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 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
Story
The story is about Yawara Inokuma, a young girl who aspires to an ordinary life but who, due to her innate talent, is forced to keep practicing judo by her authoritarian grandfather, Jigorou Inokuma, with the aim of achieving championship in Japan and the gold medal in the Barcelona's 1992 Olympic Games. Because of all the pressure from her grandfather, she has a generally bad attitude about judo, avoiding it as much as she can. However, as the manga continues, she begins to understand why her grandfather so loves judo, and she begins to appreciate it more.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yawara!_A_Fashionable_Judo_Girl
