High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 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 theTV series for North American distribution in August 2006.