Hajime no Ippo - The First Step - Vol. 72 Ch. 672 - A Vast, Distant World
- Thread starter MangaDex
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It looks like Aoki and Kimura are written so the author doesnt have to think about their fights. If they keep getting funny gag draws then the next fight is always confirmed, it probably wont stop until there is space to put an arc for them
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Over the years it seems like the author couldn't fully make up his mind whether Aoki and Kimura were just joke characters or if they were legitimate threats. At times they've been shown to have actual talent, or at least strong spirit / guts, and work hard (at times). At other times, they are absolute goof balls, that don't hardly train (or train foolishly) but still pull out draws or respectable losses.
Frankly I think they should have been allowed to fall into the "cannon fodder" category and/or retire. They could continue hanging around the gym as hobbyist boxers or just friends, and continue to have their roles as comic relief. Their matches only serve to drag down the sense of legitimacy that the matches in the Ippoverse otherwise have.
Some of the same criticism could be leveled at Takamura's matches going back at least as far as the Bryan Hawk match, or even the one before that one. A lot was (rightfully) made of Takamura's painful weight loss, and yet in the matches it barely had an impact. Not to mention Takamura has not had adequate sparring partners, tends to clown around / not have the best mental discipline in some ways (though really strong in other ways), and has been legit caught off guard with some of his opponents of late.
I actually thought the Bryan Hawk match was pretty good, outside of Takamura's weight loss not amounting to anything and the hypocritical way Hawk was treated as some monster for his behavior, while Takamura regularly acts as bad or worse. The David Eagle match was awful, and the "match" in this issue was just a joke.
It makes it real hard to feel a sense of gravity and drama in any matches when there are so many (especially in the last ~100-200 or so chapters) where there was such tenuous logic as to why things turned out the way they did. I wish the author had stuck to his early format of having the boxing serious, with some humor here and there in the slice of life moments.
Frankly I think they should have been allowed to fall into the "cannon fodder" category and/or retire. They could continue hanging around the gym as hobbyist boxers or just friends, and continue to have their roles as comic relief. Their matches only serve to drag down the sense of legitimacy that the matches in the Ippoverse otherwise have.
Some of the same criticism could be leveled at Takamura's matches going back at least as far as the Bryan Hawk match, or even the one before that one. A lot was (rightfully) made of Takamura's painful weight loss, and yet in the matches it barely had an impact. Not to mention Takamura has not had adequate sparring partners, tends to clown around / not have the best mental discipline in some ways (though really strong in other ways), and has been legit caught off guard with some of his opponents of late.
I actually thought the Bryan Hawk match was pretty good, outside of Takamura's weight loss not amounting to anything and the hypocritical way Hawk was treated as some monster for his behavior, while Takamura regularly acts as bad or worse. The David Eagle match was awful, and the "match" in this issue was just a joke.
It makes it real hard to feel a sense of gravity and drama in any matches when there are so many (especially in the last ~100-200 or so chapters) where there was such tenuous logic as to why things turned out the way they did. I wish the author had stuck to his early format of having the boxing serious, with some humor here and there in the slice of life moments.
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