Yawara! (stylized as YAWARA! in Japan) is a Japanese manga series by Naoki Urasawa which ran in Big Comic Spirits from 1986 to 1993. In 1989, Yomiuri TV began broadcasting an anime adaptation entitled Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl!, 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 1/2, 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.
Jigoro puts his special frog balm on Yawara's injured hand, assuring her that it will take away the pain so that she could take the exam (in fact, he purposely gave her wrong medication (for hemorrhoids) so that she would fail her test). Yawara is desperate as she is unable to write, but her injury is discovered by a concerned Matsuda, who sneaks into the testing site to check up on her by skipping out on an important assignment to cover "Mike Bison" (a stand-in for Mike Tyson). Yawara initially distrusts Matsuda and rebuffs him rudely, and it is only after he confesses a "personal interest" in her that she allows him to fix her hand with a makeshift handkerchief (allegedly borrowing from an injured tennis player's technique). Yawara asks her mother if she was "attracted to many men at the same time" when she was younger. Mistaking her surprisingly good mood for having given up on Mitsuba College (because she must have failed the entrance exam), Jigoro takes her to visit Saikai College to visit Coach Yuutenji and the college president, but Yawara bursts their collective bubble by categorically stating that she will not attend Saikai. She goes to the newspaper office to return Matsuda's handkerchief, but meets Yuniko who lies about Matsuda being out and pretends to take a message for him. As she leaves, Yawara is fooled into thinking that Kuniko might be a good person after all.