I wonder how Joe felt when he attended Nishi and Noriko's wedding but neither of them attended his Pacific or world title matches in the manga.
Considering that he felt confused and upset when even Yoko said she wouldn't watch his match with Kim, I'm sure it sat unsettlingly in his mind.
A lot of people in the fandom have this idea that it's Joe who distanced himself from the joys of everyday life in favor of burning out, but I don't think Joe himself saw it that way, or that he made any such conscious decision. He did decide to burn out, but distance himself from his loved ones? There's a lot to contradict that.
To me, it looks like they are the ones who were scared of Joe's intensity and distanced themselves from him.
Of course, this is the most obvious with Noriko.
She walks away from Joe, not the other way around.
It's true that Joe finds his best connections through boxing, but he's an orphan. He values all connections, including the ones with the Doya people. He even tries to connect with Yoko.
He might say that he doesn't care about Nishi and Noriko's relationship here, and there's only one Jose Mendoza, but his face at their wedding tells a different story.
I think Joe is a guy who craved every connection he made, whether it was his fellow boxers or the Doya people. Remember how he was moved to tears when they welcomed him back from juvie? His feelings about them didn't just vanish.
Fandom is so off the mark when they say that he pushed all these people away to burn out. I think he felt off about the fact that his greatest moments of intensity and connection simply terrified the people around him. Including in the ring, in the form of his final opponent. It wasn't that Joe couldn't live life with them. It's that they couldn't live life with him. The real reason Jose had to keep the belt and trophy wasn't because 'there was only one Jose Mendoza,' as Joe assumed. Actually, there are a lot of Jose Mendozas. He's normal. It was because there was only one Joe Yabuki. That level of fire was simply unbearable to most everyone around, and would have melted any metal trophies. There are only a few people who willingly burned themselves with him, and only Yoko remains.
The normal world could not accomodate him. But in the end, he made his peace with that. Burning out and reaching that peak was worth it, even if the normal world didn't understand.
The thing i most find fascinating about Yoko's and Joe's relationship is the inevitability of all that'd lead up to Joe's ending. I've seen some people hypothesize that if Yoko had come forward with her feelings to Joe earlier on she could have prevented his fight with Jose Mendoza but i have to disagree.
No matter how earnest or sincere her efforts could have been, Joe could have never reciprocated, and it's not because Joe doesn't have any interest in love or relationships. But because of his low self esteem and his own self awareness.
A romantic relationship between the two could have never been, the social and economic barrier was far too vast to get past.
No hate to this poster at all! I just found the points interesting wanted to provide my own perspective, and the few things I wanted to express disagreement on. This was too long for a comment!! 😖
I feel like it’s being implied the main reason for Joe and Yoko’s disconnect is class and social status, which I don’t think holds up, especially as the series progresses. It plays a role in their initial distance, but I don’t think it makes their relationship impossible, particularly since a major theme of Ashita no Joe is breaking free from social constraints.
Joe’s insecurity is definitely important in how he responds to Yoko and why he struggles to see the genuineness in her gestures. There are numerous scenes of him comparing himself to a man like Nishi, saying he is “stable” “changed” etc. Joe clearly doesn’t view himself as the ideal man. But I think a key point is being left out: he doesn’t actually know Yoko likes him, and she’s often ambiguous about her intentions. That ambiguity feeds directly into his insecurity. The story shows that despite his emotional struggles, Joe is someone that responds pretty well to openness and vulnerability, which I talk about in my Reddit analyses. If he had clearly understood that she loved him earlier on, I don’t see why a relationship with her would be inherently impossible.
These are some of my favorite scenes from the Kim arc of Joe actively seeking out Yoko, (even if here isn’t romantic). Social class isn’t an issue for him, it’s simply about the understanding that matters. What happened during this OPBF match as clearly important.
