After 2 months of reading it off and on again, I have at last completed Ashita no Joe. I can easily say it was completely worth every single page turn. The story is definitely one of the best written sports story I've ever read in any type of media, and also probably the most human. Let's start off with its strongest point.

Characters

The characters in Ashita no Joe are never stagnate. But that doesn't mean they're all over the place. Quite the opposite, as they build upon their already established character arcehtype into becoming more realistic and multifaceted. Take for example the titular character of this series, Yabuki "Brawler" Joe.
img49%(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/772182763691442186/801046922810490900/Ashita_no_Joe_-_Vol.4_Ch.35_-_1.jpg) img49%(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/772182763691442186/801046923044716614/20210119_051404.jpg)

Joe starts off as your average delinquent runaway orphan who's completely aimless in life. He's extremely quick to get in a fight with anyone who even looks at him funny and is a general nuisance to everyone around him. Then he meets a washed up drunkard boxing coach, Danpei Tange, who will change his life forever. Not before Joe gets sent to jail for tax fraud(it was just regular fraud don't worry 1960's japanese IRS). While in jail Joe recieves letters from Danpei titled "For Tomorrow Lessons" which teach Joe crucial fundamentals of boxing. A prideful but painfully bored Joe caves in and starts practicing these lessons that Danpei sends him and instantly falls in love with boxing. As the story progresses, Joe goes from a directionless orphan who wanders the slums like a stray dog, to one of the greatest boxers in the world. But thats not where his development lies. Throughout the story, we start to unravel Joe as a person, and see exactly what the inner workings of his mind are and why he acts the way he does. Then we see him grow as a person and eventually mature into strong willed boxer who will go to unbelievable limits to fight for his pride as a brawler. Joe learns and grows from every match he fights, and he gains something emotionally from them too, whether that be to his betterment or detriment. The other boxers are also beautifully written, such as Rikiishi Toru, who is probably the most crucial character to Joe's development. When his official match with Joe is nearing closer and closer, Rikiishi hits the extreme limits of the human body and completely shatters them in order to secure a match with Joe, as he is a lightweight boxer and Joe is a bantamweight. I want you to go look up both those weight classes right now and see the difference between them with your own eyes. Rikiishi's reason for doing this is because he sees Joe as the only thing stopping him from achieving his lifelong dream of becoming a world class boxer, so he will stop at nothing to make sure that he is dealt with before he moves on up in the ring, or else Joe will crawl on up to shatter his dreams. But during the fateful match between the two, they both realize that they are each others true equal in life, a rival they would never have encountered if they didn't chose to pursue a life as a boxer.

This is the part of the review where its going to be filled with spoilers so if you're still not convinced then either go about your day or continue reading

After a long and arduous series of blows exchanged between the two fighters, towards the end of the match, Joe lands a powerful left hook to Rikiishi's temple, but it proves useless as he is KO'ed in the final round. His body exhausted from the extreme weight loss it went through, combined with Joe's blow to his temple, cause Rikiishi's brain to hemorrhage killing him. After the match with Rikiishi, Joe finally finds his purpose in life and decides that he wants to continue boxing until the day he dies on the ring, in honor of the sport his greatest rival Rikiishi gave his life for. This is just a small portion of the brilliant character writing of Ashita no Joe, writing that's inspired countless sports series of the like and will continue to do so for decades to come, and if you are a fan of fleshed out and complex characters, this is definitely the story for you.

Plot img49%(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/772182763691442186/801076578725134346/Ashita_no_Joe_-_Vol.14_Ch.105_-_101.png) img49%(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/772182763691442186/801076579363061781/Ashita_no_Joe_-_Vol.14_Ch.105_-_100.png)

What you just read is one of my favorite character monolouges of all time. This story is the original underdog rags to riches sports story where a stray dog from the Tokyo Slums makes it all the way into the world championships on equal footing with the best fighters on the planet. Ashita no Joe is really slow at the start, but once it get's going it becomes a well oiled machine. You genuinely never know how each match will turn out, all you know is that Joe will find any way he possibly can to perservere, until he either gets a KO or gets KO'ed. This adds more to Joe's character and leads him to getting the nickname the "Wild Boxer", because of his nature resembling that of an untamed beast. The plot structure is fairly simple. After Joe finishes a match he looks for another boxer to fight. In the meanwhile he's usually training and hanging out with the neighborhood kids making sure they don't get in trouble(but most of the time getting them into it). Then he finds a boxer he wants to challenge and starts training vigorously in order to defeat them. During the match the odds seem far too high for Joe to pull through, but in the heat of the moment he deduces an ingenious strategy to break through his oponnents defense. That or he just says fuck it and beats the everloving living shit out of them. That works out in his favor a couple of times believe it or not. It's not all over the place and very concise. This isn't Serial Experiments Lain or Evangelion, this is a boxing manga

Art

The art style in Ashita no Joe can feel dated at times, but what's most impressive is how immersed you will be in the story as to not really care, as I mentioned above how well written the characters are. Even so, there's a massive improvement in art as you continue reading through the story that you'll question whether this was actually drawn in 1968. Rather than tell you about the art, it'd be far more apropriate to just show you the art from one of my favorite matches. Spoilers obviously. Read right to left
img49%(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/798822522316783646/801069425921884160/Ashita_no_Joe_-_Vol.16_Ch.107_-_108.png) img49%(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/798822522316783646/801069425629462578/Ashita_no_Joe_-_Vol.16_Ch.107_-_107.png)

Now obviously this doesn't hold a candle to fight scenes from manga like Kengan Ashura or Hajime no Ippo, but you aren't reading Ashita no joe for the same reasons as you're reading those, so this is just unadulterated hype vs strong character writing lol.

