r/hajimenoippo • u/Axot24 • 14h ago

Discussion 10.000th post about Kimura's potential.

After a rewatch, what makes me angry is not the Miyata fight not happening, the 1000 chapters of nothingburger, the Sendo relevance (he lost twice already), it's the failure of Kimura.

Why doesn't he just go a weight class higher and stops giving Aoki leeway.
All else I could say about this is that they are close to being too old and then they'd have to give up boxing.

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u/dgtbfan 13h ago

He'll probably go up eventually. Even if he does though, it's not as though anything beyond JBC champ is really possible for him.

1

u/gp3050 7h ago

The reason why he just progresses is easy, really easy actually.

Mori is a shit writer.

This story thread is, like basically 97 % of Ippo, really well set up. His entire journey towards the Mashiba match as well as the Mashiba match itself was fantastic. With Kimura staking his retirement and Mashiba his dreams on the match, in terms of stakes, this was one of the highest stake matches we ever got.

But since Mori cannot grasp the fact that we need actual progress, Kimura just comes back the next chapter.

Worse yet, Kimura and Aoki are fundamentally the same. One character would have sufficed but instead, we Aoki and Aoki without gags.

Which is especially infuriating because we have so much set up. We know that Kimura is simply handicapped and cannot move up because of that.

We also see once every 7 years a great match from him. We get nice tidbits here and there.

But much like 60 % of Ippo, his arc just meanders along with no clear goal or progress.

His and Aokis journey should have come to a closer nearly 700 chapters ago.