And the scene of Joe doubting Danpei when he says Yoko cares a lot about him is one of my favorites. He’s getting a little upset that she left him at Rikiishi’s grave when they are clearly having a moment. It’s pretty cute. But if anything, it proves that the major contention between them is simply that neither of them are entirely honest people, and Yoko especially had a huge issue with expressing directly to Joe how she feels, clearly preferring actions and facilitating his boxing career.
But back to it, I also think Joe’s insecurity remains important—he wouldn’t suddenly feel worthy or know how to navigate a relationship. But the moment where he feels touched from Yoko’s support and gives his gloves matters because he finally accepts that her feelings are genuine. That realization, and the fact that she still supports him unconditionally in the boxing match which means so much to him, is what gives him the extra drive to keep getting up and fight José. No one else encouraging him in that moment would have had the same impact.
I talked about this a lot on my Reddit Ashita no Joe analyses, but Joe’s facial expression here hits really hard, and emphasizes just how much Yoko’s honesty and support meant to him. Let alone spending his final moments talking to her, and making sure she received his gloves. He could have spoken to Danpei, or given a message to anyone else, but Yoko was his sole priority here.
The gloves symbolize a lot, but to me the key points are that he accepts her into his world of boxing and acknowledges (and to me reciprocates) her feelings. For someone like Joe, that level of vulnerability is huge. Joe and Yoko here just reached a level of understanding that Joe basically hasn’t experienced with anyone, besides Rikiishi. But the one he shares with Yoko is special. Joe can easily connect with people like Rikiishi and Carlos through boxing. He doesn’t need to have a long history, conversations, etc. just going all out in the ring, in something that means so much to him can form unshakable bonds.
To form such a relationship with Yoko, someone who is a woman that he can’t box with, their understanding has to come through words and actions, which is far more difficult for Joe, especially because of his insecurity and Yoko’s ambiguity for most of the series as I mentioned. But this is exactly why his relationship with her is so special. All it took for was Yoko’s instance of vulnerability and unconditional support to allow him to do the same, especially in such a monumental and symbolic way with his gloves.
Because of that, it doesn’t make sense to me to say they could never be together, especially in a post-series scenario where boxing is no longer a barrier, and they could be more honest after everything they’ve been through.
In the original ending, Joe and Yoko are supposed to be living together post-series. Given Joe’s personality, it’s hard to imagine him choosing that if he didn’t have feelings for her, he wouldn’t accept that level of care and devotion if he couldn’t reciprocate. If anything, I think the stronger argument against them being together earlier on in the story in a hypothetical where Yoko confessed, is that Joe wouldn’t feel able to take on the responsibility of a relationship given how dangerous and unstable his life is, rather than an intense fear and insecurity over status differences. I could definitely see Takamori writing an interesting dilemma with this, especially later on, once Joe learns he’s punch-drunk, where he may possibly have to choose between personal fulfillment and a relationship with Yoko.
All in all, I think the story doesn’t lean to the inevitably of these two being unable to be together. If anything, the tragedy lies in the fact that Yoko, and in response Joe, were honest far too late. I write more about this in my Reddit character analyses if anyone is interested, but the story subtly shows countless times how similar these two actually are.
1. Both are young people on a journey of breaking free from social expectations in favor of finding self fulfillment.
2. Similar life values, which is why Yoko is one of the few able to actually understand and accept Joe’s passion for boxing, despite not even being a boxer herself.
3. Both have been isolated and misunderstood their entire lives because of people unable to see them as more than what their status is,
And there are many more. The irony of their relationship is that they are from completely different worlds, Man and woman, wealthy and poor, boxer and non-combatant, and yet they are somehow the most similar down to their core. It was just realized far too late.
Adding onto this, while it's true that Joe initially mistrusts Yoko in some form, her money isn't (I think) the full and complete reason for it. I don't think Joe's thought process was, "Yoko is rich so I don't like her or think we can be together and we're worlds apart," it's the misunderstanding that "Yoko is trying to use her money to buy and sell love, affection, regard, and camaraderie, which are things that no money can buy. Therefore she is fake." Basically, it's not money exactly, but his wrong notion that she is insincere, manifesting through her money.
