He has like a hundred chapters until Woli shows up, let the man enjoy his life while he can. Because we all know suffering in the form the worst fight in the show will be coming for him.
On the topic of national styles: I do wish HNI showed someone like Canelo, Mexican who fights in a style completely anathema to what is usually understood as "Mexican".
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The bond between Shinoda and Itagaki that spins from there is pretty sweet.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Oh yeah, I forgot to report where I was in the manga. Sorry, I was just engrossed in what was happening. Miyata canceled his fight with Ippo (probably because of that Randy Boy Jr. fellow who cornered Miyata after his last fight talking about fate, who was also in contention to be the interim OPBF champion), Ippo got depressed and considered quitting, but got a pep talk about the weight of the 19 people's worth of dreams his fists are carrying (the 18 people he's beaten + Date), and he came back. Now he's lined up to fight Jimmy Sisfar, who's apparently been busy ever since Miyata crushed his face in with that Jolt Counter.
And Ippo beat Jimmy with... what I think is a Dempsey Roll uppercut? Something like that, that's where Takamura thinks it's going. I thought he was just going to use the Gazelle Punch, but apparently not. Man, I miss the Gazelle Punch. It's like the one named move of Ippo's that was just completely forgotten, the last time it was used was when Shimabukuro used it, and the last time Ippo used it... I think was against Sanada when he repeated the Liver Blow-Gazelle Punch-Dempsey Roll combo that beat Sendo.
Wow, and they name-drop the Gazelle Punch in the very next chapter, I guess it wasn't forgotten about. He's just not using it. Or, if he is, it's not being called out or made especially obvious.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 12th 2020 at 10:05:41 AM
You know, if Takamura actually took the Beetle's Punch seriously, it could be an effective signature move. Lean back to do a massive telegraphed uppercut or use the motion of leaning back to throw a smaller overhand punch, like he did. It's just that he never even considered expanding the move beyond the uppercut, so the overhand punch ended up as an accident.
It could be sort of like Kimura's Dragon Fish Blow or Volg's White Fang, except with more focus on the lower punch.
The Randy Boy Jr fight is Miyata's most important match since the story began, for reasons that will become clear to you soon enough. Probably his best fight, too. Be on the lookout for it.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."So, Randy Boy Jr. is the son of the boxer who ended the elder Miyata's career. Please tell me his dad's name wasn't just Randy Boy, that would make the whole mystery around who he is so stupid. On the other hand, that's a really good explanation for why Miyata suddenly canceled his fight with Ippo, his promise to prove his father's boxing style is the one thing more important to him than his promise to fight Ippo as a pro. This whole "Miyata canceling the fight" arc would make for a great thematic throughline for season 5.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 12th 2020 at 11:01:25 AM
It's not as bad because it's shown Randy Boy Senior's moniker was "Raccoon Boy", and given how boxers become sometimes only known by their nicknames, it's plausible that it might have taken a while to associate one thing to the other (though the "Boy" bit does help to signal it). This also being somewhere c. the late 90's, before the Boxrec site was even launched, so there would be no immediately easy way to check. It'd be something like if a fighter called Esch Jr announced his intent to avenge his father. It'd probably take a while to click he is Butterbean's son.
But yeah, it's still a bit forced.
Oh my god, Takamura giving a fuming Kamogawa shit by turning his office into an interrogation room and Kamogawa immediately picking up the entire couch to unleash untold violence on Takamura is one of the funniest things I've seen in this series. Just the image of this old man picking up an entire couch as a bludgeoning weapon is hilarious.
So, I'm at the Ippo vs Malcolm Gedo fight, and it feels like it's just a lot. He's the champion of the Philippines, he's a boxer willing to throw a fight just for money, he seems to have a former member of the Kamogawa gym working for him to fix fights (unless that was just coincidence), he has some magic technique that prevents boxers from getting a good grasp of range and distance, he doesn't know who Ippo is and just wants to know if there's prize money, Ippo's guessing that his arms can extend so he spars with Mashiba to get a grasp of range, there's a 2,000,000 yen cash prize, it just seems like the build-up for this match is a lot of seemingly disconnected things. Not necessarily saying it's bad, I'm actually really invested, it just feels a bit chaotic.
I don't know why Ippo is so hung up on the idea that this guy can somehow stretch his arms, it was just one guess out of many and the other guesses seem more plausible. If anything, I bet that his trick for screwing up the opponent's range is even more different than anything Ippo guessed.
EDIT: Ooh, and he's got bullet wound scars? Okay manga, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 13th 2020 at 1:49:31 AM
Malcolm's character is really cool, that his experience being shot means that he has absolutely no fear in the boxing ring makes him more hard-boiled than anyone Ippo's fought, in a way, since every other opponent has felt fear before.
Oh my god, Malcolm's technique to extend his punch's range is dumb as hell and I love it. I was seriously thinking that I might hate the reveal, since they were building up to it so much, but it's actually so good. He just loosens the strings on his glove and punches, letting the glove move forward freely on his hand a little bit, then in-between punch barrages he shakes his hand to situate the glove back in place. That's so stupidly ingenious, I love it.
