In this crowded and varied spring schedule, Megalo Box is the anchor.  It’s the series that shows up every week, narratively kicks ass and goes home.  There are no debts to pay here, no nods to the source material that have to be dotted and crossed, no period tropes that need to be checked off.  For a spinoff series it seems remarkably free of the burdens of being part of a legendary franchise, even as it stays faithful and gives it the occasional bow (“For tomorrow”).  It’s just good storytelling, no more and no less.

While it seems as if Aragaki’s role in the larger plot may be over, he certainly made quite an impact in two episodes.  Enough so that one might wish that Megalo Box could have had a long run like the sports anime of old (such as Ashita no Joe), where his character might have been a central figure for eight or ten episodes.  There’s a lot to this guy – a lot of pain, a lot of history, a lot of potential.  Too much so for two eps, really, but if Megalo Box was going to use him the way it did, it certainly got the most out of him in terms of pushing Joe and even more so Nanbu’s stories forward.  That’s a difference between one-cour series and longer ones – secondary characters usually end up being subverted to their utilitarian role in the narrative, rather that have character arcs which exist for their own sake.  But it’s hard to do that much better than Megalo Box did here.

“Saved by the bell” could hardly be better defined than by what happened with Joe in the first round of this fight – though truth be told, a boxer breaks no rules in finishing a punch he’s started to throw before the bell.  A couple of things are happening in this first round – most obviously, Aragaki is totally dominating the fight.  But merely by getting up time after time, Joe is foiling Arakaki (and Miyagi’s) strategy.  And soon enough, it becomes clear that there’s an urgent reason why that strategy hinges on finishing Joe off quickly.

Joe’s decision to parrot Nanbu’s advice over and over may or may not have been innocently intended – I would have no problem seeing him as the kind of guy who’d do that knowing it would get into the opponent’s head.  But irrespective of intent, it’s effective – those are words Aragaki has heard himself, countless times.  They, and Joe’s smile (anime’s most charismatic since ACCA: 13’s Jean, probably) are a red cape to the bull, and there’s a growing desperation to Aragaki’s haymaker punches.  So much so that he leaves himself open to a counter, and is promptly laid flat by Joe.  He gets up in time, but the damage is done – they dynamic of the fight has totally shifted.

Aragaki, as it turns out, is living on borrowed time – both in this fight, and as a boxer.  In fact he knew this was going to be his swan song going in, and saw it as an opportunity for some sort of closure with Nanbu.  The third round is a Balboa-Creed style slugfest, but that’s all Aragaki has in the tank – he fails to answer the bell for the fourth, and for the rest of his life.  In truth, it’s the scene in the locker room after the fight that this arc was building towards, not the fight itself.  Both Aragaki and Nanbu have to let the post go and face down a frightening future, and perhaps now that’s become a little easier for both of them.

For Joe, the question now is whether he has Megalonia in his future – though of course, we don’t have much of a story if he doesn’t.  Yuri would very much like to see him there – the newly-minted third entrant, Glen Burroughs, would obviously not.  But “Gearless Joe” has caught the public eye, and given that the entire event is clearly designed as a media spectacle first and foremost Joe’s background hardly matters if he’s the guy the paying public wants to see.  Will he continue to be gearless even as he steps up to the major leagues?  And will Shirato Mikio (Suzuki Tastuhisa), seemingly set up to be Megalo Box’s signature elitist, be his next opponent?