In this regard, it's not that different from Joe's initial dislike of Danpei, who was poor. For Danpei, Joe's thought process was, "He's trying to use me to make money and regain his lost glory." And while Danpei might initially have seen Joe as a free meal ticket through boxing, that clearly changes over time. Danpei rigging the scale so that Joe wouldn't die of weight loss, as an example.
And as much as they clash, Joe eventually accepts Danpei's sincerity, affectionately calling him his "one-eyed mother" in the manga, and obviously, the reason he doesn't tell Danpei about his medical condition was that there was no way he'd let Joe fight if he knew, because at some point Joe as a person became more important to Danpei than winning matches and getting money and fame.
If he could get over that with Danpei, presumably he could with Yoko, who proved her sincerity in the final match against Jose by encouraging Joe to fight with no regrets.
It's a misunderstanding that would be corrected once they clear things up and are honest and forthcoming.
I love that Ashita no Joe utilized this narrative structure. I don't know if Kajiwara/Chiba did this on purpose or if they just did it intuitively, but a chiastic structure (ring composition) is a classic narrative technique and it's used even in small moments here. It's found in many famous works of literature and it is a brilliant technique. I don't know if anyone else has thought of this, but it's something I noticed!
And nooo I misspelled 'chiastic' as 'chiasmic'...well, please ignore that.
Another chiasm! Joe starts and ends his career the same way. Not possessing a professional license/title belt, but utterly embarrassing the presiding champion (Wolf/Jose).
One thing I love about the Ashita no Joe manga is how the art direction tells a whole micro-story.
Look at Carlos Rivera and Joe Yabuki spending time with the Doya residents vs Jose Mendoza spending time with his family.
Carlos is a world-class boxer with money, fame, and a fearsome reputation. Many people would have been utterly soaked in their ego at this point. Carlos, though, when he sees these people who don't have anything, is reminded of the times he didn't have anything, growing up in the slums of Venezuela, and he lovingly gives these people the clothes off his back and shares everything he has. He lets them into his world.
His love is warm and expansive, and it radiates outwards like a beautiful flame. Look at how jam-packed this image is.
His life is crowded with love and joy. The same applies to Joe in this image.
And Carlos' love and expansive nature really show in the later stages of his fight with Joe.
The Doya residents...cheer for him. He is a complete foreign stranger in an unfamiliar land and he receives so much goodwill from these people that they root for him even though they have their own homegrown champion, his rival! And Joe doesn't even mind!
Meanwhile, take a look at this image of Jose.
He and his kids are in an open space (the beach), but look how the car acts as a barrier, keeping the rest of the world out. Joe has to peer in, as if this is a walled castle. Jose's wife is genuinely fearful when she witnesses Joe's match.
He's shut everyone out. I love how quietly this is conveyed, through just a car shielding him from view.
The problem with Jose is that he treats his family as some kind of bomb shelter away from the ring, not integrating them into his life fully. It's profoundly isolating. In his match with Joe, Jose starts panicking, saying he's scared because his wife and kids are in Mexico, waiting for him...implying they are not there, watching him.
It's incredibly sad, what Jose did. By compartmentalizing his life like this, he accidentally ensured that he was all alone in the ring. It was not Joe who sat lonely in his corner. Jose was. His corners cheer, oblivious to the fact that he's been totally destroyed until it's too late.
No one was there for him, truly. He's cut off everyone who loved him and kept them in a box. Carlos Rivera smiles as Jose is ruined. All he got was Caballero, and let's break down why his encouragement here totally fails vs why Yoko's encouragement succeeds.
