YAWARA!, also known as Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl, is a Japanese manga series by Naoki Urasawa which ran in Big Comic Spirits from 1986 to 1993. In 1990, it received the 35th Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga.
The manga is first adapted in 1989 by Toho as a live action movie, Yawara!, directed by Kazuo Yoshida, starring Yui Asaka in the main role and singing the main theme Neverland.
In 1989, Yomiuri TV (part of the Nihon TV network) began broadcasting an anime adaptation, which ran from October 16, 1989 through September 21, 1992 for a total of 124 episodes. Each episode ended with a countdown to the number of days remaining to the start of the Barcelona Olympics. The anime, produced by Kitty Film with animation by the Madhouse studio, aired on Japanese television contemporary with Kitty's Ranma 1/2, but achieved higher ratings than Ranma, despite the latter series' being more well-known outside Japan. AnimEigo licensed the TV series for North American distribution in August 2006. However, as of April 2010 AnimEigo has been unable to license the remaining episodes of the TV series for North American distribution.
Read more about Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl: Story, Characters, Cultural Context and Impact
Famous quotes containing the words fashionable and/or girl:
“This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good- breeding, and consists in a Fashionable Habit, acquir’d by Precept and Example, of flattering the Pride and Selfishness of others, and concealing our own with Judgment and Dexterity.”
—Bernard De Mandeville (1670–1733)
“When a little girl opens her bright eyes in the sunlight, there is no variety of options.”
—Jean Arnold, U.S. inventor. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, ch. 9, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)