Hajime No Ippo

On this blog,I usually talk about games and anime and stuff.

While I usually don't put much thought into most of my posts,I would like to introduce something new to whoever's reading these,like with my Saint Seiya entries.




This series is Hajime No Ippo,also known as Fighting Spirit for the American audience.



The premise is that this quiet shy kid gets his ass kicked by bullies until one day,a professional boxer saves him and he admires how strong he is and becomes a boxer in the search of true strength



The series is basically a sports anime,but it stands out due to it's stellar fights,great character development and just fun characters.



Hajime no Ippo has 2 anime series,a "Tv special",an OVA and loads of manga chapters,so it does take some time,but I found that it was well worth the time.



*This is the order you should watch them*

The first series is simply called Hajime no Ippo and it's 76 episodes.

The Tv special is called Champion's Road and it's about 2 hours,taking place after the first anime series.

The OVA,Kimura vs Mashiba,takes place after Champion's Road.

The second anime series is called Hajime no Ippo:New Challenger and it's the last anime related thing for this series.



The series is very good but one flaw is that the anime barely scratches the surface,there's literally over 1000 chapters of manga material(1015 as of this writing)



I recently went back to reading the manga,and I'm all caught up now,so I wanted to pass the time telling you how great the series is.



If you're not too big on anime,no worries,you'll still like it enough.My mother of all people saw me watching this in the living room during episode 2 or 3 and she was just watching.

She ended up seeing the all of the anime episodes and specials,and she said she really enjoyed it.



I think the reason she enjoyed it is because this anime is grounded in reality.You don't see super powers or too many fantasy elements.I watched some of Ring ni Kakero with her,a boxing anime that has alot more fantasy elements like special moves,and she didn't like it nearly as much.



With Hajime no Ippo,it feels more relatable since these characters are human,and while later manga chapters seem to be pushing the limits of what a human can do,it's still done very well.



The fights in this series get pretty intense,even when you're reading the manga,you can still feel the intensity,though the anime portrays this aspect better.



Only the first series of Hajime no Ippo and Champion's Road got licensed and released in America,and the series doesn't seem to have a happy future in the West,so that's pretty much all we're getting unless FUNimation or someone picks it up,but it's very,very unlikely.



While there is an English dub of this anime,I recommend to listen to the japanese version.

The English dub doesn't have the same feelling as the Japanese one,it's more awkward and the some of the voices just plain suck.



Anyway,this is one of my favorite series of all time,so if you read this far,I expect you to at least give it a shot.



All of the episodes are on YouTube,even Champion's Road and Kimura vs Mashiba,although not all of New Challenger's episodes are found there.



If you choose to ignore my words and want to watch the dub episodes,I guess you can,you can find them at Toonami Aftermath(plug) during the weekends,although they only show 4 episodes a week,so that's hardly the recommended way to watch a 76 episode series.



As always,I shall post pictures about various things that I own from the series,it's relatively barren for a collection,but this is all I could do for this obscure in the West series.Oh yeah,and I kinda lost my drive to buy more dvds after I've seen the series 3 times online.



EDIT:I haven't worked on this in over 2 months,it was pretty much finished,but I never published it.

Oh well,that works out greatly because they're the 3rd season of Hajime No Ippo!

You cannot even fathom the hype I have!
Full Post