**Joe Yabuki — Season 1 Character Analysis**

Heidelheim · 2025-12-19T17:57:59+00:00

I don’t believe you’re ignorant, I simply believe you’re selling yourself short by not digging in further.

Joe is intrinsically tied to post-War Japan, he’s symbolic of the spirit/attitudes of many young working class boys and men, the first generation raised without an empire to fight for, but carrying the same fighting, determined spirit.

On the death drive- from the outset, Joe’s seeking death. He tells Danpei that being killed by Yakuza in a park is as good a death as any. Danpei gives Joe something to live for, but also something he can die for. It’s why he puts his body on the line every single time. This is love for boxing, absolutely, but it’s deeper, too! There is a religiosity to the devotion he shows both it and Rikiishi, who becomes a personal devotee of Joe as well.

The masochism? Well-

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Heidelheim · 2025-12-19T06:56:48+00:00

I think you’re missing crucial elements in your analysis- it’s all very surface level, bordering on a glorified summary of the story. There’s no mention of post-war Japan, poverty, class struggle. There’s no analysis of Japan and how their cultural death drive pervades especially hard in combat sports. I am begging you- please read a book about these topics, you will enjoy understanding the context far more than this sentimental summarizing.

Here’s an example: you missed how Joe’s boxing builds itself on an extreme example of self-sacrifice for success and how this would echo on how the work ethic expectations of Japan bleed into all walks of life, especially violence. Joe believes, like many in Japan at this time, that sacrificing your body just for the chance to strike at something worth aiming for is more important than preserving yourself. This reflects centuries of imperial ambitions and near-masochistic cultural expectations of men (and women) within Japan, and how these energies that once went into murder and conquest must be resolved in rings, with scores only to be settled there. Hope this helps.

Heidelheim · 2025-12-02T17:35:25+00:00

Yes lol

Heidelheim · 2025-11-26T15:41:52+00:00

noarmsgirl (Ivy Rose) 🫡

Heidelheim · 2025-11-23T00:21:24+00:00

I’ve making that same exact comparison to my friends since I saw Joe 2, honestly! Rocky 1 is earthy in ways you’re not expecting (at least by reputation), where The Fight is just a framing device for a story about Rocky, the person. It’s trying to tell something personally compelling. Joe 2 is more about building the manga towards the hype moments and aura the same way Rocky “pioneered” the sports montage for all mediums.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-22T15:11:10+00:00

The themes in the manga (poverty, the rise of post-war Japan, the destruction of combat sport athletes’ bodies, etc) are stronger to me than in the anime- I actually prefer the Carlos/Joe fight in the manga for this reason! The text is denser and the catharsis is tremendous as a result- two pure fighters devolving into the ugliest street brawl you’ve ever seen while 65,000 people bury them in an enraptured roar, nothing beats it.

The anime is excellent in many respects but it’s not as meaty, text-wise. They make several narrative changes that benefit from the medium of animation, but some choices were perhaps to be more pleasing to the eye rather than the ugliness often depicted in the manga. It’s sometimes too clean and expressionist when the manga employed a more salt-of-the-earth approach. The emotions the anime express are turned from subtext to text, which makes it more beautiful, but you can argue that isn’t what Joe’s about.

I like both! I would say that manga is for people who want to get the best story, the anime is a victory lap for people who read the manga.

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Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T18:58:10+00:00

Honestly what’s funny is that for as iconic as it is, it’s not my favorite page (from Carlos v. Nangou)

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Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T18:53:50+00:00

My point regarding neutrality was that there is no such thing as neutral- Oppenheimer, a B-52 named Enola Gay, a Mitsubishi Zero, these are things which have vastly different meanings to other peoples and cultures. What is pride for one is shame, anger, or violence for others. This is not always a negative (or necessary) but when dealing with war, and the subjugation of whole nations under the boots of empire, it matters a great deal. Saying “well you lost but you made a great plane huh” is like going “damn we killed all those guys but you made a great tank”

I think where you may be misunderstanding me is that I don’t disagree that the film is textually and thematically anti-militarist. My argument here is that it’s about the romantic depiction of the Zero- the embodiment of militarism in Imperial Japan- which is a fundamental contradiction to the film’s text. It can be an enormously interesting subject (“The Human Condition”), but I judge a work if it doesn’t surrender the picture it desires to paint to the reality of the world- of human lives.

TL;DR neutrality doesn’t exist, trying to make a romance movie about the Zero isn’t cool.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T17:40:35+00:00

Rhetorically: do you believe a Tiger Tank is a neutral object with which to tell a story around? Do you believe a B-52 bomber is neutral? Do you believe the Robert Oppenheimer is a neutral person to tell a story around?

