Ashita no Joe is one of the most famous manga and anime of all time. It’s about an underdog boxer named Joe and his rise to become champion. It’s also iconic for its depressing ending.
This… is NOT Ashita no Joe.
This is the parodically-named hentai title Ashita no Yukinojyo.
We start out with a flashback. Our main character, Yukimura Yukinojyo, finishes his morning workout, receives a bottle of sweets from his girlfriend Shouko, and hits the gym for a sparring match with his friend and Shouko’s brother.
Skip forward and we’re introduced to the main heroine, the vaguely tomboyish blatant ripoff of To Heart’s Akari Kamigishi. Her name is Serina. She’s late for school and tries to sneak in after the gates have closed. She sees Yukinojyo passing by, and he barely says a thing, but it seems she instantly falls in love because he’s attractive. Literally no other reason since he doesn’t say anything of consequence, so… yeah. She just think he looks attractive.
Next, we’re introduced to Serina’s friends, the overly-excited Teppe, stoic Tatsuya, and bespectacled shy girl Manabe. They seem to be in a love quadrangle; Teppei likes Manabe, Manabe likes Tatsuya, Tatsuya likes Serina, and Serina… well, we already covered that.
For no reason at all, we’re introduced to Reona and Sanae, who have nothing to do with the main group. It seems Reona wants to be friends with them, but… well, they never talk so what’s the point of knowing this? Reona is a talented swimmer and seems to be preparing to move to London. Sanae is planning to study dance in New York.
Anyway, Teppe tells Serina about a new boxing game in the arcade by the train station. She says she’s not interested, but she heads over there and kinda makes fools of three delinquents when she scores higher than them.
Meanwhile, Yukinojyo orders an iced tea where Sanae works. And this happens:
On his way back home, Yukinojyo comes across the delinquents trying to rape Serina. To Serina’s credit, she’s outnumbered and still managed to put up a decent struggle when she breaks one of their noses and uses a pin to cut one of their hands.
Yukinojyo uses his boxing skills to beat the crap out of them, until the holds back when he sees something in Serina’s eyes. Serina carries him back to his apartment to treat his injuries. A half-asleep Yukinojyo remembers when Shouko used to bandage his hands while Serina bandages his injured hands in reality. This leads him to pull Serina in and start groping her before making love to her. Serina is of course completely oblivious and just figures he’s hot and he did save her from being raped, so it’s okay.
Serina leaves, thinking she just made a connection with the hot guy she likes, and at just the last second, Yukinojyo fucks things up.
Next episode!
Ashita no Yukinojyo adheres to the vanilla hentai rule of having sex with a different girl in each episode.
Serina has her first shame shower and can’t keep Yukinojyo out of her mind. It doesn’t help when Yukinojyo transfers into her school.
Reona shows him around and seems to have a thing for her. Sanae recognizes him and urges Reona to try to get him to join the swim club.
After school, Yukinojyo visits his friend in the hospital. It now becomes clear why he transferred schools and is so distant from everyone.
As he leaves, Shouko sees him in the elevator, and… yep.
At lunch, Manabe approaches Yukinojyo about any ideas he might have for the upcoming culture festival. For some reason, she seems to be immune to his facial close-up cut powers. He then goes off to eat alone and daydreams about Shouko. He wakes up while overhearing Reona having an argument with his father about not wanting to transfer overseas.
Yukinojyo goes to the roof to finish his lunch, and Reona is there. The two quietest students in the school have a bonding moment. She invites him to attend swim practice, and Yukinojyo flashes the closest thing to a smile he’s had since transferring.
Yukinojyo ditches Serina to watch Reona swim. For no discernible reason, Reona exposition dumps her entire life’s story to him. He tries to offer some advice, and the confused Reona just goes for a swim. Again. She says swimming can help Yukinojyo “forget everything” and invites him in. He obliges. Also, he doesn’t have any swimming trunks on him.
And so the two have some highly satisfying, fulfilling pool sex.
In the next episode, Yukinojyo orders iced tea from Sanae again. Then Sanae tells him Reona left for London. It seems Yukinojyo somehow fucked her so hard, she made amends with her father.
