So I started watching Hajime no Ippo not quiet sure what to expect. I saw bits of the Prince of Tennis, and thought sports anime were stupid purely based on that experience. However I was blown away by the level of emotion, story telling, and raw energy produced by each episode. It was like getting my brain blown repeatedly.

The anime stars the title character Ippo and his fellow boxers at the Kamigawa Gym. Ippo himself is a quiet calm little guy who gets bullied all the time. He turns to boxing after champion to be Takamura saves him from a bunch of bullies. He gives Ippo some boxing videos and Ippo develops a dream.

The entire time Ippo never thinks about turning his fists on those who beat him up. In fact he stays poliet and shy almost all the time. When he steps into the ring he suffers Goku syndrome where even after getting smacked around to the point of near death he still kicks ass. Yet, it never seems unbelievable.

The cast supporting Ippo is great. The fellow boxers of Kamigawa gym are very solidly developed. At first they seem sort of like giant man children, but as the series progresses on they clearly have a lot of substance. What makes the series so great is how fleshed out every character is and each fight has a well drawn story to make not only Ippo seem really awesome but to make his opponent another person.

The story is very moving and pulls at emotional strings very well. Add in the fights are awesome and you have one hell of an anime. Honestly one of the best anime I have seen in awhile. I highly recommend you look into this.

I didn't have much interest in this series (like you, I'm generally not a fan of sports anime) until earlier this year, when I was at SakuraCon. They had the show playing in one of the viewing rooms and it had drawn a pretty good crowd, so I stopped in and watched it for awhile. I was really pulled in by what I saw. I later watched a handful of episodes online, and what I saw made a fan of me. Watching Ippo progress and get better as a boxer is strangely addictive.

I've been wanting to see more of the series, but I don't particularly like watching TV shows on my computer, and I've sworn off investing in single volume-style DVD releases for any series that runs longer than 26 episodes. I've been hoping that somebody would wise up and start putting out season sets, or at least newer releases with more than 4-5 episodes per volume, but nothing like that exists as far as I know.


EDIT: Well, upon further investigation it looks like they apparently did release the entire series in a pair of DVD box sets, but they're no longer in print since Geneon went out of business. Looks like there are some copies being sold my Amazon sellers, but they're asking $200+ for 'em. Fuck that.

Not gonna lie, one of the easiest ways for any work of motion picture (that term applies to things outside of movies, right?) to capture my attention is to have fight scenes that have actual meaning and story behind them. I'll have to hunt down the torrents for this one once I get my computer repaired.

Why has this topic been inactive for almost a year.

I've just started watching Hajime no Ippo and fffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck I love this anime. Like Arc and Moab, I don't really go in for sports manga, but the focus on character development really makes this great. Also boxing is awesome.

Nearly ten months later and I'm still pissed off that nobody is releasing the DVD box sets. >:C

Is Mashiba voiced by the same guy as Kenpachi, or is it just me?