Hajime no ippo manga 1480

Every year, I read the manga Hajime no Ippo. The series, written and drawn by George Morikawa, shows the journey of a young man as he becomes interested in boxing and then starts a journey to find out what it means to be strong. The main character’s name is Makunouchi Ippo and I jokingly refer to him as my fictional son because I am proud of him in a way it’s difficult to express.

As a story, its very simple. Ippo and his gym mates train, fight, and improve. Time passes, the opponents get tougher, and the rivalries and friendships grow. It is well drawn, funny, exciting, and probably exactly what you would expect from a long form sports comic. Emphasis on LONG form. Hajime no Ippo currently has 1474 chapters. I have read 1433 of the chapters before, but as every year some will be new to me. As soon as I publish this, I will be starting the series over from chapter one and reading everything over again just to get to the new stuff and check in on Ippo to seen how much he’s grown.

As a creative project the series is strangely timeless. The characters don’t age visually beyond art style changes, the timeline is hazy and now lists dates with 200X in current chapters despite starting in 1989 for the characters, and technology like cell phones started popping up years early for our characters. And yet, the whole series is about progress over time. The first hint of this theme is in the names. The name Ippo literally means “one step” and could be read as “one step at a time in each situation” in conjunction with his family name. The series title Hajime no Ippo means “The first step.” The chapters are numbered “Round 1” up into infinity.

I won’t focus on the story here, as anyone interested should just read it and all of that was only the first chapter, but you can get an image of Ippo as a character. He is earnest, hard working, quiet, and nearly unstoppable. Since that first chapter he has grown from an amateur seeking confidence, to a rising star of Japanese boxing, to a champion, and a role model without ever changing from the first week chasing leaves. Hajime no Ippo isn’t about the best, most exciting fights in any comic where you can perfectly follow through shifting weight and momentum page to page although it has those. Instead, when I think of the series I think of the hundreds of chapters that are just running next to a riverbank desperately thinking about how to be a better version of yourself. It’s not about champion belts. It’s about personal milestones. It’s about continued effort and small steps to progress. Repeating the same actions over and over because you want to do a little more each time.

This continues year over year, along hundreds of chapters. The others in the Kamogawa Gym have all started their own stories. Ippo’s rivals have moved on to the world stage. Ippo began to work as a boxing coach for the gym and a whole new dynamic developed. All while he trained more than ever. Clearly stronger than he’d ever been and the manga foreshadows with dialogue and imagery that at any moment he could return. The only thing that we waited for was Ippo to make the choice to try for his dream again.