The manga was authored by Jyoji “George” Morikawa. It became a TV series and was released in Japan on October 3, 2000. We are talking about the anime series, Hajime No Ippo.

Aside from being an Anime enthusiast, I’m also a huge boxing fan and boxing is my favorite sport. So imagine an anime series about boxing. That is totally awesome! While Slam Dunk makes me want to go out and play basketball, Hajime no Ippo makes me want to step into the ring and fight!

Hajime No Ippo is another sports anime that brings in great action and drama of boxing and humor common to anime series. Like most fighting anime, some of the fight scenes are a bit exaggerated for more excitement. The humor often involves stuff that are for adults only but I won’t categorize it as anime porno or hentai. I’ve watched it on TV and they censored out these things and I only found out about them after watching the DVDs. The setting of the story is a modern day Japan. The series is composed of 76 action-packed episode.

The story revolves around a kid named Ippo Makunochi. In high-school, he’s always been a weakling and bullied by his school mates. He’s too kind and didn’t like to fight back. Until he met a middleweight fighter named Mamoru Takamura. Takamura is a very skilled and strong fighter who inspired Ippo to learn boxing under his own trainer, Genji Kamogawa. He started his boxing career at the Kamogawa boxing gym were met his friends and fellow boxers, Tatsuya Kimura and Masaru Aoki. Another character is Ippo’s rival, but at the same time, his idol, Ichiro Miyata. Miyata is a talented boxer who was taught how to fight by his father since he was a little kid. Ippo became a popular featherweight contender in Japan with his exciting style of fighting and unmatchable punching power.

I own a DVD set of this anime series which is in Japanese and English subtitle. I wasn’t sure if there was an English dubbed version of this anime but with a little research, I found out that it was also licensed in North America by Geneon Entertainment and was titled “Fighting Spirit” (such an appropriate title). I first watched this anime, dubbed in Tagalog and was aired in one of our local TV stations.

This is also in my list of favorite anime series because, although this is not the first sports anime, it’s still unique in a way. It brings in a lot of excitement during fights and the drama of real boxing. You can also learn a few stuff about boxing and its history as it sometimes mentions some nice boxing trivias. The character development of Ippo is also good as he learns more technique, the fights become more exciting.

Parents, don’t show the uncut version of this series to your kids as it contains nudity, violence and some inappropriate langguage. Ippo’s a nice kid but his friends in the series aren’t very good role models to him.
Resources and Links

• Dynamite Glove is a nice website dedicated to Hajime no Ippo.
• Also, here’s Wikipedia’s guide to Hajime No Ippo (Fighting Spirit).

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Category: Series Reviews

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