Megalo Box ep 2 – Pro Punching

Hey we’re back with the first episode two review of this anime season! I thought with at least trying to review an episode a day I would be able too cover this quicker but my brain had other plans! Due to scheduling two new episodes probably would have appeared between my ep 1 and 2 review.

Alright so everything that I predicted in the episode 1 review happened. So I’m a genius. He lost his fight badly and went to megalobox tournament. The whole episode was fighting and then set up for the main focus of the story.

Before the main criticism I had for the fight scenes was that they weren’t nearly at the same level of the ones in Hajime no Ippo. Now I think I can label exactly why the fights feel so strange to me. It’s because the fights are very zoomed in, and we rarely see the two opponents on the same screen. The alternating camera angles lead to a very stop and start feel that makes the action less gripping for me. This also isn’t a fault of the director but being forced to a short number of episodes reduces the chance to add more to the fights, flesh them out a bit and really show the pain of the opponents as we see them get slowly worn down.

As well as that my complaints for the villain still stand. He is bland and boring with nothing going on but supposedly being the best.

One thing the episode did well but maybe could have done sooner was show the terrifying consequences of going against the people who plan the match. We see the fighters boss told to cut out his eye for a mistake he didn’t make. This sets up the tyrants they are running from but also makes winning the tournament so important.

Ideally I would have liked the show to be longer so that the introduction of the tournament didn’t seem so forced, but it’s not which is a shame. At the end of the episode he gets his name “Joe” and it shows that the rest of the show will be about the tournament.

It looks like this is going to turn into a lot more action without a whole lot else to say. Therefore if I stop reviewing this episode you know why. I’ve already explained why the action doesn’t work for me so there is a high possibility I won’t have much else to say.

What did you think of the episode? Which seasonal anime should I review next?

This is what I mean by way too zoomed in. You can’t tell what’s going on so it’s less interesting. Also Yuri is a lot taller than the fighter so this fist is just directed at nothing.