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Ashita no Joe Manga's 50th Anniversary Project Announced in Video
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
TMS Entertainment began streaming a promotional video on Sunday celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ikki Kajiwara (pen name Asao Takamori) and Tetsuya Chiba's Ashita no Joe manga. The video shows iconic scenes from both the manga and the anime, and also reveals that the manga's 50th anniversary project is "underway."
The 50th anniversary project already includes a previously announced new spinoff television anime titled Megalobox. The anime will have an original story, and will premiere this spring.
Ashita no Joe revolves around an orphan named Joe Yabuki who rises from the Tokyo slums under the tutelage of a former boxer. Takamori and Chiba's original 1968-1973 manga is among the most critically acclaimed stories in Japanese popular culture, and Osamu Dezaki's television series added to the story's iconic status. The manga would later influence two generations of sports and shonen manga, including Hajime no Ippo (Fighting Spirit). A crucial twist in the Ashita no Joe television anime's plot made headlines in Japan as people marked the occasion with public ceremonies.
The manga inspired multiple TV anime series and anime films, and more recently a live-action film that opened in Japan in 2011 starring Tomohisa Yamashita. A stage play adaptation ran in Tokyo in 2015.
[Via Ota-Suke]
