Hajime no Ippo The Fighting (Japanese for The First Step), known in the west as Fighting Spirit, is a manga series by Joji ''George'' Morikawa that has been adapted in to a 76 episode anime, a movie, an OVA and a 26 episode sequel titled Hajime No Ippo New Challenger, both produced by the awesome studio known as Madhouse.
Hajime No Ippo is probably one of the greatest works in sports fiction history. It has memorable characters, consistent character development, fantastic action and despite some of the stylization (like the dust clouds the punches sometimes make), it still remains fairly realistic. Also there's comedy and some drama.
Hajime No Ippo tells the story of Ippo Makunouchi, the son of a widow who runs a fishing boat. After his father passed away, he had to help his mother run the family fishing boat. Because of this, he had to work hard and didn't have much time for anything else.
Ippo doesn't really have friends and he gets bullied a lot by the bancho of the school delinquents, Masahiko Umezawa (who everyone refers to just as Umezawa).
One day Ippo gets a pretty strong beating from Umezawa but he is saved by Mamoru Takamura, a professional middleweight boxer who happened to be doing his running at that moment and was passing by.
Ippo is inspired by Takamura and wants to also become a boxer to find out what it means to be strong.
So after being tested by Takamura, Ippo eventualy joins the boxing gym Takamura goes to, which is run by the old coach, Genji Kamogawa. Also there are his senpai (superiors, seniors), Tatsuya Kimura and Masaru Aoki, who are mostly comedic relief.
At first Ippo is a complete mess when it comes to his boxing and gets beaten pretty hard in a sparring match by Ichiro Miyata, but he continues to get up after every down. This spirit convinces Kamogawa to train Ippo.
After some training, Ippo has a sparring rematch with Miyata and Ippo actually succeeds at beating Miyata.
After this, Miyata leaves Kamogawa gym for the gym run by his father. Ippo has no idea why.
So Ippo passes the pro license test and after it faces Yusuke Oda as his first opponent.
And then he participates in the East Japan Rookie Championship. He meets Miyata and Miyata tells Ippo that he will be waiting for him in the Rookie Championship finals.
Ippo defeats the African American boxer Jason Ozuma, the cunning but not very strong Kenta Kobashi, the handsome genius Ryuichi Hayami, who despite losing captures the hearts of all the swooning teenage girls (something boxers like Kimura and Aoki lament not being able to do).
Before moving on to the finals, Miyata has to defeat Ryo Mashiba, a tall, unnaturaly thin, grim and creepy boxer. Miyata gives it his all, but loses, spraining his ankle and sustaining other injuries. Miyata loses and cannot keep his promise to Ippo.
And Ippo then faces Mashiba, which kind of reminds me of Rocky 4 with how Ivan Drago beat Apollo Creed and now Rocky wants to beat up Drago.
So Ippo engages Mashiba, who has an obsession with winning which forces him to not give up. Ippo eventualy defeats Mashiba, but not without breaking his right fist. Ippo is crowned East Japan Rookie Champion. Mashiba says he has to start over and decides to move on to the Jr. Middleweight weight class.
Ippo's fist must heal. The West Japan Rookie Champion, Takeshi Sendo wants a match with Ippo for the title of All Japan Rookie Champion.
Miyata decides to box around Asia to get his groove back.
After being visited by Sendo, Ippo has decided that he wants to face Sendo.
With that we'll break off here.
So the first 25 episodes show Ippo's humble beginnings as a boxer and his rise to boxing stardom. These are some fun episodes and I think they go with the opening song pretty well since this is where Ippo isn't as determened and confident as he is later on, in that what is happening right now is sort of like a dream and he doesn't know how far he wants to take it.
Also Tsuneo Imahori's (the same composer as Trigun) soundtrack is less guitar heavy in these episodes as it is later on.
Takamura's antics are pretty funny and gags about how Aoki likes ugly women, Ippo has a large penis and the yearly training camp antics are created within these episodes.
So join us some other time as we go for the next 25 episodes. This series is definately worth a watch, hell, it's worth several rewatches.
when the new part after the Hajime no Ippo New Challenger down ?
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