Look. Jose's internal narrative is broken, and he has no idea how to cope with his ruined invincibility. His corner essentially tells him, "Yeah, we have no idea why this freakish monster is this way but do your best, soon it'll be over. No specific advice or moral support, though~." Caballero's accidentally validating Jose's fear that Joe is weird and otherworldly, and this form of encouragement is ultimately extremely soft and puts Jose on a defensive backpedal. This is the language of desperation. You do not want to tell this to an undefeated world champion. It makes his strength seem in doubt, transferring all momentum to Joe. Again. "Your opponent's unstoppable and we have no idea why, but hang in there! Somehow. I don't have any tips or moral support to give, though." This is what Jose hears. He's unintentionally planting seeds of doubt in Jose's mind and sapping him of the aggressive urge to carry the final round. Caballero's made Jose stand all alone, making him repress his panic, therefore eating his mental energy, and pushing him into a meat grinder. Which all is Jose supposed to give? He is no longer capable of much. There is no roadmap, no reason to keep fighting. He's induced learned helplessness in Jose by shifting the locus of control to something external (Joe) rather than internal (Jose's own strength). Jose built a physical barrier in the Hawaii image and his second is mirroring the same energy back to him. No wonder he looks so awful! No wonder Jose got beaten to a pulp in the fifteenth round.
In contrast, look at this.
Yoko says she's watching Joe until the very end. She removes his isolation, strengthens his resolve, and makes even the possibility of failure irrelevant. Joe is carrying her eyes into the fire. She acknowledges the magnitude of the challenge and encourages Joe to break this barrier. It's the ultimate proof of his strength!
If Jose had cultivated his relationship with his family in the ring, if he asked his wife to keep watching Joe fight that time in Hawaii, if he said, "This is my greatest opponent. Look at his strength, and accept my struggle," if he'd brought them along, if his wife or children had told him, "Keep going, I believe in you," then his hair wouldn't have turned white in terror. He wouldn't have looked like this, while Joe looked like this.
i don't know if i'd consider "avoiding yoko's wiles" to be much of a struggle on joe's part.
Yoshikuni Igarashi, "Jō & Hyūma: Kajiwara Ikki's Manga Heroes and Their Violence Quest for Historical Angency." in Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism, (Columbia University Press, 2021), 213.
You know, this is an interesting article, and maybe there's more written here that wasn't included, but I think it misses a lot of important things about Yoko.
For one thing, it's true that Yoko is an extremely rich lady and that she does, on the face of it, control Joe's career, but I think that line about how Yoko tries to "channel Joe's wildness and free existence into pugilism through careful planning" misses the thrust of Yoko's characterization.
Yoko, just as much as Joe, feels deeply constrained by what she considers a "vulgar and materialistic modern world," and she implies as much. They're both trying to break free of constraints. I think the article misses this important point, unless it did note this, and it just wasn't in this particular passage.
Just as Joe initially gets torrents of abuse from the boxing world for being a "wild animal," Yoko faces a certain level of condescending behavior from the boxing presidents for being a "sheltered rich girl."
She uses this perception of her as a rich girl following her whims and fancies to her advantage, but I think she finds this stifling, patronizing behavior deeply disappointing, and more than anything else, Yoko, just like Joe, wants to break from these vapid constraints (money, fame, image) to have a pure and free existence. It isn't Yoko who stifled Joe's freedom; it's "vulgar and materialistic modern society" by turning Joe into a star after he gained popularity following his match in Hawaii.
Do you notice that Joe behaves exactly like Jose Mendoza here, the symbol of the materialistic success that Yoko dislikes? He has money, fame, a gentlemanly disposition, and a loving family, but all of it is a mask for arrogance and egotism that Jose carefully camouflages? Yoko hates this change in Joe's attitude.
She isn't truly a symbol of that society, though it may appear that she is at first glance. Jose Mendoza is. Yoko's the one who most appreciates Joe's wildness and freedom and tries to revitalize him when he loses that spark. Yoko doesn't want him to become like Jose, bloated with wordly success but hollow. Ironically, she does this by controlling his career by holding his world title match hostage, but in the end, she stops doing that entirely and just wholeheartedly supports him fighting all the way to the finish.
