Two boxers who went from zero to hero, surely it can’t be a coincidence, can it?
Ashita no Joe is a phenomenal anime that is referenced to and borrowed from to this day. There isn’t a person who wouldn’t recognize the iconic ending of him sitting with a satisfied smile on his face because of the impact it had on the industry. Similarly, Sylvester Stallone’s career started with the work of his life that showed people that there’s more to sports movies, and his iconic run to the Philadelphia’s Museum of Art earned him a monument. Both are stories about down on their luck boxers who rise up to the challenges, gain victories and suffer defeats.
However, the manga Ashita no Joe started publishing in 1968 and ended its run only in 1973 with two anime adaptations. While Rocky was released in 1976, almost an entirely different decade. Could it be that Sylvester Stallone noticed the impact Ashita no Joe made? The short answer is no, in fact, the superficial similarities between these two stories aren’t nearly as interesting as how asymmetrical they are.
Truth be told, it’s hard to classify either of them as just sports anime or sports movies. The key similarity is that both of them do talk about love, and Sylvester Stallone can be quoted as saying Rocky movies aren’t sports movies at all, in truth, it is a love story about Rocky Balboa and his love interest Adrian, who became the source of his power and confidence.
Similarly, Ashita no Joe isn’t about boxing at all throughout the first quarter of the story, Joe Yabuki had to be convinced to take up boxing by his mentor after spending some time in the juvie, and the boxing aspect is merely a vehicle to tell the story. And unlike Rocky who is embraced by Adrian by the end of the movie after his defeat, Joe Yabuki never settles into a relationship. If anything, he had two potential love interests, one he ignored and shared mutual animosity with the other.
But the saddest fact that makes any allegations of plagiarism impossible is that Ashita no Joe was simply never published in the USA. Even to this day. It’s highly unlikely that Sylvester Stallone in the 70s would have imported any Japanese copies or VHS copies of anime adaptations as it would be troublesome even today, without the option to read or watch it in English.
Hopefully one day Ashita no Joe will be officially localized and sold in English language, because, really, it doesn’t take more than one glance to see that two stories, despite often sharing points of connection, go in extremely opposite ways, to a curious degree, but purely coincidental nonetheless.