Lessons from Past Anime #3: Aging well - Ashita no Joe vs Devilman (1970s)

The fascinating thing about Ashita no Joe is how it managed to be the best anime sport series despite being one of the first to have sports in it. It usually takes decades of slowly improving the formula of a genre before it can be considered great, yet here we are with Joe being the best right away.

And it’s not like it came out at a time when there was no experimenting done yet, so it won by simply being the only one which tried. 1970 was the year of sport, since most shows were about a different sport and a distinctive atmosphere for each. Joe was again the best amongst them.
Tiger Mask: wrestling / rule of cool
Attack no.1: volleyball for girls
Star of the Giants: baseball for older boys
Akatsiki no Eleven: football for younger boys

I need to clarify what I mean by best, since I am someone who doesn’t care about sports. Unlike reality which can be fun for many to watch or play a sport in real time, when it comes to fiction, sports don’t mean anything on their own, since nobody’s watching a series for the sport. By extension, no anime is strictly about sports; it just happens to have sports in it. There is no sport genre or demographic, it’s just an element which depending on how it is used, the result can be completely different.
Captain Tsubasa: coming of age
Slam Dunk: comedy
Kuroko no Basket: rule of cool
Shokugeki no Soma: food porn
Yuri on Ice: gay romance
Ping Pong: psychological drama

For me, what sets Joe above the other sport anime, despite the result being completely different depending on the handling and thus coming down to personal preference, is how it follows my golden standards. Regardless of what a show is about, I always have the same standards in mind: High stakes, tension, permanent consequences, internal conflicts, no ridiculing or sexualization, consistency of in-series laws, catharsis.

And what do you know; Joe is the only one that passed in all categories. But as I said these are my standards. Depending on what others are looking for, the results can differ. Maybe someone only cares about flower symbolism in his sports. As far as I’m concerned, the best sport anime was made in 1970, at a time when anime were still trying to develop their formulas, and nothing managed to rival it ever since. And this comes from someone who doesn’t even give a damn about sports. This is all the evidence you need for why it’s such a brilliant series.

On the other hand you have something like the manga of Devilman. It was the OG edgelord material and it inspired lots of later titles, such as Berserk, Parasyte, and Neon Genesis. It was a major shock for a few years but then later mangaka began improving the same concept and characters. After decades of refinement, the OG edgelord material is now nothing more than a skeleton of what it could be if it had more volumes to flesh out its characters and setting.

Unlike Ashita no Joe, it didn’t perfect the formula as soon as it came out, and it has been surpassed by later titles. It’s historically important as far as the medium is concerned, but that is as far as it goes. It’s not well-written or particularly deep, since it was made by Go Nagai, the master of schlock. The guy is all about boobs and gore, not thought-provoking messages about war and human cruelty.

It’s plain ridiculous to see so many calling the recent Devilman Crybaby, a goreporn with an undeveloped cast of characters and a barely explored theme of ant-war that was thrown in at the final episodes, to be the anime of year only a few days after the year began. How can you say that when it’s highly flawed, and Yuasa’s directing couldn’t save it. No amount of good directing can save a bad script. Plus, I prefer the far more detailed artstyle of the 90s version.

By the way, I am not saying it’s a terrible series for the time it came out. Winter of 2018 is full of cute girls doing cute things, so by comparison it stands out for simply not being that. It’s just that, Unlike Ashita no Joe, Devilman is a relic existing just to be studied and appreciated for inspiring later creators. Nothing more.

And for crying out loud, anime of the year a few days after the year began? That’s a dumb thing to say regardless of the actual quality of a show. I wonder what kind of a fucking idiot will say that next, for some other show that just came out and also happens to be about a message against war.