Ippo Makunouchi

**Ippo Makunouchi** (幕之内一歩, *Makunouchi Ippo*) is the protagonist of *Hajime no Ippo*. He is a trainer, retired featherweight professional boxer from the Kamogawa Boxing Gym, and a former reigning featherweight JBC champion.

## Background

Ippo was raised by his mother, Hiroko, for the majority of his childhood because Ippo's father, Kazuo Makunouchi died early in his childhood when his boat crashed in a storm. During the time when his father was missing out in the sea, Ippo went everyday to the shore to wait for his return. He believed his father's words that upon his return he will never leave Ippo and Hiroko again.

Although his father never returned, Ippo was able to satisfy himself that his father fulfilled his promise by finding the cap his father wore. After his father died, Ippo grew up assisting his mother with the family fishing boat business. During his school days, when ever something happened at school, he would come home, hiding his feelings by saying that he was okay.

## Appearance

Striking a resemblance to his father, he has black, short shaggy hair and thick eyebrows. He has a light tanned complexion, and his eye colour is black, while in the anime, after the first season, his eye colour was changed from black to brown. At one point, Ippo shaved his head as a way to take the guilt of having injured Taihei after he slapped him until it slowly grew back. Later, he shaved his head again while helping Kimura go through weight management by shaving his whole body to cut off some weight.

His body was in shape even before becoming a boxer due to working at the Makunouchi Fishing Boat. While being in the featherweight division, his body is stressed as extremely muscular. It should be noted that Ippo has a larger than average penis, a quality apparently not uncommon amongst featherweights as Sendō has one as well, according to Takamura.

His attire usually consists of plain t-shirts, shirts, and buttoned-up shirts of various colours, as well as checkered shirts. His usual choice of legwear are blue jeans or black pants, sometimes shorts in the Summer. While at high school, Ippo wore a black gakuran with yellow buttons over a white buttoned-up shirt and white shoes. While at the Kamogawa gym or training his students, Ippo usually wears shirts that have the gym's name on them. During roadwork he usually wears his blue and white jogging suit that he received from Kumi for his 23rd birthday.

## Personality

As a child, Ippo was a very shy, kind and obedient boy who was also very strong-willed and stubborn. He carries most of these personality traits as he got older. He is usually a kind and reserved person who dislikes fighting, and because of that he had been bullied since grade school. He would also come home after school, holding back his tears and try to convince his mother that everything was alright after being bullied.

Despite his strength and courage, Ippo still behaves rather meek out of the ring and often humbles himself around his rivals. For example, even though he has defeated both Mashiba and Sendō, he fears Mashiba and tries to avoid discussing a second rematch with Sendō whenever he is around. He also continued to be intimidated by Umezawa, his former bully, long after he began boxing. He has a great deal of respect for his gym-mate Takamura and former Japanese Featherweight Champion Date and he was completely shocked when World Featherweight Champion Ricardo requested a spar with him.

Ippo is quite friendly, and many of his rivals have become friends of his, most notably are Miyata, Sendō, Date, Sanada, Volg, and Kobashi, whom all still keep in touch with him from time to time. He is well liked by his gymmates, especially Takamura, Aoki, and Kimura. Even though he still has the personality of a young boy, he still manages to serve as a good senpai for his kōhai Itagaki.

When it comes to love, Ippo is definitely a late bloomer, he is naive, pure-hearted, and awkward. He is in love with Kumi whom he dates frequently, and she feels the same for him, but because of the silent pressure of Kumi's older brother Mashiba Ryō, the "attacks" of reporter Mari and Nanako, and the meddling of Takamura and the others, their relationship has yet to progress much. The one time Ippo confessed to her, Kumi had fallen asleep after drinking too much alcohol, and unfortunately didn't hear it.

Because of his personality, Ippo is seldom seen as being angry before a fight, even if his opponent insults him or his boxing skills. However, it has been shown on rare occasions that he is capable of displaying anger whenever an opponent says or hurts someone close to him, or does something to look down on the sport of boxing, which he loves. Such occasions have been when he saw Sawamura intentionally commit fouls in his previous matches, despite having the upperhand, and then later on when he struck Kumi with a sharp jab, cutting her face. Another occasion when his opponent, Kojima, insulted his previous opponents, both in person and publicly in a magazine, and also insulting Kamogawa's teaching methods as they were fault. This resulted in Ippo displaying a new attitude, even going so far as to calmly state to Takamura, when asked if he would have any problems, that "this won't take long", referring to the match. Ippo's anger side also shows when he sees someone getting bullied, confronting the bullies.

