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The Pro Wrestling-Shonen Anime Connection

Rikidozan isn't Japanese. He's South Korean. Never forget that.

Really now? That's pretty cool, but I'm not sure my cable service provider has that channel. I'll be sure to check though. I would definitely like to watch it, but I'm sure it would be pretty expensive unfortunately. Plus what I would really like is to keep up with the shows closely as they're happening, although I doubt a crunchyroll equivalent for wrestling is likely to pop up sadly.

I lack mental organization.

Octorockandroll wrote:

Really now? That's pretty cool, but I'm not sure my cable service provider has that channel. I'll be sure to check though. I would definitely like to watch it, but I'm sure it would be pretty expensive unfortunately. Plus what I would really like is to keep up with the shows closely as they're happening, although I doubt a crunchyroll equivalent for wrestling is likely to pop up sadly.

The closest equivalent to Crunchyroll would be NJPW World, their online streaming service equivalent to the WWE Network. It costs 999 yen a month, but aside from the signup page much of it's in Japanese. The current shows are streamed live, and the major shows feature an alternate track for English commentary courtesy of the Ring of Honor announcers.

The omission of Kinnikuman from this article was deliberate, as I don't think I really need to tell anybody that an anime about pro wrestling which features caricatures of real pro wrestlers was indeed influenced by professional wrestling. This is also why I only mentioned Tiger Mask in passing.

Damn, less than 10 bucks a month for all the NJPW stuff with english commentary and presumably the ppv's too? Well, I know what I'm saving up for next.

Chojin Sentai Jetman is probably still my favorite of the sentai tokusatsu shows. I think it's because I first saw it via the Malaysian(?) English dub, which was exceedingly wacky because English was clearly the second language for everyone in the cast, but if memory serves only about half the series was dubbed into English. The melancholy final scenes of its last episode struck me as something influenced by Hong Kong action cinema from that era (Jetman came out in the early 1990s), which Japanese stunt teams and tokusatsu creators would certainly have awareness of. Still, the similarities to Rikidozan are indeed there!

Octorockandroll wrote:

I read this article and I loved it. It's almost making me want to get started on njpw despite the fact that I would have no idea as to what anyone is saying. This article made me very happy and I can see it has made many other people happy as well. I can hardly wait for the shojo/wrestling article.

You're in luck! The cable channel AXS TV (formerly known as HDNet) has been running noteworthy New Japan matches with English language commentary since last year (the interviews and in-ring promos are kept in the original Japanese but subtitled in English), and quite a few major cable providers do carry that channel. The episodes air on Fridays. At first, the play-by-play was handled by noteworthy boxing/MMA announcer Mauro Renallo, but since he is now employed by the WWE, as of last month the currently play-by-play duties are now being handled by Jim Ross, whom many consider the greatest professional wrestling announcer of our generation. Color commentary is by Josh Barnett, who was a famous MMA fighter as well as NJPW performer, so if you want to know who all these unfamiliar faces are and why they're doing what they're doing that show's an excellent primer.

Can I get a Woo Woo Woo?

It's true. It's true.

One of the most advanced skills you can develop as an enthusiast of any sort is the ability to assess whether the people around you absolutely do not care about whatever thing it is you're really into, regardless of what they may be saying just to be polite. ... As such, what I'm about to say is not something I typically bother with regaling others with because you can practically see the souls escape from their bodies in real-time with each passing sentence spoken.

I always noticed the similarities between pro wrestling and anime but my brother is a big wrestling fan who talks a lot about it and I grew up watching WWF (back in the 80s and early 90s when it was good fun). The fact that the first Manga I read and the first subtitled anime I ever watched was Kinnikuman also probably has something to do with it. I always enjoy seeing wrestling moves show up in anime, especially when it's one from Kinnikuman.

I covered the Tiger Mask connection, the history of AJW and its connection to the Dirty Pair and even touched on how some wrestelrs will moonlight as seiyuu for special projects (Ex. Dump Matsumoto doing the voice for Jade Ivory Fan in Crying Freeman, which was something coming full circle since Koike/Ikegami had paterned Jade Ivory Fan's appearance on Matsumoto herself)..