Megalobox

Episode 5

After this episode opens on soldiers working their way through the dusty roads and ruined buildings of a war-torn country, you could be forgiven for thinking they were watching the wrong show at first. The faux-low-res haze and grimy aesthetic of MEGALOBOX are all there onscreen, but there's still something to be said for the way “The Man from Death” so capably upends expectations, and this cold open is just a taste of things to come. Once again, MEGALOBOX goes out of its way to take a familiar sports drama plot, where our protagonist goes up against his mentor's old protégé, and infuses it with enough style and drama to make the whole story feel visceral and compelling.

A big part of what makes “The Man from Death” such a fascinating episode is just how much it commits to selling the pain, both physical and emotional, that broke the foundation of Nanbu and Aragaki's relationship. Last week, I assumed that the scary-looking bruiser was someone who had been burned by Nanbu's penchant for chicanery and back-room dealing, but the truth turns out to be much more harrowing. Aragaki is a veteran who lost both of his legs and suffered terrible burns in a bombing incident that took out the rest of his crew, and for a long time he was thought to be dead. Before this awful incident, he worked with a very different Nanbu from the one we know today, a legitimate trainer who offered Aragaki the only home he could depend on. When Aragaki returns to Nanbu to challenge Joe to a fight, he isn't doing his old mentor a favor. Aragaki hates Nanbu for shutting down the gym and fleeing when he needed him most. Aragaki doesn't simply want to fight Nanbu's new protégé; he wants to destroy him.

Indeed, destroying his opponents is what Aragaki has become famous for, as Sachio ominously discovers after some internet sleuthing. The fighters who face off against him aren't just beaten, they're left broken, bruised, bleeding, and unconscious after just one round. This plot works on a number of levels. First, and most predictably, this conflict elevates the stakes for Joe, who has quickly risen up the ranks after his brief stumble in the ring last week. Beyond that, Aragaki's ruthlessness gives MEGALOBOX the unexpected opportunity to explore the depths of suffering that come from his physical trauma and PTSD. “The Man from Death” makes liberal use of both mabanua's electric score and MEGALOBOX's flair for surreal visuals to dive deep into Aragaki's headspace, including a particularly fraught scene where Aragaki has his finger on the trigger of a gun he's lodged in his mouth.

It's really dark and heavy material for a show about boxers with pistons attached to their arms, but MEGALOBOX pulls off this feat by drawing direct parallels between Joe and Aragaki's lives, with Nanbu caught right in the middle to reckon with his past. Like Joe, Aragaki was cast off by society, though his pain is amplified by both his physical scars and the psychological damage that comes from being tossed into a warzone, chewed up, and spit back out, only to be forgotten by the world you were maimed trying to protect. Nanbu may have thought that Aragaki was dead when he cut and run from his old life, but that offers little comfort to either of them, and Aragaki cannot help but bristle with rage and hurt when he sees that he's been replaced by a haughty young upstart. Aragaki needs prosthetics just to be able to walk, let alone fight, and here comes a kid who thinks he can become the next Megaloboxing champion without using any gear at all.

This is complex material for MEGALOBOX to throw at us out of the blue, and I can't help but be impressed with how well it turned out. The general outline of this story may be familiar, but the show goes to surprising lengths to examine the many ways its heroes have been tossed aside by the world and how they rely on acts of violence to fight their way back to claiming even a modicum of human dignity. Even though some of the imagery and direction is heavy-handed, “The Man from Death” succeeds in making Aragaki, Nanbu, and Joe's stories all gripping in their own ways, making even a routine matchup between the young blood and the ghost from the past heavy with real tension and emotional stakes. When Joe gets knocked down in the first round at the episode's end, we feel the hit land, and it ensures that the cliffhanger works despite MEGALOBOX's reliance on relatively predictable narrative checkpoints. If you were worried that the show might begin to lag as it neared the halfway point, “The Man from Death” is here to reassure you that MEGALOBOX isn't letting up any time soon.

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.