You must have seen some sports drama shows that might be freaking awesome, but there is and will be nothing in comparison to the show Hajime No Ippo (2003). Well, you can never expect anything much lighter in action from anime, and Hajime No Ippo is no exception. It has a story that can make you laugh, cry, motivate you in your hard time, and has action beyond imagination. To completely soak in its story, you should know the proper Hajime No Ippo watch order, and that’s what I am going to tell you here.
Released on April 18, 2003, Hajime no Ippo is a Japanese Boxing theme anime inspired by the manga of the same name written by Georgi Morikawa. This entertaining anime follows the story of Makunouchi Ippo; a high school bullied student who begins his career in boxing sport.
He defeats the greatest champions and wins the hardest titles with his extremely hard work and never-giving-up personality. There are six main seasons of this anime that you have to watch in chronological order to understand the story completely.
Table of Contents
Hajime No Ippo Watch Order | Correct Watch Order To Dissolve In The Storyline!!
To completely understand this anime series, you have to follow a pattern that includes regular seasons and special bonus seasons/OVA. These OVA are just one episode but mainly one hour in length, and here I have discussed their stories properly.
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#1 Hajime No Ippo
Makunouchi Ippo is a high school bullied student who is tortured by the stronger kids throughout his entire life. With continuous bullying and being regularly beaten up, he wants to change his life but lacks passion. One day in the midst of bullying, he is saved by Takamura Mamuro, who turns out to be a boxer.
Ippo, during this bulling, suffers from intense wounds and faints out, so Mamuro takes him to his gym to recover. As he regains consciousness, he sees himself in the gym. The gym pumps in him the desire to become stronger but lacks the courage to take any step. To help the kid, Mamuro encourages him to fight back with the bullies for which he places the photo of one of the bullies on the Boxing bag, and tells him to hit him with his full strength.
Here Ippo requests Mamuro to train him in Boxing, but then Mamuro feels that he does not have what it takes to be a boxer. So he gives him an impossible task to complete in the time of one week. Suddenly, Ippo feels an intense desire to become stronger for himself and his hardworking mother and restlessly trains himself to complete the task. His hard work proved his worth for boxing, and thus, Mamuro started training him.
#2 Hajime No Ippo: Boxer No Kiboshi
Hajime No Ippo: Boxer No Kiboshi is a bonus episode/OVA in the series that tells the story of Takamaru Mamuro. This special episode is available On DVD and tells about the background of Takamaru’s life, relationships, personality, strength, and why he took the boxing career.
In the episode, we also see Mamuro’s relationship with his coach and all the fights he did during his time. The episode shows us the jolly nature of the Mamuro, making the show a lot funnier. Apart from that, in this Ova, we also witness the background story of every secondary boxer like Kimura, Aoki, Sendo, Miyata Date, and Volg. What this episode miss is that it doesn’t tell how Mamuro enrolled himself in Boxing.
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#3 Hajime No Ippo: Champion Road
Hajime No Ippo: Champion Road is a long-length special episode released on April 18, 2003. This special episode is actually a movie from the franchise that should be watched after Boxer No Kibosh. This movie takes the story forward to Mamuro training Makunouchi Ippo. With his regress hard work and passion for Boxing, Makunouchi, a challenger, has become a champion and wears the boxing championship belt of Japan.
Makunouchi is seeing a bright light in his career and now has the support of friends, his coach, and his crush, Kumi Mashibi, who also likes to spend time with him. Things are going well for the new champion, but just as he steps of becoming the best boxer, his first challenger, Kazuki, poses a dangerous threat for him.
Kazuki Sanda works as a doctor with Kami in the same hospital and is best known for integrating his body knowledge into fighting. He is a fearsome contender, and now Ippo has to fight a boxing match with Kazuki to retain his belt and win the girl he loves.
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#4 Hajime No Ippo: Mashiba Vs Kimura
Hajime No Ippo is a one-hour OVA/ bonus episode in the series that is worth watching to understand the series completely. This episode was released on September 5, 2003, taking a different narrative from the original story. Tatsuya Kimura, the companion of Mamuro, begins to feel that he is left alone by Ippo and Mamuroa.
This makes him continuously think about his failure that he wasn’t able to win the Junior lightweight boxing championship. His inability starts to eat him up from inside and makes him feel more anger on himself. With his intense desire to prove himself, he scheduled a fight with current champion Ryo Mashiba. To prepare himself for the fight, Kimura begins to train with Ippo’s rival, who previously faced his defeat from Mashiba’s signature boxing style, Hitman.
On the other hand, Mashiba desires to win the world championship and provide financial stability to his sister Kumi. He is preparing for his fight and will not let anyone take the title from him. Will Mashiba successfully hold his title or lose it to Kimura? That is the main plot of this special episode.
#5 Hajime No Ippo: New Challange
Hajime No Ippo: New Challenge is a 26 episode long season that aired from January 7- July 1, 2009. This series, in continuation with Hajime No Ippo: Champion Road and is best to be watched after Mashiba VS Kimura. In this series Ippo Makunouchi, the featherweight boxing champion of Japan, has successfully retained his title from Kazuki Sanda. Meanwhile, Ichirou Miyata made his comeback in the boxing ring and aimed for Ippo’s featherweight belt.
Ichirou wants to own the featherweight belt in the pacific boxing federation. Also, boxing champions from all around the globe come knocking to the Japanese boxing ring. Now, will the Japanese best fighter be able to defeat them, or will they lose everything?
#6 Hajime No Ippo: Rising
Hajime No Ippo: Rising is the end season of this anime. It has 25 episodes that aired from 2013 to 2014. This series is the continuation of New Challenge, in which Ippo defends his championship title from Ichirou with his signature move Dempsey Roll. Also, champions from all around the globe have entered the Japanese boxing championship. Now, will Ippo be able to stand against them, or will his pride destroy him before he gets to real meaning to become strong?
Meanwhile, Akoi, the gym companion, is just one step towards claiming the lightweight boxing championship in the series. In the series, we see Ippo’s quest to become strong and some new players who take their first step of entering into extreme boxing sport.
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Final Words
These OVA episodes of this series may be available to download for free on the internet. One site from where you might get to watch these Ova are Animebee. The other site from where you can download anime is Kickass torrents.