What does it mean to be strong? Ippo the Greatest Sports/Martial Arts Manga of All Time As a preface this review will be for every instalment of Ippo in animated form thus far. It will include: Hajime no Ippo Mashiba vs. Kimura Champion Road New Challenger and Rising into its final score though not all series technically enjoy the same score on their own. All story lines continuing on from the anime even controversial elements in the manga such as shall be ignored for the purposes of this review. Synopsis: Hajime no Ippo follows the development of one Makunouchi Ippo a bullied timid bookish highschooler. He works at his mothers local fishing boat business and is in his final year of high school with the opportunity to join any university and job he could probably want if he put his mind to it. However on one day he is being bullied once again by Umezawa and his friends he takes it on the chin as usual before Umezawa mocks Ippos mother. This singular action causes Ippo to be infuriated for a single moment before Umezawa beats him unconscious. By happenstance Takamura Mamoru a promising MiddleWeight 7073 kg boxer is running by as a part of his roadwork routine road work referring to boxer and other combat sport atheletes regular running routine Takamura quickly dispatches the bullies and brings Ippo to his gym: the Kamogawa Boxing Gym headed by Kamogawa Genji. Takamura reveals that he hates bullies but especially hates people that let bullies do what they want before giving Ippo the opportunity to blow off steam by punching a heavy bag with Umezawas crude drawing on it. Ippo having never thrown a punch before demolishes the paper into shreds and sends the bag flying but flaying his knuckles in the process. The other members of the gym note that the latter observation is a sign of a hard puncher. Takamura introduces Ippo to the world of Boxing with tapes of various Boxers originally the manga only had Ippo watch tapes of Mike Tyson. Ippo decides to pursue Boxing not just as a fan but as a fighter but is admonished by Takamura due to the extreme nature of the sport Ippo cries before asking What does it mean to be strong?. This begins Ippos journey as a Boxer. Storyline and Characters: Though not as heady detail orientated and inscrutable as other shows such as: Serial Experiments Lain Ergo Proxy Boogiepop Monster etc. that many anime fans have watched and pretended to watch are Ippo still holds a very well structured and satisfying loop to each story arc. The general process goes that Ippo or another Boxer in the Kamogawa Gym will be challenged by or challenge another opponent this opponent shall be introduced the Kamogawa Gyms fighters they will study the opponent to the best of their abilities and train in order to beat them their opponent will do the same with other characters from other gyms often chiming in in order to give predictions and analyses of our given fighters. During this period tension can be built with any number of interactions plot twists and other story elements added in order to give intrigue and suspense to the match. Eventually the match comes and our fighters duke it out. More often than not our fighters for this story arc shall be fleshed out even further through internal monologue flashbacks and the ilk anime shit and reveal their techniques or improvements theyve made to counter their opponent. A victor is eventually decided after these multiepisode/chapter wars and the audience is given time to soak in what has happened with moments of brevity before repeating once again. In essence this is literally Rocky: the Anime. However due to Ippo being so longform as it is it allows George and the audience to have a fully fleshed out progression of the storyline and characters. With Ippo himself finding himself taking one step forward at a time towards attaining his answer as his fists become heavy with the weight of each loveable hateable interesting and funny opponent along the way. Not to mention the progression of other characters like Takamura Aoki Kimura and Itagaki the former three of whom are often considered gag characters being just as tangible as Ippo himself. Each opponent no matter how minor is given a fully fleshedout set of abilities personality and motivations. Making the audience root for or revile them with every shade in the middle explored as well. And when the come times for the match their character clashes with our main characters own in an intimate frenetic and wordless interaction as character is built and revealed. Occasionally defeated opponents will also reveal themselves later on in the series making for permanent/semipermanent fixtures in the series or oneoff cameos giving each opponent importance to them not found in some other series which kill off or forget about characters at the drop of a hat. Art Design: Ippo is one of the rare instances where both the manga and anime can be both enjoyed on an aesthetic basis with no objective medium being better than the other. The anime renders each movement and character with life and energy as opposed to the moving manga art style of many other series. Each punch is afforded weight power and speed instead of resorting to floaty blurry streaks many other shows resort to when showing attacks. Each characters physique is rendered with care and changes over time as they improve George obviously exaggerates proportions and muscularity greatly with each character packing on muscle like a heavyweight. Each special attack is also extremely distinct from one another making it wholly unique to the character that uses it such as Mashibas Omnidirectional flurry of Flicker Jabs Sendos canvasscraping Smash Ippos frenetic weaving to charge for the Dempsey Roll and many others. However the last season so far fingers crossed Rising has had some of the most egregious and strange animation errors or just downright wacky moments which are more than unintentional such as when animators just forget to draw Ippos arms correctlyhttps://youtu.be/lWapdBPRA0?t=158 or when Ippo decides to block Sawamuras punches with his face https://youtu.be/lWapdBPRA0?t=397 but these moments are few and far between though this just makes it that when animation does slip up that its so jarring to the audience in an otherwise beautiful show. Sound Design: Ippos sound design including its music voice acting and sound effects is actually one of its strong suits. Continuing on from the previous point about characters special attacks each special attack in the series has a clear sound profile to signal to the audience that it shit is about to go down. Ippo has wind wooshing and jet engines blaring when he charges up for the Dempsey Roll and earpiercing rubber tires scraping against asphalt is used for his New Dempsey Roll before his muscles and tendons tear apart from Ippo daring to even try to stop his own force and momentum from running its course. Mashiba has an link eargrating unnatural dronehttps://youtu.be/sZAyaGWelso?t=26 to signal his taking of the Hitman Stance. ....And Sendo just fucking screams his lungs out but thats Sendo for ya. Hajime no Ippos music is also unique but dominates and dictates the mood and atmosphere evoking a Pavlovian effect in the audience just by being played with most boxingrelated scenes marked by jazz and its many subgenres. Smooth relaxed and textbook shadowboxinghttps://www..com/watch?v=EAKR2qwMMc4 to the frenetic unbound energy of sparring or a fullon matchhttps://www..com/watch?v=3c09tZwxHBo can be embodied by the incarnations of jazz. In regards to other scenes music perfectly dictates their mood as well with the first season making great use of that sad piano song which I simply cannot find on YouTube but anyone whos seen the first season of Ippo knows what it sounds like. That being said Ippos unique sound design is only most prominent in its first season. Thats partially due to some of the characters these sound cues/songs are dedicated to dont have fights in later seasons. But most of Ippos unique sound just got forgotten to the wayside as time passed on for some reason. Fanbase: Ippos fanbase is actually one of the most chill out of all big shonen anime fanbases. That could be due to the large intersection between boxing fans and Ippo fans with boxers such as myself wink wink nod nod being quite calm and nice. But I believe it mostly has to do with the more cult following Ippo has as being one of Japans longest and largest manga and anime series but still paling in comparison to the massive shonen series out there such as MHA AOT Haikyuu etc.. In general the only thing Ippos fanbase argues about is about whether or not some arcs are boring. Even then most of the time they just post fanart and memes keeping only to themselves. Overall Thoughts/Tldr: This is one of the most influential series in my life I highly urge everyone to watch it. I guarantee it will make you cry laugh love and hate all at the same time with only minor errors in regards to animation and music exist. Even if one is not interested in sports or Boxing at all: its story characters and aesthetic is phenomenal with a gradual clean progression throughout as the audience grows along with the characters. Only minor errors in regards to animation and music exist. 100/100