## Boxing Abilities

Ippo is a pure in-fighter, regarded as the number one in-fighter in Japan and the OPBF while he was active, while also boasting the best punching power in the region.

His punching power aided him to become the All-Japan Rookie King and Most Talented Rookie Award winner, as well as coming out victorious in the Class A Tournament. In one go, he rose to the very top of the national rankings and earned a shot for Japan's throne, the JBC featherweight belt. Although he was unable to take the title from the veteran champion Eiji Date, he managed to defeat the champion Takeshi Sendō, taking the belt and defending it a total of eight times, while simultaneously building a reputation as the unofficial king of the OPBF. His durability and fighting spirit are considered to be his greatest attributes; each unparalleled in Japan.

When he started out, the public view of Ippo as nothing more than an average boxer, however, after his win against amateur world champion Alexander Volg Zangief, others saw that he had grown as a boxer and recognised that a new star of the world of boxing had been born. As he fought in more matches, his popularity grew, and even after disappearing from the rankings during his second retirement, his name would still be mentioned around the world. His unrelenting flurry of blows have earned him the title "Wind God".

While retired, he was able to keep up with the active junior lightweight IBF world champion Volg and make him get serious.

### Physical Ability

#### Power

More than anything else, Ippo's boxing is distinguished and built around his overwhelming destructive power, evidenced by the 100% KO rate in his victories, with all of them coming before the 9th round. Along with Sendō, Ippo is considered to possess the strongest punches in the whole featherweight division.

Even before joining the Kamogawa gym, Ippo showed extraordinary muscular strength and punching power when he punched the sandbag for the first time, to the astonishment of everyone at the gym. Instead of settling with his already exceptional strength in order to focus on other aspects of his boxing, Ippo has doubled down on his punching power during all of his career by constantly working on methods to enhance it even further, including weight training, log hitting and wood cutting. During his second retirement, his strength grew greater through the use of body weights.

Ippo's punching power has at various occasions proven to be great enough to break bones, embed the mark of his fists on his opponent's bodies, entirely lift them off the mat, cause them to bleed and take considerable damage from hits on their guard, and even send them flying from centre ring to the ropes or the corner with a single punch. His strength has also enabled him to knock out opponents from up to 4 weight classes higher in spars and an opponent from 2 weight classes higher in an official bout, doing the latter with a single strike.

### Speed

Although severely lacking in terms of footwork, Ippo's dash speed is one of his most proven and trustworthy weapons, used to close the distance on bigger opponents and force an in-fight. Since it comprises a key aspect of Ippo's boxing, the sharpness and speed of his dash is constantly being refined, with it receiving a significant improvement since Ippo began to use ankle weights on a daily basis. Ippo's dash speed was described by Miyata as being world class. Despite being retired, his speed increased further, being able to, while wearing weight straps, run alongside the active three weight class world champion Takamura, who went full speed.

Perfectly complementing Ippo's high-volume boxing style utilising quick combinations of compact punches in succession, his hand speed is remarkable among the division. Before even becoming a boxer, during his first spar against Miyata, Ippo's hand speed was praised by his opponent, Miyata Senior, and the onlookers at the gym when he showed his jabs. During his retirement, Ippo's punches were fast enough to be competent at the world level, with Ippo himself claiming to be able to emulate the hand speed of an active world ranker after removing his wrist weights.

### Stamina

Through consistent everyday efforts, Ippo gradually built up an enormous reserve of stamina that eventually became one of his greatest strengths as a boxer, far exceeding almost everyone’s in the division.

Among his gymmates, his stamina was, for awhile, only second to Takamura, however, after retiring from boxing, his stamina is tied with Takamura, as shown when they both ran next to each other at their highest speed for a long distance. Even the speedster Itagaki admitted that Ippo would pass him up every single time when it came to long-distance running.

His stamina has left a strong impression on his opponents during many of his matches. During his first title defence, Ippo caused significant surprise in the former champion Kazuki Sanada with his speed of recovery, with the latter considering it the possible secret of his strength.  When fighting Alfredo, the veteran world ranker was in disbelief at how Ippo was still able to keep throwing a high volume of quality punches during the last round of the match.

