Chasing the Next Step
Hajime no Ippo and Taking Time to Grow
Note on spoilers: I describe some major trends near the end of the series, but have done my best to keep the magic unspoiled for the many friends I actively try to bully into reading.
I wait all year for the end of October. Not for costumes and candy. Not for fall weather (which is my favorite). Not for my birthday (which is today). Instead, I wait for Ippo.
I should start at the beginning.
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 I said, I should start from the beginning. I did last year and the year before.
George started the series in 1990 and is still going strong. George runs a boxing gym and has worked as a real coach and second for many boxers. You can see his experience and love for the training and details on every page.
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.
The story starts with Ippo, the hardworking son of a fisherwoman, bullied on his way home from school because he didn’t have time to change his clothes after working on the boat that morning. He is rescued by Takamura, a boxer passing on a daily run by the riverside who easily scares away the other kids. Takamura returns with Ippo to the Kamogawa Boxing Gym to find a first aid kit, and ends up drawing a picture of the bully to show Ippo how to punch. He’s back the next day to ask to join the gym. He doesn’t think of the bullies. Instead, he wants the confidence Takamura showed and loved the first feeling of training.
Takamura tries to scare Ippo away and leaves him with a challenge: Takamura would allow him to join the gym only if Ippo can catch ten falling leaves by the next week. He then runs off and Ippo is left alone to figure out the motion. We get our first training montage as Ippo wakes up before loading the boat with his mom to chase leaves, and stay out late into the evening after school on the riverbank shaking the tree trunk thinking “I will be reborn!” to himself. By the time the day arrives, Takamura has forgotten about Ippo but Ippo is there at the riverbank waiting to show all his effort. He is able to catch 10 leaves. Takamura is surprised not just that Ippo kept trying on his own, but that Ippo misunderstood the instructions and thought he had to catch all 10 with only his left hand as Takamura did. Ippo is welcomed to the gym and told he just learned the jab. The rest is history.
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.
I think that’s beautiful.
My Reading Ritual:
I first found Ippo while I was in high school. The series was exciting and I quickly caught up to the current chapter at the time. This is what many consider to be a bad move. By sheer chance, I caught up during the climax of a fight Ippo would lose and then go on an extended recovery/retirement. I was crushed. I loved his journey and progress and didn’t want it to end.
Reading chapters week to week after this loss was difficult too. After binging hundreds of steps towards progress, sitting in defeat was painful. I tried to stay current but ended up forgetting to check the series and only catching up every few weeks. Ippo didn’t forget his loss though and the wait for his return to the ring grew. Soon it had been over a year of chapters for his recovery. I decided to check back in the next year and see all the progress he’d made.
Months later and forty-ish chapters later I found he was still training, still recovering, and still learning.
I check back the next year, at this point I am in a gap year working before college, and he’s still at it. It’s good to catch up with these characters that mean a lot to me.
The following year, some real progress is made and I get to see him grow.
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.
He was ready to take the weights off.
Cross the line.
Carry the baton.
And move forward.
All that’s left was for him to admit to himself he wanted to move on.
I have enjoyed checking back in on Ippo and his progress in the many years since I first caught up. I’ve gone to college, moved across the country, and become a real adult. I will not to say here if or when Ippo returned to the ring, but just know that I am excited to read from the beginning and know he will have grown so much in the time since I saw him.
Making a ritual out of waiting a full year for George to publish chapters, and then starting from the beginning or at least the middle of the series has helped me slow down and enjoy the series. It has made me really sit with why his struggles with motivation resonate with me. While Ippo was in his biggest slump, I was graduating amid a pandemic, trying to pick a career, and making a lot of big slow personal decisions about my own goals. I remain proud of his growth and will always be happy to follow his path. He inspires me to think about what I want, earnestly try to make that happen, and keep moving forward.
The River
One last aspect of Ippo that I want to focus on before you go is the river embankment Ippo and the gang run on. I have shared several pictures of it so far, but here is another.
The Ippo river path is based on an area near the Tamagawa River Japan. Other than fights, almost every important scene in the series happens there. It’s where Ippo is found by Takamura, where he caught leaves, where he trains every day, where Takamura drew a line in the dirt and told him not not to cross (deep into Ippo’s motivation crisis) and so much more.
Because that river actually exists, I have made a tradition of bullying any of my friends who go to Japan to visit it and do a ritual of their own. I ask them to find a nice river bank and take a walk or jog, while thinking about their hopes and dreams.
I currently have one friend in Japan who wasn’t able to get out and walk, but did take a picture from the bridge as his train passed. I can almost see Ippo taking his next step!
What’s Next?
I will be back in a few days to recap what I read, watched, and played this month. It was a busy month and I have a lot to talk about! Thank you for reading!
Very compelling! And Happy Birthday!!