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"As the wind whirled by, a Hummingbird appeared before the Nomad as they made their way through the wasteland. Hummingbird: Will you listen to my song, Nomad? I'm in a hurry, ask someone else. But the Hummingbird just won't give up and pursued the Nomad. Hummingbird: Please, I must sing my song. Nomad: You're rather selfish. Sorry, but I' m just not in the mood. I'm on a journey to die. Hummingbird: But that's ridiculous. Who goes on a journey to die? Nomad: It's the truth. Why would I bother lying before I die?But the hummingbird refused to give up.
Hummingbird: Then how about this? If I can make you lie, listen to my song. If I fail to do so, I will say no more.
Wanting to be freed from the persistent pest, the Nomad agreed.
Hummingbird: Why do you want to die?
Nomad: Because I lost everything.
Hummingbird: That's a lie.
Nomad: But it's not a lie. I lost my home, my fortune...and my family died from illness. I've got nothing left.
Hummingbird: No, you still have eyes to see me and ears to hear my song. You even have a mouth to speak to me.
Nomad: Yes, you're right.
Though they felt that they had been duped, the Nomad admitted defeat.
Nomad: All right, I lose.
The Nomad didn't want any more trouble, and stopped to hear the Hummingbird's song. The voice was so beautiful that it filled the Nomad's empty heart with a gentle warmth just for a moment.
After it had finished its song, the Hummingbird flew towards the ray of sunlight that was peeking through the clouds."
- The Hummingbird and the Nomad (Storybook)
Redemption. The most successful and decorated Olympian of all time, Michael "Flying Fish" Phelps, sums the one word this way: "Perseverance, determination, commitment, and courage-those things are real. The desire for redemption drives you."
Going back to Megalo Box, the prequel being a creation and a homage to the 50th anniversary of Ashita no Joe a.k.a Tomorrow's Joe, was a fun watch when the anime first debuted in Spring 2018, but quickly faded into obscurity for it being like a stereotypical Shounen anime where the underdog fights his way through all the underground boxing ring matches, to then rise up and be a formidable foe. Even I'll admit that going back to Season 1 now, just feels like the re-watch has made the experience much worse and a slog to finish this "boxing" anime.
But the sequel here, dubbed Megalo Box 2: Nomad? NOW THIS IS A 100% GAME CHANGER of anything but everything that we haven't yet seen before. And apparently the production team behind the prequel also thought of it the exact same way with director You Moriyama, whom producer Minako Fujiyoshi had to convince him to do so, thinking that the prequel by itself is an open-and-shut case. Rather than make yet another season of staying with the whole "tribute to the past" thingie-a-bob (which was what attributed to the less-than-stellar feedback in both Japan and the West at the time), the staff team scrapped that idea, and went for a more mature theme that displays the post events of Gearless Joe in a long timeskip of 7 years, where everyone has matured and Joe's fall from grace as a depressed adult post-Megalonia. Instead of sticking to the same "Ashita no Joe" guns that bullets could crack for its own niche, the production staff team went for a more independent work which incoporates real-life societal issues, while still following Joe as he travels from place to place, while simultaneously not being able to move on from his past friends and rivals. AND BOY DOES IT SHOW, I'd say this change greatly increased the impact that boxing anime fans have been craving for the longest time.
If anything, this Nomad sequel proves one crucial thing that is missing from the prequel: character development IS KING, neither the boxing matches (though since this is a boxing anime at its core, it has to be there) nor the impact of wins or losses. As such, Nomad starts out differently than your average sequel, giving it the vibe sense that the world of the past is present, but you cannot always look back to your glory days and make the same results again. And that's Gearless Joe's re-account of his mature life being the Nomad: the one who wanders around with no goal in sight.
