Kick no Oni - translated by Google This review will contain: analysis of the anime, information about Sawamura and my opinion at the end of it all. - I decided to start with Sawamura: a real person, who had an incredible story as a fighter, and the anime only adapts part of it. His career is summed up in 248 fights, 232 wins and 228 knockouts (in just 7 years). A brilliant career inside the ring. He popularized kickboxing worldwide (along with Noguchi). The anime managed to highlight this perfectly, keeping its feet on the ground (I'll talk about it later). - About the anime: as you can see, thisisn't really an "anime", it's more of an animated "documentary" about his career, that being said, we can't evaluate it objectively, it would even be lame "his life had no emotion" (lol). Even though the anime is repetitive, boring, it's still his life. It’s not possible to evaluate it objectively — but I found some loopholes. Therefore, I prefer to talk about what the anime most comments/does: a supreme compliment to honor. Yes, it may seem crude, but concepts such as masculinity, respect, friendship and the honor that surrounds all of this make Sawamura an IDEAL model of a person, but a failure as a character. Bringing back the comment about anime being "feet on the ground", the work brings this model of person as a form of maturity and reflection; and brings him as a character just a hitting and training machine (basically 80% of the anime). There wasn't a balance of those two things — not that I think it needed to be, but if that man-machine part was represented in a better way without it being 100% about tires hitting his belly, it would be better.
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About what I think: as I said before, I saw the anime more as an animated documentary than an actual anime, so I don't see many reasons to evaluate it objectively, so to speak, except the production (which is bad ). Seeing him graduate with his grandfather was something beautiful, invaluable scenes. The definition of honor, I would say. The production is terrible: several scenes constantly reused, characters ctrl+V. Bad in general.
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Ignorable notes: all the scenes in which his grandfather appears are splendid, the opening and ending are good.