The magic punch, stopped time, THE HEARTBREAK SHOT!!!!!
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 13th 2020 at 3:21:24 AM
Gedo is one of the most divisive fights in the manga, but I more or less line up with you so far. I enjoy it, and Gedo reminds me of those hard journeymen who know every trick in the book and who end up surprising champions with their "magic". Like Emmanuel "The Drunken Master" Augustus giving Floyd Mayweather the roughest fight of his career.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Gedo I get, as both a tragedy and a sort of comic foil of sorts in being so unorthodox and weird. His placement is also a bit strange, since he’s right after Scratch J, something people were looking forward to, and before...Woli. I’m sorry, but yeah, being before Woli probably made people a lot more forgiving of Gedo.
Ippo using the Heartbreak Shot is easily one of the hypest moments in the series for me.
I think I'm finally moving on to the Randy Boy Jr fight now, Itagaki and Imai just had their spars with him and Miyata. One thing I've noticed a lot more recently is Iimura teasing Ippo about Miyata being his boyfriend, but privately, to herself, and in a way that makes clear she thinks it's cute and endearing. I don't know if she really "ships it", since this isn't really that kind of series (the only example of in-universe shipping is Aoki and Tomiko shipping Ippo and Kumi hard), but it does sort of make up for Takamura's mean-spirited bullying earlier in the series.
Unless some twist happens, I think Miyata vs Randy Boy Jr. would make for a good Season 5 finale, since it caps off the thematic throughline of "Miyata cancels his fight with Ippo" that has been running for most of the season, and I'm currently at 101 chapters since the Mashiba vs Sawamura fight and the fight hasn't even started yet, so I'm guessing it ends around 120-130 chapters after it, which is the same amount of time we decided Season 4 should have.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 13th 2020 at 1:31:41 AM
On hypothetical season lengths: We had season 4 having around 141 chapters and 14 volumes (starting where season 3 dropped off and going in to Mashiba vs Sawamura) . For season 5 I more or less agree with you. Now to break it down (spoilers for you about arc lengths, PMC): From where season 4 would drop off and to Miyata vs Randy Boy Jr would be 149 and 13 volumes, so very close for season 5 and I definitely feel it'd be worthy a finale. Very dramatic, very intense.
Curiously season 6 is one that I feel would be trickier (some spoilers for fights that will be happening, but not their results, PMC): I'd have it start with Mashiba's fight which comes right after Miyata vs Randy Boy Jr, abridge the Hell out of Ippo vs Woli because fuck that, go through the Itagaki fights, and conclude with Volg challenging for the world title. This would be 159 chapters and 14 volumes. Given I'd abridge the Hell out of Ippo vs Woli, that'd probably translate alright. It's either that or you finish with Itagaki and I think Volg's fight is too sweet not to be a finale.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."If seasons 4, 5, etc, does come into fruition and are around 140-160 chapters each, I REALLY hope that the anime does them as 3-cour seasons, between 36 and 39 episodes each. That still works out to around 4 chapters per episode, but at least it would be adapting everything at a proper pace, not at the horribly rushed pace of season 3 doing 7 chapters per episode.
I've made it to the start of the Miyata fight. I loved seeing the elder Miyata's flashback to little babby Ichiro, that was adorable and it really helped build up Ichiro's motivation to carry on his father's legacy. But man, Aoki and Kimura just can't catch a break. That was one of the saddest displays of theirs yet. You said something about Takamura vs Ronald Duck being a major fight, but I can't imagine the season would just end with the semi-final fight of the night, so I guess that would also be adapted after Miyata vs Randy Boy Jr.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 14th 2020 at 12:22:22 PM
And I've now finished the Miyata vs Randy Boy Jr. fight. Took a bit of a break yesterday, but I'm back reading. This would DEFINITELY be a good finale to season 5, since it perfectly caps off the arc of Miyata canceling his fight with Ippo. It's also far and away the most dramatic fight of the season, and I really liked the ending. A point emphasized repeatedly was that Miyata needed to develop his own style, and Red Lightning was a really cool way to start. It also somewhat parallels Ippo's last fight, where Red Lightning is a Corkscrew Blow counter with insane speed, Ippo turned his Liver Blow into a Heartbreak Shot without using a Corkscrew Blow. Both are evolved versions of moves used previously, invented on-the-spot in the ring to MASSIVE effect, and have ties to the Corkscrew Blow.

Yeah, I was looking out for any signs of brain dablage in Sawamura, but in the manga format, it's hard to tell what's metaphorical and what's literal (and there was a LOT of metaphors in the Sawamura/Mashiba fight, what with Mashiba's Flicker Jabs appearing to slice chunks out of Sawamura's flesh that are totally fine afterward).
Hey, with Sendo's fight they explained: "Mexican boxers have longer reach" in a way that wasn't racist (as opposed to how they explained it with Ricardo Martinez). They just say that Sendo's opponent leans his whole shoulder into each punch, which is chalked up to different training methods. See, that I'm totally fine with, I love to see regional differences chalked up to differences in training methods. Not when it's just blatant racism.