Hajime No Ippo: The Fighting – Rising Episode #23
What they Say: “Episode 23 – The Courage to Live”
Hajime No Ippo is a Japanese boxing manga written and illustrated by George Morikawa and has appeared in Weekly Shonen Magazine since 1989. After being frequently bullied as a child, Ippo’s encounter with the sport of boxing inspired him to think about what true strength really is. Ippo has endured the kind, yet rigorous, instruction of Coach Kamogawa and defeated one powerful opponent after another. He mastered his signature punch, the Dempsey roll, and even became the champion of all Japan. But even as champion, he still hasn’t found the meaning of “true strength”…
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers).
The happy trio continues their makeshift family life in a pair of abandoned buses, but their happiness is soon to end. Nekota begins to feel numbness in his right hand, while Yuki begins to exhibit the harsh symptoms of radiation poisoning, revealing herself as a refugee from Hiroshima. Nekota’s body continues to deteriorate, his nerves and memory suffering from past injuries he’s received to the head. At the same time, he’s falling in love with Yuki, doing everything he can to help provide for her and impress her. Kamogawa can’t help but notice, the situation becoming more bittersweet as he struggles with his own feelings towards Yuki.
As the sunflowers begin to wilt in the late Summer, Yuki wonders if she’ll make it long enough to see them bloom again the next year. Kamogawa continues to train, but feels that he can never truly match Nekota’s anamalistic fighting spirit, developed from living up in the mountainous regions of the country. And Nekota begins to worry that his condition might be more permanent than he wants to admit to himself, as his headaches and numbness continue to tear apart his body and make it difficult to earn a living on the side. In one last push, he arranges a match between himself and the American soldier and boxer who humiliated him in the alley that night, and promises to make that his final fight.
Kamogawa finds out the night of the fight that Nekota is likely facing his doom against the American who has humiliated (and sent to the hospital) several other Japanese men, and clues from Yuki help to Kamogawa figure out that Nekota is suffering from “punch drunkenness,” a degenerative neurological condition caused by repeated concussions. They race to boxing ring… only to see the American kneeling!
Adding to the overall pro-Japanese message of this story arc is the fact that Yuki’s condition is perhaps one of the most iconic of people from that time period – degenerative radiation poisoning from the atomic bomb fallout. It’s something that I probably should have been able to predict had I really wanted to, but I think having watched so much anime and read so much manga, as well as having studied Japanese history in the past to some extent, I’m more willing to purposely lose focus and passively take in these big “reveals” as if I had never seen them before. What’s the fun, really, in knowing everything ahead of time? I can forgive this story arc’s predictable tragedy on its other merits, most importantly the fact that its inclusion at all was actually kind of a big surprise in and of itself.
Of more interest to me is Nekota’s history and story as it’s being told here. He’s never been a character that I’ve paid much attention to in the series, mostly because his use has been limited to one major training arc and some commentary here and there. He’s also primarily comic relief it seems, popping in when needed to act like a weird old guy toting around his large dog. This story arc helps to add a little perspective to his character, to add a little dose of tragedy for the purposes of character development, as well as to personally make me feel guilty for rolling my eyes every time he’ll show up in episodes from now on… probably.
As much as this show, like many sports anime, focuses on the “ganbaru” aspect of training and development in sports skills, it also occasionally delves into a more technical focus and lays down some knowledge about what it takes to be a successful boxer. Learning about Dementia Pugilistica or “punch drunkenness,” especially in relation to a lot of recent claims from American football players about the severe after effects of playing that sport and suffering through similar neurological consequences, is quite interesting. For how often that this series treats its matches as being very “in the moment,” with major medical effects only becoming issues insofar as they tip the scales during matches between the two competitors (recall Miyata’s thoughts on Takamura’s potentially detached retina), it’s curious now to see something which likely caused the end of someone’s sporting career and which is a real-life issue for participants in the sport portrayed.
In Summary:
From what I understand, there are two episodes remaining in this season. With one of them likely devoted to resolving this particular flashback story arc, I’m left wondering how the season will finally come to a close. With some fans complaining about a decline in the quality of the manga on which it’s based (something that I don’t really know much about, personally), I’m genuinely curious as to whether we’ll end on a future-leaning note with plans already in place for more episodes, or whether things will wrap up with no concrete trajectory or intention. Only the next couple of weeks will tell, I suppose.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: Acer P235H 1080p LCD Monitor connected via DVI input, Logitech S220 2.1 Speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560