There’s, like, zero transitional period between getting over Reona leaving and moving on to Sanae. Sanae’s thing? Hip-hop. She’s going to New York to study hip-hop.
That is literally the least believable thing in the entire series. And that’s including the sequel / spin-off, Ashita no Yukinojyo II, where this happens:
For no reason at all, we flash back to Yukinojyo having sex with Shouko. I would say it’s obligatory, but we never get a Manabe sex scene.
Serina goes up to the roof to invite Yukinojyo to play an arcade game, but he’s not interested. She then invites him to watch a movie, and Yukinojyo kinda half-heartedly accepts.
Yukinojyo finally fully wakes up and is met by Sanae (Reona told her that he would be up there if you’re looking for him).
Serina’s group of friends heads to the arcade and Teppei makes a big deal about seeing Yukinojyo make the high score at the boxing arcade game. I feel like I should point out that this is a game that literally uses pistons with boxing gloves on their ends to hit the player while they try to dodge the fists and attack the targets. It’s like if the Hokuto no Ken arcade game fought back. Anyway, Teppei thinks he’s so good because Yukinojyo is secretly a gamer, but Tatsuya points out he was probably just a boxer.
Yukinojyo jogs at night and sees Sanae dancing in the streets. The two take a break at the nearby park, where Sanae suddenly ambushes Yukinojyo with a kiss, and they kinda spontaneously have sex on a stage while the shittiest attempt at hip-hop music plays in the background.
Naturally, we gotta have Sanae leave soon after so there are no obstacles to the final-episode Yukinojyo-Serina pairing. But at the end of the episode, we’re introduced to the final hurdle: Shouko transfers to their school.
Final episode!
Tatsuya did some research and found out about Yukinojyo’s past and the friend he put in the hospital. He’s on the verge of telling Serina, but when he realizes Serina might be in love with Yukinojyo, he decides not to.
Shouko gets bullied by three bitches, but Serina saves her by beating the shit out of them with her fighting skills (honed from the boxing arcade game). The two actually kinda get along, and Shouko tells Serina a bit about Yukinojyo’s past as a boxer in his old school.
Serina and Yukinojyo finally have a heart-to-heart after class. Yukinojyo tries to downplay her importance to him, but Serina confesses her feelings anyway before running away. Tatsuya chases after her and finally lets her know about the friend Yukinojyo sent to the hospital. Also, it seems even though Serina and Shouko got along, she never thought to ask her name, because when Tatsuya says her name is Kubo Shouko, Serina remembers the name he spoke right after they did it.
Shouko tells Yukinojyo not to make the same mistake he made with her and tells him to go after Serina.
Wow. Shouko is simultaneously the best and the worst plot-driven transfer ever.
Serina visits Shouko’s brother in the hospital, and he seems to wake up from his coma, fittingly just as Yukinojyo learns to love again and accepts Serina’s affections for… whatever reason.
Naturally, they have sex again and start dating. Shouko’s brother recovers, and Shouko is happy again. And Yukinojyo can finally jog with a smile on his face.
Yeah… it’s kinda obvious what they were going for here, but the attempt at character development is just pathetic.
Wankability: 5
As terrible as the character development and plot is, the sex scenes more than make up for it. Easily in the top 5 most arousing hentai anime I’ve watched. Not anywhere close to Hatsu Inu levels, sure, but to be fair, that’s damn near impossible to top.
Pleasure Rating: No Regrets
Technically flawed? Sure. But despite it all, I did find myself liking some of the characters. And again, dem H-scenes.
Rewatchability: 3
Honestly, there’s just nothing to bring you back to this outside of the H-scenes.
Music: Forgettable
Marketability: 4
Hey, if the goal was to get me interested in the game… mission accomplished.
Ashita no Yukinojyo basically went the showcase route of introducing all the main girls and animating a sex scene for them. One can expect the real meat of their characters and interactions with Yukinojyo to be present in the game. There’s nothing particularly wrong about this approach, but it’s obvious that the entire story suffered, as did the “romance” between Yukinojyo and Serina, which is laughably unconvincing. Other game adaptation hentai anime managed to do this without sacrificing coherence: just look at Pia Carrot AND Pia Carrot 2. It’s not that difficult. Chalk this one up to just plain laziness.