Hajime no Ippo, a title that translates roughly as โthe first step,โ has been running in Kodanshaโs Weekly Shonen Magazine since 1989; Korean readers know it as The Fighting. Ippo Makunouchi is a high schooler who gets beaten up on the way home from school until a professional boxer, Mamoru Takamura, happens to break it up and carries him back to the Kamogawa gym. George Morikawa has drawn nothing else since his debut. The most recent chapter is round 1,515, published in issue 14 of the magazine on March 5, 2026, and the collected edition reached volume 145 on January 16, 2026.
Thirty-seven years of weekly serialization leaves a paper trail of numbers. Circulation passed 100 million copies in July 2023, when volume 138 shipped. The series won the shonen category of the 15th Kodansha Manga Award in 1991. There have been three anime seasons: 76 episodes from Madhouse between October 2000 and March 2002, the 26-episode New Challenger in 2009, and the 25-episode Rising from October 2013 to March 2014. Twelve years have passed since then with no fourth season announced.
The news right now is the hiatus. Weekly Shonen Magazineโs combined fourth and fifth issue for 2026, published on December 29, 2025, announced a break without giving a reason or a return date. In March, Morikawa posted on X that he had been hospitalized and was focusing on recovery, adding that he expected to be back in about a month. Issue 18 listed the 25th issue, dated May 20, as the tentative return, while noting that the editorial staff would make the final call based on his condition. As of August 21, 2026, no announcement confirming the resumption of serialization has surfaced.
Volume 145 collects through round 1,506, so rounds 1,507 to 1,515 are not yet in print. The Japanese chapters are on Magazine Pocket and Comic Days, and the English edition is on K MANGA. If 1,500 chapters sounds like too much, the first six volumes are enough to tell whether the book is for you. Morikawa spends as much time on an opponentโs history and on training routines as on the fights themselves, which makes this a series for readers who like the preparation more than the result. While the return is pending, this is a reasonable moment to close the gap. (As of August 21, 2026)
