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[Parsely]

@Neonivek

Spoiler: Tiny Spoilers for Hajime no Ippo about the bullies (click to show/hide)

The bullies actually end up rooting for him later.

[Reelya]

Are you sure that comment was meant for me, and not Neonivek or someone? I've seen the whole thing and didn't comment about the that.

[Parsely]

Oop. Fixed. That was for Neonivek. You and him kind of blend a bit in my brain-canon. :v

[Neonivek]

I just love the lack of awareness in Hajime No Ippo

Because now our hero is fighting against a "Genius"...

Forgetting ENTIRELY that Ippo is essentially a boxing genius far more then all the characters in the anime.

Why is it that some animes try hard to make our hero the underdog by completely discounting their nearly unbelievable feats? "You can't win you are weak"
Me: "What show have you been watching? he been pulling victories out of his butt for the last 20 episodes"

ugh it goes on and on... Look anime... it takes absolutely nothing to change Ippo into the top dog in this anime... I don't have to rewrite a thing about him.

[Parsely]

Er. He's got some natural talent, but not as much as a lot of the other people he faces.. Ippo trains really hard. He edges out nearly every match. Ippo isn't an underdog, but he's no genius either. In all the matches except the one against Sendo the crowd is cheering for both fighters.

When you say "genius", if you're talking about Kobashi Kenta, the guy who was spying on Ippo..

Spoiler: Actual Spoilers (click to show/hide)

He wins the Junior Boxing Championship later in the series. So yeah, you could consider him something of a genius when it comes to studying his opponent's technique and adapting to break their rhythm and defeat them.

He's a boxer who can win by points. Not a lot can do that. So you could say he's a pretty smart guy. As an out-boxer he doesn't have a lot of power.

Spoiler: Possible Spoilers about Kenta fight outcome w/Ippo (click to show/hide)

He loses because he becomes desperate to get a KO on Ippo, because his sparring partner was heckling him about having a weak punch, and he'd never knocked anyone out before. Ippo was going to lose. But then Kenta tried to get close to him and Ippo killed him with his superior in-fighting.

[Neonivek]

He's got some natural talent, but not as much as a lot of the other people he faces.. Ippo trains really hard. He edges out nearly every match. Ippo isn't an underdog, but he's no genius either

The entire length of the anime is exactly one year. At which time he has mastered basic boxing (he is essentially a blackbelt) and can pretty much learn any advanced technique in less than a month and has more talent then many of the characters who have been training for years and years. Not to mention he has learned many moves instantly without practice, a few without even needing to be taught. As well his body's conditioning has already perfect for boxing from the very start as well as his mental state of mind.

By what merit is he not a Boxing Genius?

If he was younger I'd call him a prodigy.

Sure he needs to "edge out the competition" which is a term I use loosely because frankly... as I said it is easy to spin it so he looks like the top dog without changing any of the details... what with his power being so great every opponent he had to face had to essentially not get hit.

Some guy who just joined boxing less than a year ago who studies your style and learns a counter specific to beat you... using his overwhelming power to defeat you. That is Grade A villain potential.

[Parsely]

The entire length of the anime is exactly one year. At which time he has mastered basic boxing (he is essentially a blackbelt) and can pretty much learn any advanced technique in less than a month and has more talent then many of the characters who have been training for years and years. Not to mention he has learned many moves instantly without practice, a few without even needing to be taught. As well his body's conditioning has already perfect for boxing from the very start as well as his mental state of mind.

By what merit is he not a Boxing Genius?

If he was younger I'd call him a prodigy.

Sure he needs to "edge out the competition" which is a term I use loosely because frankly... as I said it is easy to spin it so he looks like the top dog without changing any of the details... what with his power being so great every opponent he had to face had to essentially not get hit.

Some guy who just joined boxing less than a year ago who studies your style and learns a counter specific to beat you... using his overwhelming power to defeat you. That is Grade A villain potential.

You're talking about the Rookie fighting league, which he wins he's still in high school (everyone in there is about the same age as him, they're all teenagers, except for the American Jason Ozuma who's an officer from overseas so he's likely a 20 something). He started training when he was 17, and won the All Japan JBC when he was 18. All the other boxers had similar experience except Sendo I think, who's a natural brawler.

Currently he's a world contender, about 24 years old. There are two seasons, the first covers up to his first title defense. By the second season he's fighting outside of Japan. That's over 2 and a half years at least. He spars with a world contender at one point in the first season who is disappointed at his abilities. He's by no means the best, especially if you think about his rival, who he was meant to fight, but lost due to an injury.

I don't think you give this anime enough credit. It's got a really colorful cast and it covers a lot of information about both the contenders every time.

[Neonivek]

What discredit am I doing beyond saying that the anime goes WAY too far to try to discredit Ippo and make him seem a lot less capable then what he really is.

Which is a genius boxer (Genius is talent not skill). He is very inexperienced but a genius non-the-less.

So sometimes when it covers the "other contendor" it tends to be like "ohh the competitor is super talented, unlike our dunce Ippo" and I go "Goodness... stop trying to make Ippo look bad to make his victory seem all the greater. It doesn't work because we already seen Ippo instantly master Boxing in three months... We don't buy it Anime"

Basically when it comes to Ippo they often don't give credit where credit is due. Often summarizing Ippo as "Strong, but not much else" (heck one episode managed to REMOVE an ability he had in an earlier match)

[Parsely]

He doesn't get good technique until later (see: Dempsey roll). He still gets hit way too much in the Rookie league, even when he tightens up his guard and learns to evade for the Ozama fight, and he gets caught out by his opponents' better technique a lot. He's strong because of his helping with his mother's business ever since his dad died. So yeah, his biggest advantage is his strength, and it's totally justified.

