Groomed to be a champion, she just wants to be an ordinary girl.

Note: Yawara! will go out of print on August 31st, 2012. Order now while supplies last.

Inokuma Yawara just wants to be an ordinary high-school girl. Unfortunately for her, she's been trained since she was a toddler by her grandfather, Jigoro, to be a judo prodigy. Nothing less than an Olympic Gold Medal and the coveted National Merit Award will satisfy him, and he'll do anything to ensure that she achieves it.

And if that isn't enough, a pesky sports reporter is on her trail, convinced she's Japan's next superstar -- and that picture of her taking down a mugger (with her panties showing) on the front page of his cheesy sports newspaper isn't helping matters at all!

AnimEigo is proud to be releasing one of Japan's most popular and long-running Anime TV series, based on the sweet and hilarious hit manga by Naoki Urasawa -- Yawara, the Fashionable Judo Girl.

PS: you may have noticed that there are no online liner notes for Yawara! This is because they are so extensive that we actually printed up a thick booklet that is included with the box set!

Yawara 101

Trained from an early age to be a judo champion, Inokuma Yawara just wants to be a normal high-school girl, find a boyfriend, fall in love, and so on. Unfortunately, her grandfather is Inokuma Jigoro, 7th-dan Judo Master and 5-time National Champion. Jigoro loves two things, Judo and Eating, and he's world-class in both. He won't be satisfied unless Yawara wins both an Olympic Gold Medal and the prestigious National Merit Award, and he's been reminding Yawara of this since she's been a toddler. When Yawara decides boys are more important than Judo, he schemes to find her a rival, someone like Hon'ami Sayaka, the extremely spoiled daughter of one of Japan's richest families (when she wants a designer outfit from Paris, the designer flies to her!). Sayaka has never failed to dominate any sport she's cared to try, and when Yawara shows her up, she decides to stop at nothing to defeat her, enlisting the aid of her loyal and extremely patient majordomo, Tokunaga, and Kazamatsuri Shinnosuke, the finest judo coach in all of Japan (except perhaps for Jigoro, whom he worships), and also, despite being incredibly shy, an unbelievable babe-magnet. Unfortunately for him, for all the women in the world, and in particular, for Sayaka, he just might be getting serious about Inokuma Yawara, who is fast falling in love with him, but is perhaps even more shy than he is. However, her romantic daydreams may get a cold dose of reality when she finds out Kazamatsuri is Sayaka's coach! Meanwhile, Yawara's life is being made complicated by a tenacious reporter, Matsuda Kosaku, who's become convinced she's going to be the next great sports superstar, and whose photographer sidekick Kamoda seems to have a knack for taking embarrassing pictures of our heroine, which have caused no end of problems, not the least of which are the unwanted affections of her school's resident bad boy, Sudoh, as well as the overly-emotional devotion of the captain of the school's hapless Judo club, Hanazono.

And that's just in the first few episodes, mind you...