English Dub Review: Megalobox 2 – Nomad “Aunque estés consciente de tu impotencia, Dios te ofrecerá su imagen para que la pises”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In flashbacks, Joe takes the match against Yuri’s student, Liu, but his lack of stamina from two years outside of the ring on top of being shaken about Nanbu’s critical condition costs him the fight. Sachio tells him to leave them all alone at the funeral.

In the present, Joe hears that Bonjiri, one of Sachio’s friends, has lost the deed to his restaurant when two thugs tore up the place. Sachio plans to fight for it somehow but everyone knows he’ll lose so there’s no point in betting, but Joe steps in, Gearless once more, and purposefully takes a dive to get the deed back. It seems like this didn’t do anything to win trust back, but the kids are unsure how to feel.

OUR TAKE

It might seem a bit soon since the last 10/10, but I really do think that we’ve got another total knockout with this episode. Not only do we finally get to see the pivotal moment between this and the last season that shattered Joe’s happy life and sent him spiraling into becoming Nomad, we also get to see how much that journey has really changed Joe and forced him to grow, even if the road ahead is still an uphill route. The situation between him and the kids is still a pretty burnt bridge, or maybe a more fitting metaphor is a flooded house given what happened to the gym. In the moment of him choosing to face Liu instead of see Nanbu in his final moments, Joe still thinks he is able to punch his way out of this situation, but the reality that he can’t comes crashing heavily on him as he realizes his time away from the ring has caught up with him. Not only that, Nanbu’s absence is heavily felt, only increasing his anxiety and doubt, eventually leading to his now infamous loss.

When the first season was airing on Toonami, I liked to compare the opponents Joe was facing with the internal matters he was facing at the time, and I think I can do that here. Liu as a character is not really important here, at least not right now, because what he represents in that match is Joe trying to approach a problem he isn’t prepared for with the solution he’s used to. It’s not so much that he’s trying to recreate the glory days of fighting towards facing Yuri, but rather that he thinks he can beat Nanbu’s illness by raising money for treatment, even while knowing that would only delay things at best. And so, he is soundly defeated. This fight is intercut with him facing the boxer he was told to face to get the deed back and crucially so, as while he is definitely fighting to get something back, you could also say that this is him accepting his trauma instead of fighting against it.

A tactic that is sometimes used to start to get over a traumatic event is mentally go over it in one’s mind and accept that it is happening, so by finally losing on purpose, he is swallowing his pride to try and start rebuilding the bonds that were broken. He probably gained that habit of fighting and winning until being kicked out as Nomad to try and escape that loss that cost him so much, but only by losing could he finally start to be at peace. I was caught off guard by him losing at first and then the twist that it was on purpose, but there are little hints of him looking at the clock during the match so that he knows when to take the dive. To go from someone who would’ve rather died than done so to finally making that choice for Sachio and his friends speaks volumes of how Joe’s developed. Maybe before being true to himself and his skills would have been the right call, but he’s coming to terms with how he needs to adapt and change in order to be himself. And we’re only half way through this season! It’s going to be tough to imagine something topping this, but we have seven episodes to go to prove me wrong.