Negatives This is the part I dreaded and why I couldn't confidently give this a 100. This manga came out in 1968, so as of 2021, it has still yet to recieve a fucking english release, despite being one of the most influential stories in all of manga. Thankfully we have fansubs right? Right... except they're fucking unreadable from volumes 2-5. I'm just going to toss in the worst example to show you why I despise it so much

Yeah. It doesn't help that those volumes specifically go by EXTREMELY fucking slow that it almost feels like a chore to go through. There were moments that shined through of course, otherwise I still wouldn't be done with this manga because of how GODAWFUL THESE FUCKING SCANS ARE! If you can read kanji I'd suggest just buying the volumes on ebay, or if you don't still do it because it'll be an oppurtunity to learn a new language or sum. Seriously, these scans were so fucking goofy they made otherwise serious and important scenes make me laugh out loud. Thank fucking god a different and infinitely better translation team picks it up in the middle of volume 5. It sucks dick that there are literally no good translations of volumes 3-5. And trust me. IVE LOOKED.

The Ending

The ending of Ashita no joe deserves its own damn section because it's one of the must fulfilling conclusions to any story I've read. The final showdown between the world champion Jose Mendoza, who has never lost a single match and boasts a completely perfect defense and deadly corkscrew punch, and our hero Yabuki Joe.

Sorry I kinda got carried away and summarized the whole fight but it's also some cool analysis of the fight too but it's def not for people who haven't read the last volume yet lol

Spoiler, click to view

Jose Mendoza has already permanently crippled another friend of Joe's. Carlos Rivera, who was once referred to as the uncrowned emperor of Venezuela, was permanently crippled after Mendoza delivered his corkscrew punch to Rivera's skull, shattering it and leaving him permanently disabled and forced into retirement. Yabuki over his many matches has developed punch-drunk syndrome, or as its now known today as CTE which is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in people who have recieved repetitive blows to the skull. He knows that he doesn't have much time left as by his match with Mendoza he's already reached the latest stage of the disease before being permanently crippled. But he has nothing left in the world but boxing, and it is also what's pushed away almost everyone except Danpei because he couldn't maintain a relationship with anyone if it wasn't boxing. At the start of the match it was a one-sided beatdown as Joe tried to rush in and catch Mendoza by suprise, only to have all his punches miss as Mendoza methodically weaved through all his punches with no effort. Joe is severely punished for his brazenness as Mendoza lands several corkscrew punches to his temple. But even though Jose Mendoza was said to be a perfect machine, he froze for a moment when he saw that Carlos Rivera, the man that he crippled, was standing next to the ring watching him as he fought Yabuki. Yabuki manages to get multiple hits in and changes the tide of the fight as Mendoza's defense doesn't seem to be working anymore. This is because Joe's punches are tilted slightly off because he has gone completely blind in his right eye due to late stage punch-drunk syndrome, which allowed him to slip past Mendoza's defense. But Mendoza realizes this and starts going for Joe's blindspot, and as Joe tries to defend his blindspot he's severely beaten down by Mendoza. He goes down, but at the count of 8 Joe gets up. Mendoza beats on Joe, Joe gets some hits in himself, Mendoza beats him down, and Joe gets back up. Mendoza stares into Joe's eyes and is shook to his very core, as he comes to the realization that Joe Yabuki will never stop fighting until he dies as he has nothing tethering him to life except boxing, while Mendoza still has his family back in Mexico who he needs to return to. Mendoza knows that Joe will never give in, because at that point Joe Yabuki had already died. His body wasn't dead, but he resigned himself to keep fighting through sheer willpower alone until the last of his embers were snuffed out. And they were. At the end of the 15th and final round the judges decided that Jose Mendoza was the winner of the title match, but all his hair had gone completely gray at that point. Danpei turned to Joe to console him, telling him that he fought beyond his limits and was able to hold his own against the world champion for the entire match. Joe was already dead in his chair. There's this analysis of the ending of Ashita no Joe that is way fucking better than mine so I'm gonna quote it. You can read it here link "In the end, Joe was never the champion – he was always 'Tomorrow’s Joe'. Never happy with being static, always striving to become the best, trying to get the best of his trauma. In the end, he failed. But does this make him less of a hero? Surely a hero tries his hardest, despite the odds. And Joe, for all of his flaws, will certainly always be my hero."

He had finally achieved his dream of fighting until the very last ember of himself was burned to pure white ash. He had finally beat Rikiishi at his own game. He was free. These are the final thoughts of Joe Yabuki after finishing the last round. "Burnt... It's all burnt away... burnt to white ashes..."

Conclusion/TL;DR:
Ashita no Joe is a timeless classic that will be remembered for many more years to come while continuing to inspire the genre it helped shape into what it is today. The characters are super well written and are enjoyable to read and also dissect why they are the way they are. The plot is engaging and straight forward but the first 5 volumes are a huge drag to read if you're an english speaker because the series was never officially released in english and the fansubs for the first 5 volumes are shit. The art can seem dated but if you're open minded you'll find super hype and well drawn fight scenes will come your way. It has one the best endings of all time that isn't super fucking hard to understand. It is a must read if you are a fan of manga. If you can completely forgive the horrible translation you will probably like it more than me. Thank you for reading.