Yawara!

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. Plot 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.