I think Yoko's an interesting character because she doesn't want Joe to be a typical pugilist. She doesn't want him to "channel his wildness" into something acceptable to vulgar, materialistic social forces, in her words. She doesn't want him chained into a life of insincerity. She wants to free Joe to be his wild self until the end, and uses her money and power to make it happen, and when that ran its course, her simple encouragement, because that is freedom for her as well.
She appears to be antagonistic to him, but she's actually his ally, which Joe understands when he gives her his gloves at the end of the series.
Sorry, @refractionfish, I don't mean I disagree with you personally, this is just my response to the article. I just think that author seems to be projecting his own views onto Yoko (incorrectly). Unless there's more written here that you haven't posted, which would change the context a lot. Haha. 😅
I'm just curious. If Joe actually died in the ending, then do you think it's possible for Yoko to love anyone else after that? I mean, of course she still has to move on for her own tomorrows and it's not necessary for her to involve herself in a new relationship. Therefore, i'd like to imagine what if she could find love again and be happy even though i'm a Joe/Yoko's supporter. What is your opinion? Sorry I just feel bad for her a lot:(
Hi! Wow, getting a lot of AnJ asks the past few days! Keep them coming!
To answer your question, it's certainly possible, but I think it's unlikely. She loves Joe, I think, because he's a "hungry" boxer, someone from a very specific time period (he was born sometime in the early 1950s, in a poverty-stricken Japan that was still rebuilding from WW2). I think he was a "furoji," one of those post-war orphans whose families either died, or abandoned them. They were considered a nuisance by the police, were often coerced by yakuza, and had to sleep in the train stations and beg for food. This is why he's so hungry and hardy.
It seems like Yoko wasn't satisfied with her life, rich and powerful but fundamentally unchallenging and lonely. She probably liked Joe challenging her and the rest of the world. Note that she didn't like his turn into celebrity after he became OPBF champion and thought it was something a consumerist and materialist society had turned him into. That's why she made him fight Harimau, to regain his "wildness."
By the early 1970s, when Joe fought against Jose Mendoza, that Japan was gone, and there weren't too many hungry boxers left. Joe was probably based on Fighting Harada, Jose Medel, and other famous fighters of that era. And Fighting Harada once said that as Japan grew prosperous, it stopped creating Fighting Haradas.
Here are some of his direct quotes from the article.
“When I began boxing, in the late 1950s, Japan was poor. The gyms were full, full of young men like me who saw opportunity in boxing. Today, our gyms are not very busy.”
“We all began to notice the difference after the (1964) Olympics, when we began to become more prosperous. But as we became richer, we lost a certain spirit, I think--the spirit that I had, and the men who boxed when I did.”
So the sort of man she loves would have slowly vanished too.
She could definitely be happy, though, and find fulfillment in her life. I dunno if she could have found someone else though. It's not impossible. She would just have to find someone similar to Joe before that "hungry" spirit faded completely.
Btw, if you feel bad for Yoko, I did write some fics on AO3 where Joe is alive and they have good times together! Check them out and leave me some reviews. It's lonely over there. 😅
I saw somebody on Reddit said that Yoko making Joe fight Harimau just fucked him up more than helping him, another person also said Joe could've had a "reasonable" life if he had lost his wildness to live like any normal humans. What are your personal thoughts of those takes?
By the way, Reddit has a lot of talkative Ashita no Joe's fans there so i think it might be a nice place for you to discuss stuff if you feel lonely here. Just saying through.
I think this is the same anon lol. True appreciation in a fandom is making people write huge posts 😂
Yeah, I've seen the Reddit page for AnJ but honestly I don't like it there too much lol.
About Yoko making Joe fight Harimau, I've seen that opinion a lot, and I think it's pretty unfair to hold her responsible for Joe's punch-drunk syndrome.
