the roof, but one of the gangsters breaks the ladder, causing Danpei to fall to the ground.

One of the gangster starts beating Danpei with a stick, when Joe intervenes and twists the man’s arm. He then proceeds to brutally beat up the gangster for such a cowardly act of hitting a young child.

The girl comes up to thank Joe, but he just makes fun of her and runs along his way.

Danpei on the other hand, gets more determined to make Joe a boxer.

Will Joe take up Danpei on his offer and become a boxer?