Peekaboo, or Peek-a-Boo in the official K Manga English translation is Round 24 of Jōji Morikawa's Hajime no Ippo manga series.
Details
- Styles Introduced: Peek-a-Boo Style
- Real Life People Mentioned: Mike Tyson, Cus D'Amato
- Title Page Character(s): Ippo Makunouchi, Masahiko Umezawa, Takemura, Matsuda
Summary
Ippo is working at the Makunouchi Fishing Boat the day after his fight with Oda. His mother asks him if he's tired but he says he doesn't feel right unless he moves his body. As Ippo expects, his classmates are surprised and excited about his becoming a boxer and ask him a bunch of questions, but at lunchtime nobody wants to talk to him anymore. He heads to the lunchroom reminding himself that he didn't start boxing to be popular.
He goes to the roof to eat lunch alone but is soon approached by Umezawa and his goons, Takemura and Matsuda. The gang wants to know about Ippo's debut match, much to his surprise since he thought they were going to bully him. They admit liking boxing but clarify they do not admire him. They ask when the next match is and leave. As they run away, it is revealed their original intention was to apologise and they decide to attend his next match.
A week later, Fujii is looking over the records of newcomers including Ippo, which surprises his assistant, who asks why he is interested in a boxer like Ippo who had to struggle to win his debut match, but Fujii says that Ippo is interesting because he grows with every match. Arriving at the Kamogawa gym, Takamura assumes Fujii is there to do story on him, but they walk past him looking for Ippo. They notice that some of the gloves hanging on the wall have tears on the thumbs and realise after watching Ippo in training and biting his thumbs to keep up the guard (Peek-a-Boo Style), the reason for to gloves' appearance. After the spar, Fujii tells Ippo about Miyata and Mashiba's perfect records with the latter ending his opponents career. He wishes Ippo luck on the upcoming East Japan Rookie King Tournament, causing Ippo to worry severely.
Trivia
Volume 9's author note with a photo of Morikawa and Noriko Sakai.
- In pages 19-20, Ippo is wearing a shirt with "NORI-P" on the top right front of it. "NORI-P" is a reference to singer Noriko Sakai (酒井 法子) who has a nickname called "Nori-P" (のりピー). There is picture of Morikawa with her on volume 9's author note. Morikawa seemingly was a fan of the singer, and early female character appearances may also be based on her in the past.
| Rookie King Tournament: First Rounder Arc | |||||||||||||||||||
| Manga Volumes | |||||||||||||||||||
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| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ||||||||||||||||
| Manga Rounds | |||||||||||||||||||
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | ||||||||||
| 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | ||||||||||
| 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | ||||||||||||
| Anime Rounds | |||||||||||||||||||
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | |||||||||||