Megalobox

Episode 4

“A fake ID, four fights, and no gear”. This is what Nanbu, Sachio, and Joe are taking with them on the road to Megalonia, and it's a hell of a gamble. At first I was surprised to see Joe take on a professional fight sans his gear so early on in the series; normally this kind of challenge might be reserved for an extra-challenging penultimate fight. However, Nanbu's logic going into the battle against “Shark” Samejima makes perfect sense; the crew that will eventually come to call themselves Team Nowhere are't just underdogs, they're street trash coming up from the gutters of society. In order to climb the ranks and make themselves known, they have to start off with an all-or-nothing bet that nobody can ignore.

So Joe heads into the ring against a tempestuous brawler with nothing to defend himself but his speed, his wits, and his natural strength, and this is where “Dance with Death” begins to take shape as a truly stellar episode. Just last week, we saw Joe confidently knock a geared-up behemoth flat on his face, but this time he seems different. Nanbu is too up in his own anxieties to see it, but Sachio catches on; Joe says he's shaking with excitement, and while that may partially be true, it quickly becomes obvious that we are seeing Joe afraid for the first time. After an early knockdown starts him off rattled, there's a wonderfully executed couple of moments where we see Joe's feet sink into the ring like quicksand. In a lesser production, this effect would have gone on for far too long, likely spoiled with on-the-nose inner monologuing or hacky direction. In Megalobox, the emotional beats come as quickly and hit as hard as the punches Joe is trying to dodge.

Small but impactful touches like this are exemplary of the confident direction and superbly paced storytelling that has made Megalobox such a consistent hit this season. Making this fight the centerpiece of Joe's emotional growth spurt as a fighter is perfectly economical storytelling. It's cliche for a sports narrative, but it's also necessary to keep the dramatic tension up in an otherwise predictable plotline. It's clear from the get-go that Joe can't really lose his premiere Megalobox fight, but instead of falling into the trap of going through the motions, Megalobox smartly uses the “Shark” Samejima fight to cement the bond that Nanbu, Sachio, and Joe all share, and it finds dramatic heft by building tension in Joe's personal experience as a fighter in the ring, instead of arbitrarily teasing whether or not he will win.

By the time Sachio gives Joe and Nanbu a much-needed dressing-down, I was on the edge of my seat, because even though I knew Joe was going to win, I needed to see that victory happen so I could share in Team Nowhere's elation. If there were any doubts about what Megalobox can produce when its production staff is firing on all cylinders, you only need watch Joe's triumphant swagger as he dances around the man who had him clinging to the ropes just moments earlier. It's a thrilling and dynamically choreographed sequence punctuated by great camera work.

Speeding through Joe's next fights via montage is another wise creative decision; the episode's main bout delivered all of the plot and character development we needed to see this week, so it's reasonable that we'd just get highlights of the rest. It works especially well backed by mabanua's energetic soundtrack, which once again proves to be Megalobox's most potent secret weapon. It also means we'll get to spend more time on the Megalonia tournament itself, and I'm totally fine with that, so long as the production crew can keep up this level of polish for the rest of the season.

If anything, the only concern I might take away from this episode is whether or not the show can keep going this strong for another eight weeks. This is as rousing an introduction to the Megaloboxing world as Team Nowhere could have possibly hoped for, and it's an early watermark for highs that the series is capable of reaching. Now that someone from Nanbu's past has come to make things even more complicated for our vagabond boxing family, I can hardly bear the thought of having to wait another week to get more Megalobox in my life.

Rating: A

Megalobox is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.