By the time manga Joe fought Harimau, Joe was already showing severe symptoms of it, from way back in Hawaii, and that was inherently due to his no-guard stance and his fighting style. He was always gonna end up that way, regardless of anything Yoko did or didn't do.
And people seem to forget this all the time, but Yoko made Kinninsky look at Joe's fight with Sarawak in Hawaii and he specifically told her that Joe was perfectly healthy. Manga Yoko was relieved and did not think Joe was punch-drunk when she made him fight Harimau.
Anime Yoko only comes to realize that Joe is punch-drunk after his fight with Harimau and she feels a lot of guilt because she thinks she worsened his condition, but really? It still isn't fair to blame people for not acting on information that they did not have, especially since Joe went out of his way to hide his medical condition by refusing to see doctors.
Another thing is that the narrative obviously agrees with Yoko. The Doya kids, Goromaki Gondo, and Danpei all express the same opinion as her.
She meant well and wanted Joe to be in the best condition for the final fight. She did the exact same thing by bringing over Carlos and that worked wonders for Joe by helping him get over Rikiishi, so it's no surprise that she wanted to try it again.
Ultimately, the only person responsible for all of that is Joe himself. He wanted to burn himself up. He did not want to quit. He did not care if he would lose, or die, or become a lifelong punch-drunk patient.
I can understand why people don't like Yoko taking Joe's career into her own hands without asking for his opinion or permission, though. That, I think, was her real flaw in dealing with Joe. I'm not really surprised that he was so hurt and furious over the Harimau debacle that he refused to speak to her.
However, I understand why she acts the way she does. She blames herself for Rikiishi's death and for sealing the water taps shut because he wanted to starve, as he told her that's just what a man's world is like. And she...let him, and even helped out. So of course she wants to control Joe's career. She doesn't want these guys she likes to keep dying on her.
So...for her to force Joe to fight Harimau against his will? It was pretty harsh and cold. Especially since she never explains herself.
Was she responsible for his medical syndrome or for his worsening condition, even in the case of Harimau? Nah, that was 100% Joe.
In fact, if Joe had not fought Harimau, he could well have never pushed Jose into insanity.
And that ties into the second question. He could have chosen a "reasonable" life, but the one person who earnestly tries to push him into it (Noriko) gives up on him and walks away. He would never have been able to live a reasonable life.
Joe wasn't meant to be reasonable. Jose Mendoza was. He couldn't have bleached Jose if he had been reasonable. He had to be wild.
He really thinks Yoko picked up a random magazine or something and got obsessed with a random Venezuelan boxer who she randomly decided needed to become a world champion.
Randomly.
Even after she says "please accept it as a token of my feelings [for you]."
AnJ peeps here, I had a whole bunch of Jose Mendoza revelations yesterday.
You know how he liked to hold his opponents' shoulders and let them hit him freely? But in reality, when your shoulders are held in place, your punching power decreases a lot, and this was just a bluff about how tough he was to hide his fragility?
That was not the only instance of Jose's fragility, even if it was the only thing mentioned.
The same goes for when he bruised Joe's shoulders at the party.
Yesterday, a lady at my office squeezed my left shoulder in a hug when I nominated her for this employee of the week thing, and her grip was firm. My shoulder hurt for hours afterwards and while she didn't leave a bruise, she did leave a faint dark spot where she squeezed me.
The skin of the shoulders is very fragile and breaks and bruises more easily than other parts of the body. That's why he could bruise Joe's shoulders so fast. Not because he was super strong. Normal people can leave bruises there too with little effort. It was all a tough guy bluff.
And as to why he gave Carlos horrific damage?
Check it out. This is a single blow to Carlos' temple. The temple, called the pterion, is one of the weakest parts of the skull, and among the easiest to damage with a rotational blow like the corkscrew punch (rotational blows increase damage). Four skull bones meet at the pterion and this intersection is very easy to inflict damage on because the bone is thin here.
It's why Joe accidentally killed Rikiishi -- he hit the temple, and the dehydration through Rikiishi's weight loss hastened the lethality.
