#emoimo

What Joe says here in Japanese is 「何があってもここにとどまるべきだったんだ。」 //  “Nani ga attemo koko ni todomarubeki dattanda.” Specifically, he uses the word “todomaru” meaning “to stay” echoing his opening monologue from Season 1 Episode 1: “Koko ni todomaruka, koko kara aragauka?” // “Do I stay here? Or do I fight my way out?”, a quote which was also heavily featured in Japanese promotional material for Season 1. It’s not exactly an uncommon word, but I do think the parallel is noteworthy in regard to the themes of each season.

At around 1:00 in the track “The theme of Liu”, the electric guitar part plays a phrase from the melody of Joe’s theme in the Season 1 soundtrack. Go to my WordPress post if you want audio links (including an ugly MIDI recreation) because tumblr won’t let me embed more than one.

From a meta standpoint, I think this represents the influence that “Gearless” Joe had on Liu, how spiritually connected they are even on a musical level. But from an in-universe perspective, it highlights the eminence of “Gearless” Joe’s legacy in the sport of Megalo Box. Seven years after his Megalonia debut, the echoes of Joe’s ring music still play every time Edison Liu fights.

I was thinking about how many additional scars Joe has in Season 2 and wondering about all the things he must have gone through over the years to have gotten them.

And then I realized that Joe has no scars in the scene where he met Nanbu, which means that he got all of his Season 1 scars during the years he was fighting underground matches to pay off Nanbu’s debt.

He looks like he’s in his late teens during the flashback and he’s in his early 20s (fake ID says 22) during Season 1, so in addition to all of the head shots he would have taken doing fixed matches, he also sustained this much damage to his body in just a few short years. 😭

Rebellious Teenager

Deadbeat Dad

Good Uncle

The hummingbird in Las Alas del Viajero tells the traveller, “You still have eyes to see me and ears to hear my song.” In other words: Joe, not all is lost. There is reason yet for you to live. And we see that it’s true. Joe’s entire journey this season has been to learn that lesson: he can fix his past mistakes, he can rebuild Bangaichi Gym and his relationships, he does still have a home to return to.

If Joe dies, then everything he has worked toward this season, and everything that Chief taught him will have been pointless. Bangaichi Gym, Nanbu’s legacy, will slowly fall into disrepair again. The kids, who have so painfully let Joe back into their lives, will be abandoned once more. What kind of message does that story tell? Your efforts do not matter. You cannot be redeemed. Even if you turn around now, Nomad, you do not have a future. I don’t think that’s the story Nomad is trying to tell. At the beginning of the season, Joe was seeking death. Now that he has finally learned to embrace his life, he should be allowed to live it. Joe’s death would be antithetical to every message the story has told so far. And I think the creators of this show are good enough storytellers to know that.

The ending card for Episode 12 is white, compared to the black of previous episodes. Maybe it signifies that we have reached the light, as Joe and Mac have both found their way back home. Maybe it represents white ash or maybe it’s the light at heaven’s gate. We’ll have to see during the finale. 

But before that, let’s talk translation notes. “Hasta ver la luz” isn’t exactly proper Spanish, and I think it’s intentional. Most of us have been translating this as “Until I see the light” but that would more correctly be written as “Hasta que veo la luz”. Instead, the verb “ver” is unconjugated, which creates ambiguity around the subject. Who needs to see the light? Is it Joe, or Mac? Is it you, or me, or all of us? This is something that I think Nomad wants us to think about.

In Japanese, dropping the subject is very commonplace. Here, we could say, “Hikari ga mieru made” or “Until (unnamed subject) can see the light”. The structure of the language allows for certain poetic applications which are not as easy to accomplish in Spanish or English. But there’s another ambiguity in this phrase too, one that I think is preserved across both languages. Is the light absent altogether, or has it been present all along, only unseen?

You can view my full post on Episode 12 here and I will love you forever if you do!

“Theme of Sachio 2″: Analyzing how mabanua conveys Sachio’s character development through music

At first glance, Sachio’s Season 2 theme sounds pretty different from his Season 1 theme, and for good reason; he’s a very different character. But if we look closely, there’s a good amount of continuity as well.

If I had to describe the sound of the arpeggio melody in the S2 theme, I’d call it a glockenspiel (EDIT: In hindsight, it sounds more like pitched up strings, but everything in this paragraph about the S1 theme still holds). You can also hear a similar sound throughout both of his S1 themes (starting at around 0:10) as well as what sounds like a marimba (starting at around 0:28), also a mallet percussion instrument. In the production interviews included in the Season 1 Blu-ray, Moriyama mentioned that the vision for Sachio’s theme was a hip-hop sound with a childish feel. Because of the glockenspiel's bright, clear timbre and its association with toy instruments — and therefore childhood — I think the mallet percussion instrument family represents Sachio’s youth and innocence.

In addition to the instrumentation, Sachio’s S2 theme keeps some of the same musical language as the first: lots of arpeggiation, with stepwise moving bass notes. The main arpeggio melody is descending this time, though, instead of ascending, which might represent how Sachio has lost his way in the years since the first season. While in Season 1 Sachio served as the moral backbone of Team Bangaichi, inspiring the adults to work together and fight for their dreams, in Season 2, he is one of the most conflicted characters, suffering from the most internal strife of all the kids, and the last to accept Joe back into their lives.

This strife is further emphasized by the tinny, strained sound of the glockenspiel — in contrast with the soft, resonant tones used in the S1 theme — perhaps representing Sachio’s struggle to exist in an adult world while still a child. Mabanua also adds heavy, distorted bass and a wailing electric guitar to up the angst. The dirty-sounding bass is reminiscent of that used in Joe’s theme from Season 1, but it isn’t the only thing Sachio has picked up from Joe musically in Season 2. The key has changed from A minor in Season 1 to D minor in Season 2, the same key as Joe’s S1 theme, and there are a few melodic elements that evoke Joe’s theme as well. Namely, this section starting at around 0:37.

The first section (red) reminds me of the very last phrase from Joe’s S1 theme, and the second section (blue) reminds me of a repeated phrase from Joe’s S1 theme which can be heard first at around 1:30. Track 1 in the playlist above contains the excerpt from Sachio’s theme and Track 2 contains both of the excerpts from Joe’s theme below.

The third track in the playlist is what it might sound like if Joe's and Sachio's themes were combined. The way the melody in Sachio’s theme sits on the C# (ti ti ti ti do) makes me think it’s going to transition into Joe’s theme every time I hear it so I wanted to create how that might sound.

But, crucially, that doesn’t actually happen.

And it’s a beautiful musical representation of Sachio’s character arc — the way he tries to emulate Joe, fails, and then ultimately realizes that he is his own person. When the two of them finally reconcile in Episode 10, the track used is “Theme of Sachio 2 (Sollow [sic])”, a track which is certainly sorrowful, but is far more evocative of Sachio’s S1 theme with its ascending arpeggios and melancholy guitar. Perhaps the mallet percussion is lost as he sheds his false idea of what maturity means and genuinely matures as a result.

The Episode 13 epilogue adds one final piece. While the shift in key to D minor at first seems to represent Sachio’s misguided attempts at taking Joe’s place, by the end of the show we find that Sachio has in fact assumed Joe’s role as the young man chasing a dream, and that Joe has assumed Nanbu’s role as a father figure. The shift in key for Sachio is a musical passing of the torch in the same way as Joe passing on his motorcycle and taking ownership of Nanbu’s old truck.