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Megalo Box, a dystopian anime about boxers in the future, is coming to Toonami, TMS Entertainment announced on Twitter Thursday afternoon.
According to the tweet, Megalo Box will be coming to Toonami, the Saturday night programming block for Adult Swim, on Dec. 8 and will include a brand new English dub created specifically for this airing.
The anime, which debuted as a part of 2018’s spring anime season, quickly became one of the year’s most popular shows. The series started as a special commemorative project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ashita no Joe, an extremely well regarded boxing manga and anime.
Megalo Box takes the original’s basic premise and characters and transfers them from their setting in late 1960s Japan to a future dystopia. The series follows a boxer who calls himself Junk Dog — but later goes by Joe — who fights in MEGALOBOX matches using special exo suits that make the competition more exciting and more dangerous. As with most boxing series, the story follows Junk Dog as he rises through the ranks of the boxing world in hopes of taking on a rival who sits at the top of the standings, but it isn’t the story that made Megalo Box so popular.
What really set Megalo Box apart from other shows that have debuted in recent years is its animation. While it’s story may come from the ‘60s, the animation seems to come directly from the popular anime of the 1990s, taking it’s cues from shows like Cowboy Bebop. The hand drawn style and purposefully lower resolution gives the show’s dystopia a dusty, lived in, western vibe that’s completely different from almost anything else in anime over the last decade.
The first season of Megalo Box originally ran 13 total episodes which were simulcast on Crunchyroll. While the story of the series is wrapped up in those episodes, there is a possibility for a sequel, though nothing has been announced yet.