Another thing is that not being prepared for a well-aimed head blow increases the chances of getting whiplash. Carlos went into that match with Jose under the impression that Jose was avoiding him because he was super strong. Whether that's true or not is another story, but he was not expecting that blow. This could be why Rikiishi knocked Joe unconscious during Joe's prison escape, and why Jose knocked Joe unconscious in Hawaii. They caught him off-guard. But this didn't happen during actual matches with them when Joe was prepared for blows.
Besides this, Carlos was reeling from his very recent bout with Joe and that obviously didn't help matters either.
You do not need to be a super strong person to inflict this kind of damage on someone. Jose just happened to hit a very fragile part of Carlos' head with a rotational punch.
But Joe went in there on guard, knowing he had punch-drunk syndrome and that his opponent was a heavy hitter, with first-hand experience in Hawaii. He was prepared for the worst and that explains why he lasted all fifteen rounds and was still in better condition than Carlos at the final bell.
In the end, everything that seems to prove Jose's invulnerability is actually a vulnerability.
Joe, fighting, and the way he connects with people
Just had a few thoughts about Joe, the meaning of combat in Joe's life, how it connects to his final match against Jose Mendoza, and how Yoko comes into it.
Something I noticed is that a lot of people online don't think Joe could have a friendly relationship with Yoko post-series because of how hostile, antagonistic, and vitriolic their relationship is during most of the series.
What gets brought up repeatedly are things like Joe grabbing Yoko's throat and telling her he doesn't care if she dies in a ditch somewhere, the time he throws water at her when she asks him to forfeit against Kim, the time in the manga when he teases her about her confession and tells her that women's magazines would love that scoop, Yoko forcing Joe to fight Harimau against his will, Yoko holding his world title match hostage, Yoko accidentally making his punch-drunk syndrome worse, Yoko actually telling him to die in the ring...
It goes on.
People who prefer Joe with someone like Noriko seem to want Joe to have easygoing and friendly relationships that don't have all these high-octane scenes.
And I definitely understand that discomfort. Joe thinks Yoko is actually his enemy for a majority of the manga and that informs his hostility towards her (in season 2, they are way friendlier so this doesn't really apply to their anime selves).
But does it mean that in light of all the insane things they do to each other, that after Joe is done with boxing, that they'd have an unhealthy relationship where Joe roughs her up or they'd still be antagonistic towards each other or something, like some people think?
Actually, I think it's narratively impossible for that to ever happen. If Joe and Yoko were to ever be in a relationship post-series, it would certainly be friendly and peaceful.
Why?
There's a very specific thread of frustration that runs through Joe and Yoko's relationship in the series.
Namely, fighting and exchanging physical blows is a very, very positive connection in Joe's worldview, and certainly the philosophy of Ashita no Joe.
Here, Joe says that communicating with Carlos by beating each other up has made them best friends, and that this was the case with Rikiishi as well.
Not only has fighting them given them a beautiful connection, Joe thinks it is superior to other connections. Closer than friends who've shared a million words together.
After fighting his rivals, Joe's feelings of antagonism towards them completely vanish and he behaves calmly and peacefully, trying (and failing 😭) to shake Rikiishi's hand, tearfully embracing Carlos after ages apart, and even refusing to let Goromaki Gondo say anything bad about Wolf.
Joe loves his rivals.
Now, what is the specific thread of frustration that runs through his and Yoko's relationship? Yoko certainly wishes to connect to the men in her life by understanding boxing. That's why she starves herself along with Rikiishi. She wants to understand the world of men.
Now, here is where people get off-kilter.
Joe wants to connect with Yoko too. He seriously desires a close connection with her, and when he says she's a woman in a man's world?
He resents this. He wants her in his world. His antagonism masks this, however...
He is frustrated that she doesn't seem to get it. He wants to understand her and for her to understand him.
