Hajime no Ippo

Rather than try to review a ton of aspects of a 76 episode show, I want to give a few specific criticisms.

My biggest criticism is on sound, or specifically the obvious replication of Trigun's drippy, dramatic, and perfectly fitting music in a place that it does not belong at all and is utterly disruptive, leaving any scene with it utterly bereft of its intended impact. The music in this series is fine when it is just bitchin' guitar solos, and at its best when it reinterprets the Rocky theme, but it is at its absolute worse when it mistakenly transplants Trigun's music.

My second criticism iis ... that the way they shoot to the audience at fight climaxes or whatever is supposed to be an especially exciting part is extremely disruptive, especially in early fights. It inflates the time that each fight takes, reduces the tension and excitement, and can serve no possible purpose but to help dumb viewers realize "oh, so now I should be excited again, okay!!" I do not mean when they flash to trainers or the members of the gym for analysis of the matches, since that is genuinely useful, but just the roars of the audience. It gets better in later matches (as in not happening), but then does come back again.

A third criticism on a similar subject is where, in early scenes, they extremely blurred both the top and bottom of parts of fights to show THERE IS SO MUCH ACTION GOING ON! They finally learned their lesson, but it was really disruptive in the early stages of the series.

Finally, a more plot related implement, still for the fighting, is that they repeatedly rely on Ippo being the one specifically shorted by the gong ringing, not the opponent, in an attempt to add tension by making Ippo the comeback kid over and over.

I think it is nice that they do try very much to make you care about and root for all characters, even though it is obvious that Ippo is the one that you are supposed to like most, and I like the time they spend on each character even though I did not like a lot of them (especially not Ippo's oh so shy routine).

Obviously, this series is enjoyable and generally well produced and paced. I think that it is quite overrated, especially because of the flaws I pointed out, so I just wanted to give people something to keep their expectations realistic, since this is not a "best anime ever," not even a great one, merely a good one.