Musings of a technophile

I recently found out that Hajime no Ippo had started a Season 2 in January (The New Challenge). I had been thinking about reading the manga to get my Ippo fix, but this should hold me out a bit longer, if not catch me up to the massive 900+ chapter manga.

After hearing about season 2, I actually watched the entire first season (75 episodes) and the 2 specials again just to got up. That makes it the first anime that I have ever watched over again (excluding anime movies). I can’t wait to start watching the second season .

I watched Hajime no Ippo years ago back in 2001-2003 when it came on originally. Normally it’s not the type of Anime I go for (being a sports Anime and being about boxing, which at the time I could have cared less about), but a friend got me to see the first ep and I was hooked after that. HnI is not just about boxing as there is a HUGE amount of character development, with most of the matches even having character development inside of them. Also the matches come fairly quickly, as thee is never really more than 5 episodes that go by before Ippo is at least weighing in for his next match. In other words, this is not one of those ‘filler’ animes – as it shouldn’t be, since the manga has been in circulation since 1991.

Anyways, I think what really draws me to this anime is A) The great character development and attention to detail B) The choreography of the fight scenes and C) the ‘comeback’ nature of each of Ippo’s matches and how he learns to fight back.

The anime is definitely a shonen type of series, and I doubt any but a few girls would enjoy it; even thought the plot and character development is great, there still is a lot of fighting. The series even sort of makes fun of this with at least two girls characters who don’t see a reason for boxing (Kumi – Ippo’s gf and Ippo’s mom). Still I would recommend it to anyone as a great series, it seems like this series gets looked over by too many people do to it being a more sports related anime.