Fighting Spirit Vol-2: Debut Match (2000)
Animation Production: Madhouse
Released by: Geneon Entertainment
Running Time: 115 Minutes
By Jeffrey Couto

Introduction

With the first volume of Fighting Spirit Geneon managed to K.O. us with a release that had both heart and guts! The show, which centers around a young boxing hopeful, Ippo Makunouchi, was without doubt one of the most engaging series to make it’s way through the JH anime labs in quite a while. To say we were eagerly looking forward to the second volume would be a gigantic understatement.

So here we are! Volume two finally arrived and the excitement could not be any higher! Will Fighting Spirit keep the momentum going and wow us with further character development and well paced plot advancement? Let’s step into the anime ring and find out!

Story

"The bell for the sparring session with Miayata rings. To everybody's astonishment, Miyata falls to the mat first. Ippo's fierce determination to give his all overpowers Miyata's superior boxing skills in the first two rounds, but clever Miyata quickly recovers and outboxes Ippo with his lethal counters. Chief Kamogawa advises Ippo to stop the bout, but Ippo says "I have one more thing left to do...". The result was the astounding conclusion that nobody had expected. After the match with Miyata, Ippo trains rigorously with Takmura and awaits for the day of his professional debut match with Yusuke Oda. " DVD Box

Review

The second volume in Geneon’s release of Fighting Spirit features episodes six through 10 in the series, which include:

Episode 6: The Opening Bell of the Rematch
After three intense months of training Ippo finally gets another chance to spar with Miyata. Last time they fought Miyata proved to be a formidable foe for an inexperienced Ippo, but this time our hero may actually stand a chance!

As it turns out a sports writer for the paper happens to show up right before the match and decides to watch so that he can write something up on Miyata, who he thinks is one of boxing’ up and coming super stars, but little does he know that a new unknown star is about to be born in the ring.

Episode 7: The Destructive Force of 1cm
After a number of rounds both Ippo and Miyata seem to be equally matched, but experience is on Miyata’s side and it might only be a matter of time before Ippo is knocked out! Will he be able to go distance and pull out a surprise victory over his opponent?

Episode 8: Promise to Meet Again
Having overcome all odds in his spar match Ippo finds himself at a loss for motivation. Miyata is no longer driving him to train hard physically and mentally. It’s up to Coach Kamogawa to show him the way and help Ippo recapture his fighting spirit! Will Ippo be able to regain the fire that fueled his previous victory and will a run-in with Miyata lead to a new goal for our hero?

Episode 9: C Class License
After several months of hard training Ippo finally applies for his professional boxing license. Will he be able to impress the panel and get certified? Who is the mysterious boxer he runs into at the certification arena? Many new challenges may rise up for Ippo to overcome!

Episode 10: Debut Match
Ippo’s first opponent has been picked out and now it’s only a matter of time until they meet in the ring. Will Ippo relax upon hearing of his opponent's lazy ways or will he keep training hard to do his best? His opponent might be more driven than Ippo is being led to believe…

Wow! I anticipated this DVD to be really good, but nothing approximating the level of awesomeness that it actually held inside! This time out we come into the story at a point where we already know Ippo and have seen him go from being a bullied student to a professional boxing hopeful so instead of spending time developing the basis for the premise we begin the process of moving forward, exploring the first struggles that Ippo has to overcome in order to make his dream of being a boxing professional a reality.

Whereas the first DVD was mostly focused on Ippo and his road to victory, the episodes in this disc have a larger range of diversity in their stories and a more distributed character spotlight that allow us take our first insightful look at the lives of many of the protagonists that our hero interacts with in his world such as Takamura, Miyata, and Ippo’s first boxing opponent. By expanding our point of view of this universe as an audience the writers for the show are able to add several new layers to the overall plot and make the characters more three dimensional.

In addition to expanding on the universe of characters these episodes accomplish something very important, they setup the roadmap for Ippo’s first major challenge as a professional boxer and start introducing us to potential opponents to our young protagonist as he makes his way to a professional bout against Miyata. This development in particular is one that I was very much looking forward to as I was interested in seeing whereas the show would feature a roster of boxers with special techniques and attacks for Ippo to xontend with.

This being confirmed I can hardly wait to see Ippo begin taking on boxers with different styles that he has to figure out in order to overcome them. In a way I guess it reminds me a lot of the original Mazinger-Z TV series and some other older programs where the hero met a particular episode’s enemy robot early in the story and was defeated by that its secret weapon only to come back near the end of the story after figuring out a weak point in the villain’s arsenal to take advantage of.

As before each of the stories in this disc are very connected, with one going right into the next one. I can’t imagine a better way to approach a show like this one than to do it that way as it lets the writers slowly evolve the characters over a lengthy storyline and make them more interesting and the stories more entertaining.

The quality of Madhouse’s animation work continues to impress as it did with the first batch of episodes of the series. This disc in particular benefited from having more action oriented scenes than the previous one so it was more lively and energetic in some respects. The level of detail during some of the boxing matches is really good and show that the animation team behind the program loved what they were doing. In terms of feel and look it’s very bright with a heavy use of pastels, the drawings have nice solid line work and the frame rate is rock-steady.

The soundtrack matched blow for blow the high level animation work. For the most part it consists of simple atmospheric numbers that match the mood that’s prevalent throughout most of the show, but when the training or fight segments begin rolling it moves into a completely different area and switches up to fast moving techno pieces that add to the intensity of the scenes. The voice acting in all three soundtracks was splendid. I continue to be amazed by what the folks at Geneon accomplished with the Spanish soundtrack.

On the product end this disc is very similar to the first volume. The only real extras to speak of here are the bloopers and outtakes section, the small art insert inside the DVD case and the Spanish soundtrack. I hope the next disc contains a clean copy of the opening, that's something I would really enjoy and had hoped for with volume 2. The video and audio transfers are excellent with no issues that I could notice or complain about.

Final Thoughts

Fighting Spirit has won me over completely with volume 2. It doesn’t matter if you’re fan of boxing or not this show is a MUST OWN show. Now that it switches gears and is going for more of a tournament mode its very certain that it’s only going to get even better.

Fighting Spirit gets our absolute highest recommendation for anime DVD buyers and aficionados.

Jeffrey Couto