Hajime No Ippo: Rising

... focus to the production team behind IPPO that is rare. Sometimes success will take a favored anime down a different road and lose fans along the way, but that is not a comment you can make about IPPO RISING. Even though it can be considered backstory, it is every bit as good as the original. Which is another way of saying that IPPO and its sequels probably ranks among the top-5 animes of all time.