Hajime no Ippo 848-857
As always, Itagaki's fight in these chapters rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, I can absolutely go along with him having a rather bad boxer as an opponent this time, but finishing the match with an effortless impromptu jolt counter? Yeah sure, Itagaki has a number of similar boxers to learn from and he's a "genius" but the rate at which he is evolving in each match does very little to get me invested in his fights.
Ippo says that he's relieved he doesn't have to fight Itagaki and that their age difference is the only thing keeping him as the "senpai", the torch-passing could not get any more repetitive here. And Ippo isn't going to let Itagaki go past him, this is Hajime no
Ippo for goodness' sake, so what is the damn point of keeping a friendly secondary character so close to Ippo's power level with implications that he could be surpassed at any moment? Ippo has no shortage of rivals and many of them
have surpassed him in a sense (or rather, taken
back their position of rank superiority), but it never was beaten to our skulls the way Itagaki's potential is.
Are we going to end with a triple-whammy of Itagaki beating Miyata, taking the Featherweight World Championship from Ricardo Martinez and taking Kumi as his girl, Morikawa? Because that's the message I'm getting here, as unlikely as that ending is!
Anyway, after that we were teased romantic development between Ippo and Kumi, but as suspected, Kumi accidentally slides down the hill on a sled and avoids Ippo's attempt to kiss her. The ways in which development is blocked are so ridiculous that Morikawa's just trolling people. Probably has been for a long time.
Mashiba's OPBF title match was surprisingly good. Then again, I'd say Mashiba probably has one of the best track records for consistent quality matches in this series despite him not developing significantly between each of them. He was basically just fighting a lightweight in-fighter with his usual moves (and actually with less cheating),
BUT, the change in weight class actually made a major difference in ways that were not completely unexpected and at the same time not super telegraphed.
The lack of experience in lightweight matches made all the difference, so while Mashiba has gained strength by going 2 kilos up, he didn't account for that lightweights can much more often reach the levels of toughness and power of our featherweight Ippo, and this champion is used to dealing with much worse punches. The chopping right straight, his last line of defense, was no good. And even though Mashiba can become a tougher fighter when he gets pissed off, in this case from his enemy using a few foul moves, he couldn't utilize this because the opponent was an infighter and Mashiba needed to avoid cheating so he won't have to quit pro boxing for another year.
What won him the fight was a 10th round uppercut that he used against Ippo in their spar, as the champion was expecting a blow from above rather than below.
Why did he forget this until 10th round? Is he
that rusty, is that uppercut such a Pavlovian response to Ippo's presence? The only reason why this match went into 10th round was to make sure to the readers that Mashiba couldn't win by points.
Then again there's no reason he'd ever even try to. This is Mashiba, one of the most violent, bitter and cruel boxers in this damn series. He will not lame it out. Still, despite the late use of a simple uppercut, this was a genuinely fun match.
I can't wait to see what comes ne-
Oh...
This is
"that fight" isn't it? The gimmickiest, stupidest fight in the series? The big stinker that caused many to drop the manga until it recovered?
I have around 200 chapters until I've caught up with the manga, but I dread how many of them are dedicated to this circus act.
let me know if you guys have any issues with the proofing/tone/consistency.
