English Dub Review: Megalobox 2 – Nomad “Cuando te quitas la armadura que no te podías quitar, brotan las semillas de la miseria y de la dicha”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Joe recovers from his blackout, with the doctor thinking it may be delayed effects from his painkiller addiction and his boxing days. At the party celebrating his recovery, Joe tells everyone that his upcoming fight with Mac will likely be his last and that he’ll be wearing Chief’s Gear into the ring. Meanwhile, Mac’s mental blackouts are getting worse, terrifying his son, so his wife Maya confesses that the BES chip in his head is probably the cause and that she was offered it by Sakuma in exchange for their son’s life saving surgery. Betrayed, Mac confronts Sakuma about the chip, but Sakuma tells him he needs to be a hero and live up to the title he’s finally gained.

OUR TAKE
Well, to somewhat of a surprise, it seems that Joe has basically finished his character arc homework a couple weeks before it’s due. I mean, that’s technically not true since the fight with Mac is going to be the actual end, but coming to these key decisions of using gear and listening to Sachio about when to throw in the towel are basically the brunt of evidence about how much he’s changed and how far he’s come since both the beginning of this season and the series as a whole. Last season, I brought up quite a bit about the Rocky vibes I got off of him, though that mainly had to do with the Rocky series being the only boxing films I’ve really seen. However, in this case, I definitely see shades of the sixth movie, Rocky Balboa, which would be the last one to primarily star Rocky before the Creed movies started. Joe is no longer that lucky underdog who could dare to go into the ring over and over against powerful advanced machines and beat them just because he wanted to. He’s tired, he’s put his body through hell through both fighting and painkillers, and as much as he loves the fight, he knows his time is done. Though I imagine he’s gonna have fun preparing for this last match before he hangs it up.

Mac, meanwhile, has got a lot of pain ahead of him before he reaches his apotheosis, mainly in finally coming to terms with how his success story and miraculous recovery have come at pretty great costs. He’s finally at the top, somewhere he never imagined he’d be years ago, but he’s now understanding that it’s required him to become basically Sakuma’s puppet for less than pure ends. The easiest comparison to make here would be with Yuri’s own self-reflection and discovery at around this point in the last season. Yukiko was also using him to show the potential for Gear in both boxing and military use, though it at least seemed to be with mutual understanding of how they were using each other. It was only when Yuri felt the need to take off his gear, which also left its scars when taken off, that their paths diverged rather harshly, but even then she still cared about him quite a bit. But between Mac and Sakuma, there is no such respect or trust, just an apathetic tech mogul using an unfortunate man for his own ends regardless of the consequences and trying to hide the truth as long as possible. I’m still unsure with how I feel about that as a continuation of the last season’s themes, but we have two more weeks to think on that.