This attribute has also meant the difference between winning and losing on more than one occasion. Ippo's superior stamina was the key determinant of his victory over the amateur world champion Volg in the Class A Tournament finals, while it was also dependable enough to compete in an extended punching match with the JBC first ranked Iwao Shimabukuro, renowned for his extraordinary cardiovascular endurance.

### Misc.

Due to the continuous reinforcement of his lower body strength, Ippo's stability and sense of balance has dramatically improved as well, prompting his opponents to compare him to an immovable rock at times. As an additional result, Ippo gained the ability to throw heavy punches from seemingly impossible angles and positions while pivoting on either on his legs, essentially being able to fight at full strength in both the orthodox and southpaw stances. Since the very beginning, Ippo's devastating strength and power has been the fundamental backbone of his fighting style, and the asset he can rely on the most.

Ippo's sheer physicality coupled with his indomitable fighting spirit, enables him to endure tremendous physical damage and continue fighting. Even before becoming a boxer, his ability to take punches was above average, as shown when he was able to take Ichirō Miyata's punches in their first spar despite the latter having trained since he was a child. His showing of guts and determination when he continued fighting while enduring the attacks in that spar solidified Kamogawa's decision to let him join the gym.

Ultimately, even though Ippo doesn't have the natural instincts of boxers like Sendō and Takamura, he has, as Kamogawa puts it, "developed something just as good: experience".

### Technique

In the same manner that Ippo holds physical dominance over most of his opponents, inversely, he notably finds himself at a disadvantage concerning textbook boxing techniques and strategies when compared to his contemporaries, such as Miyata, Mashiba and Volg. However, despite not being his forte, the vast amount of technical expertise Ippo has accrued and polished over the course of his career is undeniable.

Even before being introduced to the Kamogawa gym, Ippo showed an early aptitude for boxing by learning on his own how to replicate the form and speed of a jab by single-handedly catching multiple fallen leaves, greatly surpassing Takamura's expectations. Before turning pro, Ippo learned how to perform the many basic techniques of boxing under the tutelage of Kamogawa, and was able to surprise the experienced mentor with his proficiency for uppercuts, which were a splitting image of Éder Jofre. Within a year of training, Ippo successfully accomplished his goal of becoming a professional boxer.

Ippo's progress in terms of technical prowess stands out and can be much more easily appreciated when he’s facing less experienced opponents. During his title defence against the high-level out-boxer Takuzō Karasawa, Ippo was able to masterfully predict and manipulate the actions of the rookie king in order to gain the upper hand, and was lauded by Takamura as an anti-out-boxer specialist. When facing Antonio Guevara, he was able to effectively pressure the skilful champion by pulling off an anti southpaw strategy involving successive high-low feints, among other techniques.

Ippo was also able to come up with a technique of his own entirely from scratch, the Dempsey Roll, later on improving it to the New Dempsey Roll, which he improved further.

After retiring and gaining the insight of retrospective, Ippo started to be increasingly more aware of his own flaws and the opportunities he had missed, and, even though he didn’t intend to come back, dedicated himself fully to the study of boxing in order to improve as a trainer and as a second, refining his technical and strategic understanding tremendously. While retired, Ippo added the Parry Counter to his list of weapons, which even hit the active junior lightweight IBF world champion Volg.

### Intelligence

Ippo has been known since the start of the series to be intellectually capable, with his grades being remarkable to the point that he could be capable of entering any college he wanted in the nation, according to his teacher. Ippo's bookish nature was noticed by Takamura, who showed no concern for his performance in the pro exam’s written test.

When it comes to boxing, Ippo has a knack for analysing the strengths and weaknesses of his opponents and plan countermeasures in preparation for a match. Notable examples include the uppercut counter he developed for Hayami and the stare and wait strategy he devised for Saeki.

Inside of the ring, he’s proved proficient at adapting to adverse situations when he’s able to keep calm and focused. For instance, during the East Japan Rookie King Tournament Finals, Ippo demonstrated the ability to rapidly adjust to Mashiba's Flicker Jabs and consistently get past them by the second round, even though he didn’t have any previous training or experience dealing with twisting lefts─on another occasion, by the end of his fifth title defence, he was able to naturally react to Sawamura’s fouls without slowing down, who used illegal tactics Ippo had never come across prior to the match.  Ippo has even managed to improvise and perform techniques he had never practised before, such as the southpaw stance and the Heartbreak Shot.