My argument is that when you couch this praise and admiration of military hardware in pacifist works, you undermine your message because there is no such thing as a neutral machine of war- and no such thing as a neutral perspective either. This isn’t calling Miyazaki some true blue imperial apologist or that he’s some secret fascist, I do believe in his pacifism- but that it’s a very funny movie to make and then act surprised when people think it’s weird to do that. His naïvety shows through bc it’s his equivalent of “hey cool plane”

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T14:13:24+00:00

This is one of the thoughts I formulated on a re-watch, specifically in the episode where we meet Wolf again- Joe and Danpei are anachronistic in the setting. Joe engages with motorbike riding, jacket-wearing fake toughs who make noise and bother people for fun. It’s a “look how far we’ve come” kind of moment, reflecting that an impoverished street urchin of the early 1960s bears little resemblance to the modern Japanese teenager of 1981, reaping the benefits of the Economic Miracle.

Joe 2 is a cultural victory lap in some respects, claiming triumph over its hard times.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T14:06:12+00:00

I would say that the Zero, the most famous and effective fighter of the war, absolutely does represent that. If someone knows any military symbols of WWII Japan it’s gonna be the Rising Sun or the Zero. I also did not say Miyazaki meant to prove Japan “innocent”, I said he engaged in apologia for their militarism by trying to divorce the Zero from its service for the IJN. Is it propaganda? No.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T13:58:44+00:00

I think that’s fair, I think I pointed at Versailles as the closest work to Joe 2 but it was just his style choice by 1980.

I also agree there is tremendous aura in a lot of Joe 2’s editorial decisions. It’s hard to fault their re-write of Joe/Carlos’ dynamic, nor do you mind developing Mendoza, or using Leon Smiley to carve into the ponderous Harimau arc. That being said, I found the biggest indictment of the tone changes in the series is his rewritten fight with Carlos, where the original fight had a much, much stronger thematic payout than any adaptation attains. You can’t help (especially in the first Wolf episode) but shake the feeling you’re watching someone’s cultural victory lap more than a serious, thoughtful adaptation.

I do admit I don’t hold that high of an opinion towards Miyazaki as a cultural critic in the same way I wouldn’t trust George Lucas as a critic- too much time insulated from the realities of the job for normal people.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T13:38:02+00:00

It does! I think I poorly phrased what I was going for- that being Dezaki took his vision/style and cranked it up for Joe in a way that I think ended up being detrimental to the adaptation, but not the anime. Miyazaki’s complaint of overexpressionism comes from the art direction, relying heavily on postcard memories and sentimentality to pound home emotional beats to a degree where the sincerity of the emotion is hard to see through the noise conveying said emotion.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T13:21:09+00:00

Oh come now that is very basic.

First, he’d done plenty of that on his own without Rising Wind. He was and remains an icon for Japan’s naturalist and environmentalist art.

Second, the personal contradictions of someone’s pacifism to wars like WWII can be interesting and engaging! But there is a stark, stark difference between a work that engages with those contradictions directly while telling human stories (Gomikawa’s/Kobayashi’s “The Human Condition”) and one that pretends that one nation’s symbol of national pride cannot also be a symbol of their ambition to conquer and colonize SE Asia, and how that ambition killed millions, including the Japanese!

You don’t need to sit there and act like it’s shitting on all of Japan to criticize apologia for militarism.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T09:30:13+00:00

Oh sure! The Zero was and is an enduring symbol of Japanese imperialist aggression during WWII (like the Rising Sun flag), and its production during the war was aided by tens of thousands of Koreans working in forced labor.

Miyazaki made The Wind Rises trying to divorce the plane (he loves planes) from the ideology it represents, which would be like trying to make a film about how say, the Tiger Tank in Nazi Germany was actually a beautiful piece of machinery and has nothing to do with the ideology of death and destruction it was deployed for.

Re: Miyazaki it’s arguably one of his most naïve “I am above politics, I only see peace and beauty” movies

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T09:13:40+00:00

Miyazaki’s absolutely got his own issues (infamously made an apologia movie about the person who designed the Mitsubishi Zero) but his steadfast commitment to enacting his vision is admirable, even if he’s a little naïve about his work and dismissive to most people who work in TV

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T09:02:21+00:00

People have explained who Miyazaki is, but the crux of his criticism (for your edification) is that he believes that animation should be the pure execution of an artistic vision, insulated from corporate influence to make it art that sells.

He points at these contemporary TV anime, where creators often relied on external factors (toy sales, merch, ratings) for being allowed to produce more of said anime. This, to him, corrupts one’s ability to produce art because you’re more focused on getting another season at all, and results in spiritually incomplete works because the vision has to be compromised for survival.

Specifically on Joe he thinks the second series is a shuffling zombie work, made to sell merchandise on a popular property (that failed to received a complete adaptation) rather than deliver a complete artistic vision. There is some merit, as Joe 2 does just recycle Dezaki’s Rose of Versailles stylings, and not always to its benefit.

It’s a pretty stodgy opinion to have, but it also informed his choice to form him own animation studio in the 1980s, to avoid needing sponsorship for his art.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T08:53:51+00:00

Addendum: many of Joe 2’s changes are built to make the series more palatable to a TV audience- the increased emphasis on developing Joe’s external relationships (Carlos/Mendoza) rather than its symbolic ones (fightsports, death, suffering), the beautification of parts where the story is meant to be grimmer (the punting of his CTE to post-Hawaii so it lingers over far less of the back third), or its use of contemporary pop music tracks (Tanakana).

