Fighting Spirit, known in Japan as The First Step (はじめの一歩 Hajime no Ippo), is a boxing mangaand anime series created by Jōji "George" Morikawa which is serialized by Kodansha in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. The plot follows the story of highschool student Makunouchi Ippo, as he begins his career in boxing and over time obtains many titles and defeats various opponents.
The manga has been running since 1989 and spans 96 tankōbon so far. A 76-episode anime adaption titled Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting! was produced by Madhouse, Nippon Television and VAP, directed by Satoshi Nishimura and ran on the Nippon Television Network from October 2000 to March 2002. One OVA and a movie were also produced. At the end of 2003 the anime was licensed in North America by Geneon.[4] Geneon released it as Fighting Spirit. It was called Knock Out! in thePhilippines.
On September 15, 2008 it was announced in Weekly Shōnen Magazine that a second season of Hajime no Ippo would begin airing on January 6, 2009. The second season is called Hajime no Ippo: New Challenger and concluded on June 30, 2009.
Story
Makunouchi Ippo was an extremely shy high school student who never had the time to make friends because he was always busy helping his mother run their family fishing charter business. Because he kept to himself, a group of bullies led by Umezawa got into the habit of picking on him. On one particular day, these bullies decided to give him a rather serious beating, but a middle-weight professional boxer who was passing by stopped the bullies and took the injured Ippo to the Kamogawa Gym (鴨川ボクシングジム Kamogawa Bokushingu Jimu), owned by retired boxer Genji Kamogawa, to treat his wounds. After Ippo awoke to the sounds of boxers training, the boxer who saved him, Mamoru Takamura, tried to cheer Ippo up by letting him vent his frustrations on a sandbag. It was then that they had their first glimpse into Ippo's talent for boxing. After that incident, Ippo gave the situation a lot of thought and decided that he would like to begin a career as a professional boxer, and when he conveys this message to Mamoru Takamura, he gets verbally reprimanded due to the fact that Takamura thought Ippo was taking professional boxing too lightly. However, Takamura felt that he couldn't outright refuse Ippo, especially since his feat of punching the sandbag much harder than anybody else in the gym (except for Takamura). Therefore, he challenges Ippo to catch 10 falling leaves from a tree simultaneously after a week of training, fully convinced that Ippo would fail, Takamura jogs away as he continues his roadwork.
However, after a week of tough training, involving nightly hours, Ippo manages the technique in the nick of time. He waits for the jogging Takamura to come by his usual path, and manages to surprise Takamura by not just catching all 10 of the falling leaves, but only doing it with his left hand. This impresses Takamura greatly, and he informs that the action required to catch all 10 leaves was called a boxing jab, and Takamura invites Ippo back to the boxing gym for introductions.
When they got back to the gym, the coach, Genji Kamogawa, was not at all impressed by Makunouchi's lack of fighting spirit, and therefore, was challenged by Takamura to have a practice spar against a member of the gym. However, Kamogawa decides to give Ippo a severe challenge and tells him to spar with Miyata, a man that's also 16, the same age as Ippo. However, Miyata is known as a boxing prodigy and is one of Kamogawa gym's future hopes. Takamura gets extremely worried with this prospect, as Miyata skill is way above the 4-rounder pro boxer. As expected, Ippo loses by KO, but not until Miyata struggles dodging his punches and finally ends the match with his trump card: "The Counter" The coach Kamogawa decides that he has great fighting sense and spirit and decides to train him to eventually become the Japanese Champion with a world ranking while Miyata became the OPBF (Oriental Pacific Boxing Federation) Champion. Both are expected to hit high in the world rankings and eventually, fight each other for the World Champion's belt.
The story focuses heavily on character development, even during the matches something is learned about the fighters. Ippo and his friendly rivalry with Miyata is the main draw in the early part of the series. That later changes to Ippo's path towards the Japanese Featherweight Championship and eventually the world championship. Along the way we are given glimpses into the other side character's pasts, motivations, relationships to others and current boxing trials. A colorful cast of support characters and opponents as well as side stories concerning their path in the boxing world rounds out the series.
Media
DVD
Geneon distributed the Fighting Spirit series in North America on 15 DVDs with 5 episodes per disc. The first DVD was released on July 6, 2004 and the fifteenth released on December 19, 2006.[5] The DVDs included English and Spanish language tracks, as well as the original Japanese. The movie, Champion Road, has also been released in North America on DVD by Geneon. Unfortunately, plans for the second OVA, Kimura vs Mashiba, are not in the works. Disc sales of the series did not break even. The first DVD was the best selling at ~5,000 units with each DVD afterwards selling ~1,000 units.[citation needed] Many fans blame the lack of marketing and the negative appeal that a sports anime has on the mainstream audience.[original research?] As Geneon USA closed its doors at the end of 2007, the US rights of the series are in question.
Video games
There have also been some video games based on the series, first released on the PlayStation, then later the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance, and recently to Wii, as well. Two of the games have been released in North America and in PAL territories. There was some confusion regarding the Western title Victorious Boxers 2: Fighting Spirit prior to its Western release, as this is generally assumed to be the same game asHajime no Ippo 2: Victorious Road, when actually it is the next title in the series, Hajime no Ippo - The Fighting! All Stars.[6] The Japanese releasedVictorious Road is unique amongst the titles as it includes the option to create your own boxer and control his training, diet, weight etc. The second Western title, Fighting Spirit, gives the player a choice of over 70 fighters for VS play. Each title has its own story mode which closely follows that of the manga, though obviously the storytelling is not of the same quality.
Recently, Ippo and Takamura have also appeared in the crossover video game Sunday VS Magazine: Shuuketsu! Choujou Daikessen! as playable characters.
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