During his second retirement, Ippo has gained more knowledge as a boxing trainer. When he trained Kimura to fight against Junpei Yoshimoto, Ippo learned of losing weight and adding muscle, and how to increase power during weight management. Ippo thought of fighting Ricardo about one-hundred times in his head, coming up with a strategy in the ninety-fifth time for him to make Ricardo reveal an opening. Shinoda acknowledged that Ippo has been thinking and acting on his own, overcoming his weaknesses and acquiring more advantages.

### Training

One of the main reasons for Ippo's success as a boxer is his willingness to train. His body is able to tolerate the training he does that is regarded harsher than an active boxer's, even while he was inactive.

Even before he started boxing, he had a good muscle build. Years of helping his mother carrying the fishing coolers to and from the boat helped develop his muscles and also constantly moving around on the fishing boat helped him develop a good lower body as well as good balance. Before his first spar against Miyata, he trained three times the amount recommended to him everyday for a month using Takamura's training menu, increasing his body's endurance. To train for his fight with Jason Ozuma, he ran full speed at bars at the park in order to speed up his ducking so as to avoid Ozuma's powerful hooks. Before the rest of the Rookie King Tournament, he embarks on his first training camp with the Kamogawa gym, the camp was held at the beach and it improved Ippo's lower body strength and endurance due to all the running on the sand. To prepare for his fight against Volg, Kamogawa had Ippo build up his lower body with many hill runs and squats in order to build the strength needed to throw the Gazelle Punch. In Ippo's return fight after his loss against Date, he trained his lower body even more with harsh sprints, he also decided to improve his bobbing and weaving and unknowingly used a not so polished version of the Dempsey roll. To prepare for his second fight with Sendō, he had a training camp in the mountains. There, Nekota introduced Ippo to the method of chopping wood to help back strength, and further utilised running in the mountains to add more leg strength.

During his second retirement, he would still wear weight straps on both his wrists and ankles and train while coaching his two students, showing improvement in both power and speed. During Ippo's spar against Volg, the latter noticed by looking at Ippo's muscles that even though Ippo is retired, he hasn't slacked on his training.

### Weaknesses

Ippo is regarded as being small for a featherweight. Because of his height, Ippo is at a perpetual disadvantage outside of close-range. Most of his opponents are larger and have a longer reach than Ippo, leaving him with no option but to move forward and fight from the inside in every one of his fights.

Another weakness is his inexperience with southpaws, as seen when he fought Antonio. As the southpaws leg and hand are in reverse, Ippo had trouble adjusting for the distance and kept tripping over his leg.

#### Accumulated Damage

Due to the frequency and severity of his matches, coupled with little rest and non-stop training throughout the entirety of his career, Ippo accumulated a great deal of long-lasting damage in his body that he never gave the opportunity to heal and recover. Since his match against Kojima, in which Ippo was accurately countered with a punch with 2 tons of force behind it that resulted in him fainting right after the match, Ippo has begun to show symptoms attributed towards punch drunk syndrome, such as deficient depth perception, reflexes and poor damage tolerance, as noted by Takamura and Sendō.

These symptoms were increasingly noticeable after being knocked out by Gonzalez, as was evidenced after the fight when he showed episodes of memory loss, was effortlessly defeated during spars and was unable to draw in a straight line, with his hands shaking uncontrollably. However, after he was forced to take a month off from the gym he later returned seemingly without any symptoms. This proved to not be the case when he was easily and repeatedly knocked down by Antonio, an opponent clearly out-classed by Ippo—eventually leading to an early knockout loss and Ippo's decision to prioritise his health and retire.

#### Mindset

Despite Ippo having been noted to hold vast talent and potential, his lack of confidence and motivation often holds him back from performing at his best in the ring.

His motivation is an important source of concern since his purpose from the very beginning, to find the meaning of strength, is an extremely abstract and difficult to grasp goal. During most of Ippo's career, the only tangible goal that constantly pushed him to keep winning was his desire to fulfil his promise and clash with Miyata in the pro ring—and as the possibility of realising this faded, his determination to move forward was cut short as well. Unlike most world ranked boxers, on many instances Ippo has expressed disinterest to pursue a world title or to win fights beyond the oriental pacific region. This absence of ambition, as Ippo himself stated, led him to lose his first match in the world stage.

