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17. Inner Light - Hajime no Ippo OP2
https://animethemes.moe/anime/hajime_no_ippo/OP2-NCDVD576

I adore the visual story told by Inner Light. Muscled-up Ippo suits up and gets in the ring and gets dramatically punched in succession by his greatest opponents, and he gets knocked down. But in a moment of inspiration, he gets up, puts his hands up, and gets ready to fight again.

That's the story of Hajime no Ippo right there, just like it is for Rocky. The kid has unusually strong punching power and some springy legs, but ultimately he wins not on talent but guts. The OP is actually pretty stirring, something I actually generally feel with EDs more so than OPs. The intro and outro guitar riff helps as well; it's used in the climax of the final fight of the original anime run and it is absolutely perfect. That's what helps to elevate it above some of these clearly technically superior OP/EDs.

16. Yuuzora no Kamihikouki - Hajime no Ippo ED1
https://animethemes.moe/anime/hajime_no_ippo/ED1-NCDVD576

Meanwhile, this song is even less sophisticated. It doesn't even have much instrumentation, just one guy lamenting. It's a clean sound.

You can call the animation a slideshow, but I find it awesome to see everyone just at their non-boxing lives. While it's a sports anime and thus mostly concerned with training and matches, Hajime no Ippo actually has me pretty deeply invested in its characters' lives outside of boxing - perhaps because it's actually about pros instead of students. Aoki, Kimura, and Ippo all need day jobs to get by, and Takamura lives a Spartan lifestyle off his purses. So using the ED to show this other side is pretty great.

The part about the ED that really elevates it is its use in the series. ED1 plays frequently after major boxing matches during the wrap-up, and almost always during emotional moments. The simple, plaintive sound of its intro works so perfectly as catharsis when Ippo - or an opponent whose pro dreams have been entirely dashed - and I like that it sounds like "Oh, what a day" in English, which is obviously unintentional but enhances the experience for me.

Hajime no Ippo might be my favorite anime overall, based on its original run. It essentially single-handedly interested in following the sport pretty closely for the better part of a decade. The emphasis on pros versus amateurs definitely heightens the stakes, and it maintains a deep commitment to extremely juvenile male humor. Its animation style is pretty minimalistic and the art style is not the prettiest, but it uses excellent musical cues and creates largely legible and dramatic fights, though the emphasis on KOs gets a little excessive. Reading later chapters has a lot of enjoyable points, but it's actually gotten a little tough as Takamura's antics feel like they go from funny to abusive and the obsession with metaphors for fighters' actions have gotten a bit repetitive and out of hand.

But it's topnotch during the anime's actual run. Great training, great rise-and-fall-and-rise-again arcs. Nothing is stale. Fights are gripping and special moves actually feel like they have stakes. This is one of the anime I have seen front to back and would do it again.