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Yoshimasa Hosoya Stars in Megalobox Boxing Anime

The official website for Megalobox, a new television anime based on Ikki Kajiwara (pen name Asao Takamori) and Tetsuya Chiba's Ashita no Joe manga, began streaming a promo video for the series on Thursday. The video previews the protagonist, Junk Dog. Yoshimasa Hosoya will voice the character.

The anime will premiere on TBS and BS-TBS in April.

The anime is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the original manga, and it will feature an original story. In the new story, a man called JD (Junk Dog) participates in fixed boxing matches in an underground ring in order to live. Today, he enters the ring again, but he encounters a certain person. JD wants to take on a challenge that risks everything.

Yō Moriyama (animation director for Master Keaton and Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, concept designer for Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress and Attack on Titan) is directing the series at TMS Entertainment, and he is also in charge of conceptual design. Katsuhiko Manabe (Shin Kyūseishu Densetsu Hokuto no Ken: Raoh-den Gekitō no Shō, Shin Kyūseishu Densetsu Hokuto no Ken: Raoh-den Junai no Shō) and Kensaku Kojima (live-action Shinya Shokudō series) are both overseeing and writing the scripts, and mabanua (Kids on the Slope) is composing the music.

Chikara sakuma. will launch a manga adaptation of the anime, titled Megalobox - Shukumei no Sōken (Megalobox - The Twin Fists of Fate), in the March issue of Kodansha's Shonen Magazine Edge magazine on February 17.

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.

Source: MoCa News