Need I mention that Nomad itself is more complex (as foreshadowed by the production team), but still reigniting the same flame of nostalgia? Because that is what it is: the Gearless Joe is not the same Gearless Joe 7 years later, and has largely kept to a low-profile state after losing out to Yuri's young successor Edison Liu, leading to his recluse life under painkiller drugs and earning money from his old ways of underground boxing matches. If you're wondering why I'd mention a "nonsensical" story in the beginning of this review, "The Nomad and the Hummingbird" is essentially the mature-but-depressed and delusional Joe's road from cradle to death, then riding the road to redemption, and it is a crucial pointer in the progression of the sequel. Through the same-old and new characters that are like character arcs in and of itself (and outstanding ones at that), these people will teach Joe the meaning of life, and what it meant by getting through all the trouble of being an outcast and making the most out of the new life, setting new goals, objectives and aspirations for the future. Seriously though, never have I been so captivated by a character-centric story so jarring, yet is intensely intriguing and hits at the heartstrings like a solemn foreign song played on the guitar. You can never find a better original story like this that is done through much of the production staff team's back-and-forth multiple discussions about the new Gearless Joe and his mature characterization, but fix as much as they can it did to give it an edge that I can say, is on a much higher pedestal than any typical "underdog to champion" fame kind of boxing show.
Mature being the theme of Nomad, and of course, with such a huge timeskip, Joe and the kids of Team Nowhere have matured A WHOLE LOT. We all know what happened to Joe, but in the course of events, his manager-cum-coach Nanbu...shall I say, had some life complications to the point that Sachio and crew thought that Joe was solely at fault when he "abandoned" them for his own gain when going against the former No. 1's student successor (Edison Liu). Needless to say, all of that was a recipe for disaster, as the tables had drastically turned on Joe: the loss of his Megalonia "champion" status, and Sachio with the Team Nowhere kids exiting Joe's life thereafter. 7 years later, everyone obviously grows up, but Joe's fame got so much on his head that the loss subjected him to post-natal depression. Overtime, the new characters Chief (an Afro-Latino immigrant) and Mac "The Hero" Rosario (brought in as the new technological face of boxing Gear) encounters Joe, fights him, and teaches each other about what their human values are worth fighting for, hence the symbolism of "The Nomad and the Hummingbird", which explicitly interchanges the roles between the three Megaloboxers (once in each character arc), educating them and edifying the meaning of "coming home to the family". Even if all is lost, your family will still be right beside you, even through the course of life and death. And you know that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE symbolisms in shows, and Nomad does an outstanding job at reading between the lines when it comes to characterization of the tightly packed and immaculate kind.
TMS Entertainment is back to produce this show (without the help of its subsidary 3xCube which also produced the classic Ashita no Joe), but this time, the old-school style animation is largely improved for the better. Even Joe's VA Yoshimasa Hosoya was surprised at the improved animation, and quote-unquote "was surprised by the improved animation which he felt to be more fit of a movie rather than a TV series". Season 1 wasn't bad, but the asinine tight production schedule, other than the tribute of sampling full HD to old 480p visuals, made it truly stand out in its time. Season 2 here is largely more of the same, though I'd guess that 3 years of production development is more than enough time to make this sequel work its legs to kick out wonders. It is an unique mold, all on its own.
Even the music by famed composer mabanua is back with more of the same-old, old-school style instrumentals, but incorporating with Mexican-Spanish themes. Such as the OP "The theme of the Nomad" which is meant to sound like a glorification of Gearless Joe's better days in mono, to the Latin-American ED "El Canto del Colibrí" (translated as "The Hummingbird's Song") in full Spanish Tejano "folk" style music, meant as a song of the hummingbird, seen as a messenger of the gods used to convey good and peaceful thoughts to kin about their loved ones, dead or alive. And even as much as I miss LEO Imai's hyper OP "Bite" of the prequel, this narrative shift of a sequel does not need all the barking and biting hype, and settles for the comtemporaries to add the classic punch to the impact.
Overall, it's insane to see a famed sequel like Megalo Box 2: Nomad, be so shunned by the community, because other than it being a vastly superior sequel, it can also be taken in as an independent work all by itself. Providing the fact that you have to bear through the decent prequel to get to this sequel, I can safely tell you that the wait is worth the trouble.
Este es un Anime Excepcional Secuela! Realmenté excellenté.
