Ippo at Korakuen Hall

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Recently I decided to catch up to the latest scanlations for Hajime no Ippo and came across a really pivotal point in the story. Right after Ippo’s junior Itagaki wins against his own rival, Ippo looks over the now empty Korakuen Hall where he had so many of his own fights over the years, and decides to give up his Japanese title to progress to the OPBF at a chance to fight Miyata his longtime friend and rival. It’s seriously the fight all the fans including me have been waiting for, and after 70+ volumes released thus far, its finally time….hopefully (part of me thinks something is gonna delay it further). Either way Ippo will finally be moving out of Japan and facing the world which should be interesting in itself. And if you haven’t, I highly recommend Hajime no Ippo as either a manga or anime. It’s one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of reading and at such a long length, it still succeeds in having me completely locked in suspense in every fight. The attention to detail as well is great, and not to trash on typical shounen fare but in the case of Ippo, the fighting is very real. This ain’t no trash like Bleach or Naruto…
This specific page in the manga really caught my eye and I chose to wall it mainly because I found it to be a really beautiful moment given it’s context. The wall took the good amount of 3 days to finish adding up to around 30 hours or so of work. This one is definitely the first wall in a while that I spent such a great amount of time on, and for good reason. I translated the whole manga image to vector then colored it in with a minor amount of some screentones and shades of gray. I think it came out really well myself given that I did it off of a manga scan and also while making this one it really felt like I got out of my walling block that I’ve been suffering from for awhile. Not really in a creative way, but more in that I actually enjoyed making this wall which is something I haven’t felt in a long time, hence why I haven’t been pumping out my usual amount these last several months.