Back in April of 2008 Tai Seng, who mainly licenses and releases Chinese live-action movies, released their first 100% Japanese anime in the form of Champion Joe, which was the first compilation movie for the legendary boxing tite Ashita no Joe/Tomorrow's Joe. While Tai Seng did release Legend of Condor Hero in the past, it was a China/Japan co-production and their release only had Chinese and English audio, whereas the Joe movie had Japanese and English audio.
Well if you look around online now (Right Stuf, Best Buy, etc.) you'll find out that the MSRP for the movie has now changed to $7.95, less than half of its original $19.98 MSRP! At this point there is no excuse not to buy the release, as it's an excellent truncated adaptation of Ashita no Joe's first half. Also, at 152 minutes/2.5 hours it's certainly not skipping all too much, though some extra details are skipped over in the beginning portions. Still, this is more than likely the only way we'll ever get any form of this legendary title, and though the English dub is mostly lackluster the original Japanese audio still holds up rather well and it's definitely a title worth owning. It's been called the Japanese equivalent of the Rocky movies, and that comparison is somewhat appropriate.
I fully recommend this for fans of sports anime as well as fans of really good drama. Now if only we could get the second compilation movie that covers the second half of the story...
Source: Right Stuf listing
Anime © Tetsuya Chiba/Asao Takamori
No comments:
Post a Comment