They don't paint him as a moron, he just has a meek personality because of his growing up being bullied.. I'm sure some people can relate to that. It stands out especially because of his other much older friends at the gym who take advantage of his naivety and mess with him. He makes a lot of mistakes in the ring but pulls it out because of his determination.

EDIT: Even after the JBC, he's still only ranked 10th, despite being rookie of the year. If he was a genius, he would've won that first sparring match against Miyata. :p

[Neonivek]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He makes a lot of mistakes in the ring but pulls it out because of his determination

He doesn't make many incompetence mistakes in the ring. The mistakes he does are mostly the kind every other boxer in the anime makes as well.

To my knowledge so far he has only made... exactly 2 real mistakes in a match.

So yeah, his biggest advantage is his strength, and it's totally justified.

His major strengths are
1) Strong punches
2) Fast dashing
3) Super fast learning curve (he is the ONLY character that could learn a move specifically to counter his opponent and master it in time... some during the same fight... or instantly)
4) Great pain tolerance
5) Cerebral buffer (I don't know the correct term for this... he seems to recover from brain injuries quickly)
6) Amazing Eye Acuity (They never state this, but it becomes obvious early on)
7) Supreme Stamina (Which... either exists or doesn't exist depending on the episode...)

They USUALLY don't paint him as a moron, I exaggerated. But a few fights really don't seem to realize that our hero is fantastic. He certainly has more of a collection of advantages then any of his opponents who would stand no chance if Ippo had more experience.

Which is really the thing the only true disadvantage Ippo has, other then ones they make up for drama, is experience.

He's strong because of his helping with his mother's business ever since his dad died.

To a certain extent this is true. But you need to be more then strong to translate into those strong punches he does. Most people have to actually train to throw proper punches... he got it after someone just explained it to him once.

He isn't "stronger then the other opponents" he punches harder then they all do.

In his defense Ippo is seriously Stout... All his opponents have a serious height advantage on Ippo and yet are the exact same weight. So Ippo's weight all comes from muscle. To a certain extent it kind of makes me wonder why his muscles don't show more... but I take it as artistic license.

They don't paint him as a moron, he just has a meek personality because of his growing up being bullied..

Hey, I said that earlier. As well early in the series they certainly paint him as a genius.

Heck one fight in particular removes an ability Ippo used earlier, as I stated earlier, and he had to relearn it (canon discontinuity... as it retroactively removed that ability...)

Ehh my long winded way of saying... It isn't that the show never gives him credit, it is just that they don't always do.

[Parsely]

^^I can see that.

Spoiler: Long-winded response (click to show/hide)

His major strengths are
1) Strong punches
2) Fast dashing
3) Super fast learning curve (he is the ONLY character that could learn a move specifically to counter his opponent and master it in time... some during the same fight... or instantly)
4) Great pain tolerance
5) Cerebral buffer (I don't know the correct term for this... he seems to recover from brain injuries quickly)
6) Amazing Eye Acuity (They never state this, but it becomes obvious early on)
7) Supreme Stamina (Which... either exists or doesn't exist depending on the episode...)

In his defense Ippo is seriously Stout... All his opponents have a serious height advantage on Ippo and yet are the exact same weight. So Ippo's weight all comes from muscle.

To a certain extent it kind of makes me wonder why his muscles don't show more... but I take it as artistic license.

Heck one fight in particular removes an ability Ippo used earlier, as I stated earlier, and he had to relearn it (canon discontinuity... as it retroactively removed that ability...)

1) No he really is just super strong. Have you seen the work he does with his mom? He's been doing that every day since he was little! Not pictured: all the lifting he does along with constant sparring and road work. You get to see a lot of sparring for obvious raisins and the road work because it's an excuse for him to interact with people for da plotz. The only other rookie featherweight with a punch like his is Sendo.
2) I'll give you the dash as one of his specialties, due to all the practice he does with it.
3) It's seriously not even a big deal that he works on techniques based on what his opponent is good at. There are lots of cases where his opponents do the same. ("That's the move he used in the [blank] fight!" Is something you hear a lot.) The preparation for a fight is usually a week or more. From my experience in wrestling, that's plenty of time to nail down a new technique if you practice every day.
4) It stems from his determination attached to his rival. He mostly loses it at the end of the Rookie League.
5) With the way the punches are depicted in this show these people should all be extremely dead. But it's awesome and it's entertaining so I don't really care.
6) Um. Adrenaline? No explanation. The show is slowed down, obviously, so we can actually see the action and soak it in. I don't think his reflexes or ability to react are anything special. Other than those moments where he's falling and magically recovers to nail the other guy with an uppercut (that's happened one or two times. that's bullshit), everyone is faster than him.
7) I haven't seen any inconsistency with stamina. It all depends on the battle's intensity, and how good his opponent is at provoking him. If he's fighting an out-boxer, usually he's exhausted by round 2. And it's not like they ignore it. The fighters are always talking about their legs.

Yeah Ippo's really really short. Not sure how tall he is.

He doesn't wear tight shirts? His massive forearm muscles show whenever he wears a T-shirt, which is pretty rare. I guess it's pretty cold in Japan all year round, but there's a part where they go to the beach to do some stamina training. But the school uniform hides it all during most of the first season because of the long sleeves and tall collar (I can't believe he actually wears that outside of school, it seems so weird).

What ability is that?

[Neonivek]

Direction changing ability.

[Parsely]

Direction changing ability.

Direction changing ability? What do you mean?

[Neonivek]

Direction changing ability.

Direction changing ability? What do you mean?

uhhhh....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strong toes

[Parsely]

He forgets how to change direction? I don't understand. Which two fights were these even a thing?