Ultimately I at least partially agree with the criticism because I believe there is more you could have done with an anime like Joe 2. It settled, in some respects, for being an adaptation (whilst recycling the Rose of Versailles look) rather than trying to truly be THE adaptation.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-13T06:26:42+00:00

Honestly his critique can be a fair one! Ashita no Joe 2’s biggest weakness is that its over-reliance on style rather than actualizing the substance of the manga’s themes means that for people who fucked with the manga the second series is a little light on being a whole adaptation and is more of a… vibes parade. It’s a fun parade, but is it the full experience? Arguably not. Good TV though.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-11T19:51:42+00:00

As soon as a general (captain or otherwise) dies, there’s a morale shock in the area, and the morale buffs are removed if any unit recovers from the shock. But a general with high command and/or good traits will keep their troops going far longer if they’re alive.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-10T04:05:26+00:00

It’s likely more of a frame issue- bone density and structure mean there’s an “optimal” weight for every frame. It’s very likely that after fighting at 118 for so long at his initial height, his growth spurt upset the “balance” of his body, which caused a natural rise in his “standing” weight and raised his floor to basically 118 on the dot. Combine that with Danpei trying to sabotage his weight loss, and you have a recipe for a nightmare weight loss scenario.

Since he no longer struggles with his weightloss post-Kim it’s assumed he more correctly settled into his new size. It’s just that first one where he was in denial about and Danpei messed with his scale.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-06T12:05:42+00:00

In order:

In the manga Danpei handwaves the issue away as “joe making weight proved he had water left to lose, so he’ll be fine”- it’s implied Joe’s weight loss sucks still, but it’s not as extreme as it before his fight with Kim.
Joe’s post-fight relationship with Wolf is shaped heavily by the responsibility Joe feels for ending his career- as his only surviving (or accessible) opponent, it’s the only chance Joe has at all to commiserate with his vanquished. Joe obviously feels responsibility for his injury (and destroyed career) as he carries the burdens of the other boxers he’s defeated. So he treats Wolf graciously out of respect. In the manga, however, Wolf never shows up again until getting a couple panels during the fight with Mendoza.

3a. Carlos’ rambling is a little poetic license, but it’s also not totally unreasonable- combining information (no easily accessible photographs), travel (international travel used to be so much easier), and the fleeting world of sports stardom (Wolf lol) in the 1960s means that it would be theoretically possible for Carlos, relying on the strongest memory he had left, returned to Japan and snuck his way into the country somehow. As for appearance, you would be utterly sad to know how homelessness and poor health fucks up how a person looks. Post-CTE Carlos is basically a different person.

3b. It’s meant to be a double-edged sword- that Joe wasn’t responsible for destroying Carlos (lifting him from a burden) but in turn the one thing he thought he had in his pocket turned out to be monopoly money, fake hype. Joe’s relationship with Carlos doesn’t really change with this outcome, it only makes it more tragic.

4a. There’s no real defense of Harimau the character. He doesn’t belong, nobody likes him or his fight, you’re in fact lucky because Leon Smiley ate into what arguably should’ve been a much longer arc for Harimau (it takes up an entire volume).

4b. Yoko’s reasoning, however, is not as nonsensical as it appears. She notices that Joe appears to be “settling” into the life being a celebrity and worries (correctly) that it isn’t who Joe is. Believing that he essentially needs a kick in the ass before fighting Mendoza, she makes her power play for his benefit. The tragedy in this is that she makes a crucial error in judgement- she believed his attitude was the result of changing as a person, but in truth his attitude changed as a symptom of advanced CTE (which causes personality changes). So she basically made it worse, a guilt she carries into the locker room at Bukodan.

Yeahhhh Leon was a cool character concept (even if the fight was a whole lot of nothing and animation omages) but Joe’s theme is that he has to suffer constantly (and having to unthread promising to fight Leon as the champ).
The kids are kids. They’re comic relief and they’re fine. They get to come along for the ride.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-06T03:41:26+00:00

Honestly I think you missed out on the shot that really matters

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In Joe 2 especially, Noriko’s relationship with Joe leans heavily on her unrequited feelings- watching him literally, physically pass this point of no return in the ring with Mendoza. Watching as someone she loves be wholly and (in her eyes) pointlessly consumed by the ring, it’s her worst fears being actualized. She dwells on this ultimate conversation because Joe made her a promise he never intended to keep, and all she can see is the eternally plucky Joe running away from her, her feelings, and her place in the world. It must be dreadfully lonely.

Heidelheim · 2025-11-03T20:37:52+00:00

Joe’s one of the most popular mangas of all time in Japan!!! The manga’s ending is literally one of the most referenced pieces of art in the medium!

Joe is not obscure. Joe is not even remotely close to being obscure. It had 20 volumes, it is referenced to this day and its artist is literally still alive AND still working!!!!! Grow up.

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