In terms of confidence, during fights Ippo is prone to lose his composure and will to fight when facing an opponent he considers to be superior to himself, as happened during his championship matches with Date and Sendō.. This flaw was grave to the point that Kamogawa predicted Ippo was going to lose if he ever were to fight Miyata, someone who Ippo thought of as being far ahead of him. Even in the midst of matches against opponents of lesser reputation, Ippo is also notoriously susceptible to panic and fall apart when facing unexpected situations. In many of his matches, difficulties arose when his opponent came up with a tactic or strategy he had not prepared for, such as Malcolm Gedo's Extending Punch and Wally's corner work.

As Takamura stated, Ippo's inability to make excuses to stand up and keep fighting is proof that he doesn't have what it takes to "cross the line" and reach the world.

#### Over-Reliance on the Dempsey Roll

After his first loss, Ippo evolved through the creation of the Dempsey Roll. However, this addition was soon exposed to be a double-edged sword.

Through the integration of the Dempsey Roll, Ippo not only added a powerful weapon to his arsenal, but completely altered his style to a new one centred around the use of this technique. This new style consisted in persistently chasing the enemy in order to dodge a punch and dive into close range to attack, preferably with the Dempsey Roll.

A huge flaw of this approach is the predictability of its offence. As explained by OPBF champion Miyata, in every match Ippo always steps forward and attacks head on while repeating the same attack patterns, a trait that an observant boxer can easily take advantage of.

Once Ippo became the JBC champion, this move defined him to the point that the name "Makunouchi Ippo" came to be synonymous with the Dempsey Roll, which, as Kamogawa affirmed, turned Ippo into a “cheese champion”, due to being full of holes as a result of the overexposure of the technique. Relying solely on the Dempsey Roll to win led him to progressively more dangerous matches as his opponents picked apart the technique’s weaknesses and found ways to neutralise it.

To give an example, it is stated by Kamogawa that Ippo's signature move was not only a strength, but also a weakness, since the Dempsey Roll is weak against counters. This stylistic disadvantage compelled the Kamogawa gym to avoid the long-awaited match between Ippo and Miyata, as it was seen as a hopeless endeavour. The drawback was eventually exploited by the counter-puncher Sawamura, who challenged Ippo for the JBC title.

Most importantly, as noticed by Ippo, the passive procedure of waiting for the opponent to throw a punch before closing in resulted in him losing the initiative and forgoing the use of his left to claim the first strike, as is noticeable by the gradual neglect and eventual discardment of his jabbing. This was a direct contradiction to the style Kamogawa originally envisioned for Ippo, which revolved around “hitting before being hit”.

Prior to his first performance on the world stage, Ippo's one-dimensional style was described by Eiji Date as too simplistic for the world level. This idea was reinforced in the night of the fight by Ippo's opponent, Alfredo González, who judged his boxing as outdated and technically unremarkable.

Despite all of the complications the Dempsey Roll would bring, this was thought of by Kamogawa as a necessary evil, a sacrifice in order to achieve victory. In the long run, all of the trials and tribulations Ippo confronted may have been the setup to an immense payoff, in the form of a weapon even stronger than the Dempsey Roll that would also conquer all of its weaknesses.

## Etymology

* The name **Ippo** means "one step" (一歩), creating a pun in the series' title (as *Hajime* means "first", therefore "The First Step").
* Ippo's surname **Makunouchi** means "curtain, act, hanging screen, bunting, case" (幕) (**maku**), "this" (之) (**no**) and "inside, within" (内) (**uchi**).

## Trivia

* Ippo's birthday, November 23rd, is notably on Labour Thanksgiving Day in Japan.
* The fights Ippo will never forget are, his fight against Eiji Date, Alfredo González, and Antonio Guevara.
	+ His favourite boxer is Mamoru Takamura.
	+ His favourite punch is the right straight.
	+ His favourite place to fight is Kōrakuen Hall.
	+ All fighters leave a strong impression.
	+ Ichirō Miyata is a person he'll never forget.

* Ippo's favourite real-life boxer is Mike Tyson.
	+ In Round 29, in Ippo's bedroom, there is a Mike Tyson poster on his wall.
* In Round 5, while he was shopping for new boxing shoes at Ōta Sports, Ippo mentioned to Miyata that his shoe size is 25.5 cm (10 in).
* Ippo is a terrible driver, though he can steer a boat just fine. He's also awful at baseball and editing manga, and has never been shown catching a fish, though he has been shown fishing numerous times.
	+ In Chapter 1158, it's revealed that Ippo is an expert at bowling. The Kamogawa crew believe this is because "bowling" and "boxing" are just a few letters apart.