Hajime No Ippo

Writer: George Morikawa
Publishing House: Kodansha
Review Type: Manga
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Shounen, Sports

Synopsis

Hajime No Ippo basically centers around the the life of 16 year old gopher and social reject Makounochi Ippo, who is the son of a late fisherman and also helps his mum handle the business after his father passed from a young age. After some inspiration from magazines, videos, and boxers, he decided to take up boxing.

Ippo's desire to take up boxing initially seems pretty straightforward, as he is constantly bullied and beat on in school, and decided to take up the sport after his senpai and gym mate Takamura Mamoru helped him fend off a few bullies one day and gave him a little taste of what boxing is really all about. As he enrolls himself in Kamogawa Gym, his first training session also made his coach Kamogawa Genji notice his talent in punches, which prompted a sparring match with another gym mate, Miyata Ichirou, who is also dubbed a boxing pedigree, a term only used for boxers who are sons of boxers. During the spar Ippo unleashed a punch that caught Miyata cleanly and won him the match. This angered the prodigy Miyata, and thus prompted him to quit Kamogawa Gym and declared Ippo his rival, vowing to finally settle the score in the ring once and for all, as gym mates could not fight each other.


Chibi's Hajime Review

Well folks, despite the simplistic plot overtones, this series is proof of keeping things simple will also work in the manga and anime universe. George Morikawa, although not a household name like Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Tite Kubo (Bleach), or even Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto), in my opinion deserves a lot more credit than he actually receives based on this manga alone. In terms of character development, all of the characters in this manga actually do age (the timeline in this series up to the latest chapter has been approximately 6 years after Ippo joined Kamogawa Gym), and the manga does not solely focus on one character specifically, or as Morikawa sensei likes to state, all the characters in this manga is a main character. This is evident when one of Ippo's gym mates or rival boxers have a match coming up. The focus would be solely on them and the trials and hardships they have to go through before finally reaching up to the day of their planned matches. There's also stories on their journey in becoming a boxer, and each boxer's journey is so different and varies so much that i can't help but think the characters in this manga are actual people. It is truly one of the rare sports mangas that transcends the sport itself, and also focuses on real life hardships (Ippo's mum collapse due to overwork as Ippo's more focused on boxing), which actually makes the characters all the more believable.



Reading this from start to the latest chapter is no easy task either, as to date the latest translated chapter is 865 (!!!), it took this author almost 5 months to complete reading the whole series, but rest assured you will be loving every minute of it. It is definitely one of the best sports mangas that i've had the pleasure to read, comparable to dare i say it, Slam Dunk!, which is an industy standard as a sports manga.

Hajime No Ippo was first released in 1989 by its mangaka George Morikawa in Shukan Shonen magazine, and is still running. A 76 episode anime was originally released in 2000 which ran for two years, and a new series has also been released in January 2009 with 26 episodes released, titled Hajime No Ippo : New Challenger. A movie called Hajime No Ippo - Champion Road was also released in 2003 and an OAV titled Hajime No Ippo - Mashiba vs Kimura was released shortly after.


Chibi's Review



Storyline: 5/5
Character Development: 5/5
Art: 3/5
Originality: 3/5