Mar 12, 2014
For a long time I succesfully avoided reading Hajime no Ippo, allthough knowing, that it is one of the longest running current mangas and widely regarded as a great sports manga. However after exhausting my backlog of mangas to read, I finally started it and read all 1000+ chapters in under two weeks. That alone should tell you, that I enjoyed Ippo.
I won't get into detail about the story, there are probably more than enough ressources to read about this. Basically it's about Ippo, a weak and shy boy, who gets bullied a lot. Through chance he meets the rising boxing star Takamura and joins
...
the Kamogawa gym. He then starts his journey through the ranks of the boxing world in a quest to find out, what it's like to be truly strong.
After a while most of the time the manga follows a pretty strict formula. First a boxing match is announced and/or a new enemy is announced, then follows training and pre match strategy meetings, followed by the fight, followed by some "filler" like chapters that depict the every day life of the Kamogawa boxers in a generally humorous way.
While the story is mostly predictable, it is presented well enough to be interesting and continuing reading. The true strength of Hajime no Ippo lies in it's characters. While Ippo himself is a pretty one dimensional character, he is still likeable, and it's easy to identify with his struggles to find the self confidence needed in the ring. His gym mates are genuinely fun and interesting. Just for an example, there is Takamura, whose monstrous strength and eccentric behaviour makes him not only the star of the gym but also the center of most of the mangas humour, which you could either call archaic or classic. Either way it is funny.
Most of the time the opponent of Ippo are rather well written characters with their own motivation and a lot of them reappear either as recurring enemies or as new found friends or rivals. More than once I found myself conflicted who I wanted to win in a fight, Ippo or his opponent, which really shows, how much you can relate to these characters.
The only weak point within the casts are the opponents of Ippos gym mates. They are often just there to provide a match, but rarely get much of a backstory. While I can understand that most of the panels should focus on Ippo and his matches, a few more fleshed out fights for Aoki or Kimura would have been nice.
Then lets focus on the art for now, which is probably one of the most polarizing parts of the manga. You really see, that this manga is from a different era. Even with the slight variations in the style that the manga went through, it style can again be described as either archaic or classic. For fans of old school mangas this might be a plus point, but for me it wasn’t. I found the art to be functional but the character design is not my thing. Even more so I think a lot of the characters look bland, and more often than it’s tolerable I had problems remembering who a recurring character was just based on his face.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t good parts in the art however. The fights are exceptionally well done, the perspective used and the generous use of speed lines really makes certain scenes stand out. Especially whenever powerful moves are used, a turning point in a match occurs or the manga shows a knockout scene, you can really feel the impact of the attacks through the art alone.
Hajime no Ippo is definitely a good manga. While it might not have reached the expectations I had for its long running record, it is a good read and even non sport fans will probably enjoy the characters and their struggles. If you can cope with the archaic art style or even like it more than the current ones, you should try it out. If you start it you’ll have something to read for quite a while.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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