He wants to have a close connection with her, a friendship, just as he does with Rikiishi and Carlos. That's why he visits Rikiishi's grave with her.
However, he does not think she reciprocates this desire for a close connection. He says Yoko doesn't care that he won the title (with the implication that he wishes she did?).
Just as he explains to Noriko his motivation for boxing, he does the same to Yoko here. Again, the antagonism does a great job of masking it. But he is genuinely trying to explain his heart to Yoko.
Why does he have to explain this to her, though? Because he is not allowed, narratively, nor by any legal standard, to actually exchange blows with her. Literally. He hits Danpei (and almost kills him twice). He hits Nishi.
Joe is a fictional character and not a real person, and his behavior is constrained by the narrative, which definitely forbids him from doing this. He cannot and will not exchange blows with Yoko, because she is a woman and not a boxer, and beating each other up is what he does with other boxers, in a world of men, not with her.
Because he cannot, and I do not think he has the heart to, despite what insane comments he makes, and some of the truly disturbing items on the list above (yeah, he's problematic...we know. I'm not his defense lawyer).
I think he was deeply frustrated at this, this inability of his to communicate with her in the language he knew. The best tool at his disposal, his fists, are totally useless to him here.
Do I seriously think he wants to commit horrible, misogynistic crimes of violence against a defenseless lady, however? No. I actually don't think that.
He never seeks mindless, sadistic violence. He does not desire this. He seeks understanding and true connection, and combat is legitimately the first time someone truly respected him as someone worth dying for, in the form of Rikiishi.
I think he honestly, truly wanted her to be his rival, an Atalanta to his Meleager, an equal to meet in combat, but he can't (that's why she keeps getting people to fight Joe by proxy; not just for Rikiishi, but for her too), for obvious reasons.
So what does Joe do?
Instead, he resorts to what he believes is an inferior method of communication. He tries to tell her about his feelings.
He says that exchanging blows is far superior to just talking, and yet he talks to her, and he talks to Noriko. Noriko doesn't understand, and she slowly fades from his life and marries Nishi instead.
Anyway, just as with Noriko, words fail with Joe and Yoko in that instance, though he tries. But unlike with Noriko, he does manage to have a soulful conversation with Yoko in the end, when she tells him to fight against Jose Mendoza with no regrets. When she does this, she understands him where Jose Mendoza, his actual opponent, fails.
I've said before that his discomfort with seeing Jose Mendoza's family in Hawaii did not come from being an orphan and seeing a happy family that he never had, but from the idea that he would lose everything he had gained. Joe does have a family he cares for deeply. But he must surely have been worried that his drive to become white ash was alienating them, just as it alienated Noriko.
On top of that, his final opponent, the world champion, was literally refusing the meaningful sparring and sense of friendship that Joe was trying to offer him in Hawaii, and was trying to offer him in the ring.
Yeah. Joe in the manga actually thought of Jose as a comrade and seeking him out in Hawaii was Joe's attempt to form a close relationship with him. This didn't happen, though, because Jose isn't that kind of guy.
That final match was such an ironic inversion.
Fist-fighting, his most meaningful way of communication, didn't help Jose Mendoza understand Joe as a person. It just terrified Jose and aged him prematurely.
Ironically, Yoko, a non-fighter, was the one who was finally understood him. And she did it with words of encouragement.
In the end, he gives her his gloves, inviting her into the world of men, without explaining a single thing, because he trusts her to understand. That was their version of the handshake he never got to have with Rikiishi.
In a way, the rival he made peace with was not Jose Mendoza. It was Yoko.
And, as I said, what happens when Joe makes peace with his rivals?
He drops all antagonism and all fighting. It's the end of combat and the beginning of peace. The cycle of combat was broken with the world title match, and Joe would stop fighting, because he reached the undestanding he was hoping for.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
tldr - Joe and Yoko would definitely have a friendly relationship with peace and calm if he somehow lived.
Joe is a Problematic Protagonist, but not as problematic as you think.
