Just how anime is Creed III?

Minor spoiler warning: I talk a little bit about the way the final battle is shot. No plot reveals.

Like a lot of anime nerds, I went to the theater to see Creed III specifically because of online buzz about director/star Michael B. Jordan’s love of anime and how it seeped into the film.1 Jordan has been very open for a long time about his love of the medium, and an interview with his costar Johnathan Majors talking about how Jordan made him watch key scenes in Naruto as prep went viral.

So, brilliantly, this got a bunch of curious otaku like me into the theater to answer one question: how anime is it?

Creed III is very anime. With an influence that runs deeper than direct homage and callout— which it has a little bit of as well— the film is deeply informed by the aesthetic of Shonen Jump anime, its sense of drama and pathos.

And where better to draw from when your movie is about one big fight between two former friends, their lifelong grudge, and the love and hate between them?

Though this is the third movie of a spinoff series, you don’t need any previous experience to get into the story. Adonis Creed (son of Apollo) is at the top of the world, a retired champion moving into upper management, living lavish with his happy family.

When his old friend Damian gets out of prison and walks back into Adonis’ life, Adonis finds himself negotiating the rocky past that led them to this situation. It’s a complicated relationship, and not the kind of problem they can settle with words. As it untangles this past, the movie slow boils towards an explosive showdown in the ring. With each punch, the two aging boxers exorcise the demons that have haunted them since their fateful parting.

In Jump terms, you could think of this as a “flashback arc” movie. Its emotional core is in Adonis’ past, his deep bond with Damian, everything that has come between them, the wrongs that can’t be taken back on both sides. It’s difficult throughout not to think of Naruto and Sasuke, and I didn’t watch that anime.

The film isn’t just aesthetically “anime” but thematically so, and adopting the naked sincerity of a Jump comic is what makes it really hit. The part that felt the most like Shonen Jump manga to me was actually a protracted, emotional deathbed scene: shades of “thank you for loving me”.

But Creed III also has the look of anime: not the easy stuff like speed lines or effects, but the subtler mannerisms that only a really passionate fan would draw from. The first fight of the film is a classic manga-style battle: downplaying his power to start, our hero takes some hits to find his opponent’s weakness. When he sees it, the camera quick cuts to a close-up of the man’s exposed side: I saw the emphasis lines in my head. Then, immediately a cut to Adonis’ eye dilating; the “!!” panel. Many of the fight scenes in this film feel storyboarded by manga.

And I must spoil the finale a little bit, because it embraces anime/manga’s sense of fantasy the most. Once the big fight between Adonis and Damian really gets going, reality melts away and we no longer see a stadium or a crowd. They’re in the canyon from Naruto. They’re in the group home they grew up in. They’re outside the liquor store. They’re in jail. The two men fight through everything that has hurt them, including each other. It’s genuinely powerful. There is a cross counter.

I think that the most popular anime/manga work because their fantasy never forgets to pack with it some intense emotional resonance. Relatable humanity is the secret weapon, expressed through means larger than life. Creed III borrows some of that style; it feeds on it for its drama. And as a result, it’s some damn good shonen.