I arranged my old post because it will be film in next year.
Have you ever read Japanese sports manga like "Captain Tsubasa", "Slam Dunk", "Kyojin no Hoshi", basically most Japanese sports manga/animations are completely serious; "Perfect Stoic world". Main character works hard to make his dream come true, but many troubles and tough episodes come to him from one minute to the next. Sometimes he sheds bitter tears because of severe coach's training or miserable losses to his rival. But still he tries to go up and up... That is a typical story of Spokon Anime (Sports Konjo animation) = Spots balls animation.
One of them is boxing manga "Ahita no Joe" (Tomorrow's Joe). It's tragedic story of an troubled orphan Joe and his rival Rikiishi. The manga was loved a lot by Japanese boys and when Rikiishi died in manga, people had held real funeral of him. And last scene of manga is a famous, where people argued "is Joe dead or is it just metaphor of his burning out" still now. The manga influenced people, even on crimers. "The Yodo-go incident" was the hijacking done by the Japanese Red Army (Sekigun). When they left Japan, they declared, "we are Ashita no Joe". It will mean they would fight until they burned out. (hijacking story is very intersting, check here)
The manga will be made into live action film in next summer. Tomohisa "Yamapi" Yamashita of News from Johnnys plays Joe and Y?suke Iseya who acted "First Blind Man" in Blidness will play Rikiishi.