When I say there’s nothing in anime like Nomad, I mean that almost entirely in the positive sense.  I find Mars Red to be an actor’s series, and Dynazenon a director’s.  If so, Megalo Box II is very much a writer’s series to me.  Everything about it is good, but this show is all about the script.  The layers of complexity and subtlety you see here are rare in any narrative medium, never mind anime.  It’s a series with literary pretensions and the skill to achieve them.  As such, it remains my early front-runner for 2021’s best series (and if it’s gonna be beaten, it sure as hell isn’t gonna be by anything off the summer schedule).

But there is another sense in which Nomad is unlike other anime for me specifically, and that’s the way it continues to compel me even as my gut is telling me it’s headed down the garden path.  Simply put the writing is so good that even if I think it’s wrong, it’s right.  I think this series was pretty much Nomad for its first six episodes, and Megalo Box 2 for the past five.  How it reconciles the two halves of its title in the last two eps is going to determine how far up the charts it ranks in the end – and that too is pretty interesting and unusual.

There’s a poetry to Joe saying that he put his gear on when he came back to the ring because “Gearless Joe” no longer belonged to him – he belonged to the world.  That may sound egotistical on his part but I really don’t think it is – it’s honest.  And if anything humble, because Joe realized he wasn’t the same man he was in any way.  Now, of course, he’s in an MRI machine and surrounded by worried family.  Because, of course, he’s a boxer – and Nomad is no less unsparing when tackling the plight of fighters than that of immigrant communities.  Megaloboxing may be fictional but what the doctor said is fact – there probably isn’t a long-time boxer out there without some sort of brain damage.  Even if Joe is OK for now, it’s only a matter of time.

So what to do?  Why, get back into that ring of course!  Surely at least this fight has to be a good idea for the other guy, right?  Well, no.  If anything Mac is in more acutely bad shape than Joe – much worse in fact.  He’s continuing to have episodes at home, terrifying Miguel, and Maya lies to Asamoto when she comes asking after him.  Asamoto does leave her brother’s article with Maya, though – and Maya shows it to Mac, telling him that he’s displaying every symptom Mikio warns of.  And she comes clean about the real reason she agreed to let ROSCO implant the BES chip – Sakuma bribed her with assistance in getting Miguel a (heart, presumably) transplant.

Coming clean is a theme here, and when he’s released from the hospital Joe finally opens up to Team Nowhere about his past after he left them.  This is – unsurprisingly, as it’s the most “Nomad” – by far the best scene of the episode.  These are all good people, Joe included.  He’s a wonderful protagonist, a flawed and weak man who nevertheless always tries to do the right thing.  To him, asking the others whether he should fight Mac is the right thing, especially after the Liu fiasco.  But I also think Joe knows that his friends won’t deny him something he really wants.  The real question is why he wants it.

Sakuma is the root of all evil in Megalo Box 2, obviously.  A liar and manipulator, callous and calculating, with balls of steel.  He doesn’t even back down when Mac confronts him over what happened, knowing Mac Time could kick in at any moment.  The problem is I don’t believe this series needed a villain like that – it was better off when it was just a story about flawed people trying to do right by each other and often failing.  Forgiveness and acceptance.  But I suppose it was asking too much for a boxing show to steer that course all the way to port.

This is just supremely great television, but that sense of wrongness is still strong.  I don’t want Joe to die, and not Mac particularly either.  Maybe someone can explain to me why this fight is a good idea for either man, because to me it’s clearly a terrible one for both.  But it sure seems like Nomad is trying to convince us that it’s the right thing to do, one last blaze of glory.  How is that glory more important that the people who love you, and the pain this is surely going to cause them?  I’m fascinated yet filled with trepidation to see how the series is going to reconcile all that.