Yawara!

Japanese manga series

Yawara! (also stylized as YAWARA!) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa. It was serialized in Big Comic Spirits from 1986 to 1993, with its chapters collected into 29 tankōbon volumes by publisher Shōgakukan. The story centers around Yawara Inokuma, a seemingly ordinary high school girl, but her grandfather, a living judo legend, has been secretly training her since she was a child so that she can win the gold medal at the Olympic Games. But Yawara has only one desire, to have a normal life. A live action film adaptation directed by Kazuo Yoshida and starring Yui Asaka was released by Toho in April 1989. That same year, Kitty Films and Madhouse began an anime adaptation titled Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl!. It was broadcast on Yomiuri TV from October 1989 through September 1992, for 124 episodes. Each episode ended with a countdown of days remaining to the start of the Barcelona Olympics. Two animated films were released in August 1992 and July 1996. AnimEigo released the first 40 episodes of the anime in North America in 2008, but were unable to license the remaining episodes. In 1990, the manga won the 35th Shogakukan Manga Award for the general category. Yawara! has over 30 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best selling manga series of all time.

Yawara Inokuma is a young girl who aspires to an ordinary life but due to her innate talent is forced to practice judo by her authoritarian grandfather, Jigorou Inokuma, with the aim of achieving the championship in Japan and the gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Because of the pressure from her grandfather she generally has a bad attitude about judo, avoiding it as much as she can. However, over time she comes to understand why her grandfather loves judo and appreciates it more.

While Naoki Urasawa was pitching the idea of writing a manga about the medical field, he could tell his editor was not enjoying it. Knowing that the editor was a big fan of baseball, he joking proposed a story about women's judo, but the editor lit up at the idea. Urasawa said that he then scribbled out the whole of Yawara! during that meeting in about 30 minutes, from the characters to the story. The series started in 1986, women's judo became a demonstration sport just before the 1988 Summer Olympics with it set to be a fully competitive sport at the 1992 Summer Olympics, so it was perfect to include that goal in the manga. But the author never thought the series would last long enough to reach the latter. Urasawa revealed that with Yawara! being so different from his previous works as a comedy about a cute girl, some of his fans and colleagues felt betrayed and that he had sold out. But he does not see it that way as he never had any intentions of making it a love comedy or a "fight to the finish, don't give up now! sports" story. He said "My subjects of my comics might be taken from the popular mainstream, but I believe they are still embued with my own sensitivities and therefore quite distinctive in their own right." The author said that he intended for Yawara! to be a parody of Ikki Kajiwara's works, such as Star of the Giants. But for some reason readers got something out of it other than he intended; "Maybe it's because they're used to sports comics, but they seem to like my comics for the scenes of victory and defeat. They find them interesting somehow. Those scenes were really supposed to be funny! But they find them touching, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do. (laughter)". A 19 volume bunkoban edition was released between July 17, 1998 and March 16, 1999. A twenty volume kanzenban edition was released between December 27, 2013 and April 30, 2015. Urasawa created a spin off manga series titled Jigoro! that ran in Zōkan Big Comic Spirits from October 20, 1988 to April 11, 1991. He explained that he found Yawara's grandfather so interesting that the character earned his own spin off, and called it one of his favorite series. It was collected into one volume in October 1994, which was republished on February 15, 2003, and again in a kanzenban edition on April 30, 2015.

A live action film adaptation of Yawara! directed by Kazuo Yoshida for Toho opened in theaters on April 15, 1989. Having Yui Asaka in the title role, the film featured cameos by real life judokas like Kaori Yamaguchi and Yasuhiro Yamashita, as well as shoot wrestlers, Kōji Nakamoto Akira Maeda and Nobuhiko Takada. Asaka also sings the theme song "Neverland".

Two video games were developed by Sofix for the personal computer. The first was a "digital comic" released on October 1, 1992 that received a rating of 22/40 by Famitsu. The second was released on September 23, 1994, has additional gameplay elements such as "battle" and "quiz" modes, and received a 21/40 rating by Famitsu.

As of March 2021, Yawara! had over 30 million collected volumes in circulation. The manga won the 35th Shogakukan Manga Award for the general category in 1990. The significance of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in the story is that in the real world, this was the first time that Women's Judo would be a full competition event and would thus see the awarding of the first Olympic gold medal for Women's Judo. Yawara! was very popular in Japan, so when real life Japanese teenager Ryoko Tamura won a silver medal for judo at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, she was seen as a real life Yawara (her age, stature, and ability all being strikingly similar to those of the fictional character) and promptly nicknamed "Yawara chan". She was still known by this name eight years later, indicating perhaps the enduring popular recognition of the series as well as that of Ryoko Tamura. Mark Sammut of Comic Book Resources wrote that while Yawara! "might not have many of the trademarks that would come to define Urasawa's later thrillers," the humorous sports series "still serves as a masterclass in character writing and atmosphere." He also called its prequel series, Jigoro!, the funniest thing Urasawa has ever written. Reviewing Animeigo's release of the first 40 episodes of the anime, Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network wrote that Yawara! seamlessly blends romance, humor, life hurdles and sports intrigue. He strongly praised Yawara Inokuma's character and noted that the series is far more focused on romance and coming of age than it is judo. The reviewer finished by lamenting that they do not make anime like this anymore, as they seem to have forgotten the appeal of a simple story told well; Yawara! "is quite simply, the most purely enjoyable series in years." Kimlinger went on to pick Yawara Inokuma as his 2008 Character of the Year and called her "possibly the most insanely likeable character ever devised—all the more so because she is as flawed, selfish and naive as any real adolescent girl." While including the series on a list of the best anime from 1989, his colleague of the same website Daryl Surat wrote that she inspired numerous fighting video game characters. Namely in the Street Fighter series where Ibuki has a similar background and temperament, and Karin Kanzuki is very similar to Sayaka Honami.