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The story
An image of a scene from “Hajime no Ippo” in which protagonist Ippo Makunouchi slaps another character was posted to 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” live-commentary board, drawing a wave of reactions. In the scene, Ippo flies into a rage and strikes a delinquent he’d been teaching to box, after learning the young man only wanted boxing skills to get stronger at street fighting. The thread buzzed over Ippo’s famous line “You’ve made me angry” and the fact that the victim lost his memory of the incident and never filed a police report, before spiraling into a broader debate about the series as a whole — changes in the art style over its decades-long run, the story being stuck mid-hiatus in the prison arc, and lingering questions over why Ippo has never won a world title.
What people said
Wait, did Aoki ever fight for a world title? …Oh, you mean Takamura, lol
The cops just brushed him off and that was the end of it.
Cops: "We don't have nearly enough info on the victim."
Ippo: "Hey, victim, please go file a police report."
Victim: "I don't remember what happened, so I can't."
Case closed.
He'd been getting boxing lessons from Ippo, but it turned out he only wanted them to get better at street fighting — and Ippo blew a fuse over it.
"You've made me angry."
Uh, everyone's turned super skinny and scrawny though?
It's skilled, sure, but it has gotten worse — it doesn't have the punch it used to.
Have you actually seen the current art? The bodies are all blocky now, like a Gundam.
Before that he got hooked on VTubers, so it's already a lost cause.
Is Chiikawa gonna make a cameo?
Just end it with the bell ringing on his sparring match with Miyata at Kamogawa Gym, that'll do.
It's been on hiatus this whole time, stuck partway through the prison arc.
These days he can dodge, throw jabs, switch stances, and even looks like he can counter — a real all-arounder now. Plus in his sparring session with Mashiba, a world-class fighter a weight class up, he more than held his own.
Yeah, but Gori doesn't have a pro license.
Can't quite tell from this, but the elbow is insane — that's clearly a lethal weapon.
If you told me it was a G.I. Joe homage, I'd believe it.
Just let AI draw it at this point. The head's way too big.
What about Kingdom?
"At this point" — at what point, exactly?
Your ID looks like it spells "BAKa" (idiot). It's not even over yet, come on.
If the ending was just "loses out of nowhere to some no-name who isn't even a champion, then retires," well of course they'd stop him… That's worse than Yu Yu Hakusho. Still, feels like it would've been better off just ending there.
Because that would get in the way of Miyata's whole arc. Taking up the mantle Date passed on to him and beating Ricardo to become champion would be a clean ending, sure — but then what happens to Miyata…
Background and Points of Discussion
“Hajime no Ippo” is a boxing manga that has been running since 1989, already spanning more than three decades. The reactions here mainly split over the evaluation of the artwork, with some arguing it has “gotten worse” or “lost its former energy through oversimplification,” while others countered that it has actually become more technically skilled. Whether the art-style shift that comes with any long-running series counts as decline or evolution is largely a matter of readers’ subjective taste. It’s also true that the series has been on long-term hiatus since entering the prison arc, but the reasons for that and any timeline for its return have not been officially explained by the author or publisher — the thread’s suggestion that “Kodansha is dragging it out” is purely reader speculation, not a confirmed fact. As for Ippo never having won a world title, since the series hasn’t concluded, the honest answer is simply that “it hasn’t been decided yet,” so any definitive judgment on that point would be premature.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary of the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “[Image] Makunouchi Ippo’s Slap wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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