New Challenger

For a while now, I've been following the series "Hajime no Ippo" aka "Knockout" aka "Fighting Spirit". The show is extremely inspiring and entertaining, with crazy humor and interesting plot. In a nutshell, its about a bullied youngster who found inner strength through boxing. The animated tv series ended just as the show's lead, Makunochi Ippo captured the Japanese Featherweight Belt. After one movie and a special, the watcher is left hanging, as the story wasn't concluded. 2002 saw the end of the series, thus after running through all the watchable media, I went to read the Manga. This sated the craving for a while.

After 7 long years, it was a welcome development that they launched the continuation of the tv series and subtitled it "New Challenger". This run would hopefully cover all plots up to the latest manga, which includes the following storylines:

• Miyata's OPBF Title Challenge
• Kamogawa Gym's latest genius recruit: "Itagaki"
• Miyata's Dad's Past and the Filipino Champion "Randy Boy Jr."
• The return of Gero-michi
• Takamura's Rampage of multiple weight classes
• and a lot more.

Please support the official DVDs when they come out, but for the fans that want to watch it asap, you can find them thru tokyotosho.com. A number of groups are subtitling the series: SpeedStar, Animebreaker, Saizen & Ignition-One, Mahero, Frostii. Speedstar releases the fastest, saizen&ignition-one would probably be a good version to keep (because they scanlate the manga too).