Second to last season of Ippo before I have to join the unbearable collective wait for a season 4 but I'll have a truckload of tomes to catch up after.
And if until now I thought that the summit of the manga was the Mashiba vs Kimura fight which still puts me under hypnosis when I talk about it this season has a final that can easily compete with this fight but this is my biggest cartridge from the beginning and it's never recommended at school.

Artistically there's one thing I appreciate is that they kept the design of the manga in 1990 which is very retro and goes very well with modern animation, when I see anime like Devilman Crybaby or Dororo (excellent anime, no worries there) which modernizes the chara-design which is extremely retro, it reassures me that there are still recent anime which keep this retro design like Yasuhiro Imagawa does for example on his mecha anime.
Otherwise to come back on the subject it's always a visual killer Madhouse obliges, the passage to digital makes even more justice to the work of Morikawa with better effects of light and shaking camera during the big shots, I prefer season 1 because of the OST, after 76 episodes where you can hear Yuuzora No Kami Hikouki during the emotional parts of the show, it's a beautiful song, tell me otherwise or Under Star during the shonen parts, it's hard to go on with something else, it's still a good ost and Hiekireki is a great opening (the best one for the moment because I'm waiting to see Rising's opening), but it's hard to get out of the habit.

Scenaristically I think this is the season that made me laugh the most, the double episode at the beach with its ghostly curse and giant sea cockroach craziness and the pre-fight against Hawk where Aoki has his eyebrows shaved off and looks strangely like Giovanni in Pokémon made me piss with laughter, not to mention the last two episodes with the absolutely awesome comic dad, but it's not a secret that Ippo makes me howl with laughter it's the case since season 1, also noted the appearance of a new character in the club in the presence of Manabu Itagaki a very nice addition because although in the background he contrasts with the eccentric and stupid personality of the trio Aoki/Kimura/Takamura by being better off in terms of IQ, on the other hand of the strong and serious moment there is here it goes crescendo: first of all the return of Miyata and Kimura on the ring, and I would even say finally concerning Miyata because for the moment I find the character rather discreet and I am quite happy that he comes back to fight.
Then comes the return of the fanboy of Ippo Yamada whose physical change is as funny as spectacular but it allows to deal with underdogs in the world of boxing, and the stakes that there is behind in this case because it is to break the face of a guy who admires you and that you have trained, and the stakes are felt well with Ippo who tries to finish as soon as possible but Yamada gets up so how to do to knock him out. O quickly but without having too many regrets? then even to have made this minor character come back with such a radical physical change and to give him the spotlight was quite audacious as Eiichiro Oda didn't invent anything with Cobby.
But of course, but of course the main part of the season is after that, it's Hawk the first real villain of Ippo, because if until now Morikawa humanized his characters to make them non-manichean here it's not the case, Hawk is a human purge as we love to hate them: Provocative, reducing Japanese women to pieces of meat and his favorite dish, threatening Japan to fornicate all their women to bring them his superior American genes and I just caught that it is the first American of Ippo and the first treated in this way, Morikawa would he be as hateful of America as Hideaki Anno? And on top of that he slaps Genji in the face, this character is an infamy that we are just waiting for the match to see him get beaten up and even if he is the only character treated like that I love this kind of villain a la Freezer where he is just the absolute evil to be shot on the spot and that gives a crazy rage to the protagonist.
Moreover before and after the introduction of Hawk we have a long phase on his extreme dryness, point mentioned in season 1 but this time fully exploited with the complications that it provides, because for the anecdote the dryness of Takamura is perfectly feasible in real life it's just extremely hard morally and I really appreciated this mini-arc of character and the way it is treated although it's hard to see Takamura with the zombified face but it only confirms the richness of the portrayal of the world of boxing in this manga.
Then comes the fight Takamura vs Hawk, THE FIGHT, the unpredictable fighting style of Hawk, Takamura who literally flips out and goes into Ultra Instinct mode 8 years before it exists, the animation of the fight fluid and nervous with the most devastating punches that there was so far, the public who is 100% on the side of Takamura and who waits like the spectator for Hawk to eat his teeth, this fight is just incredible so I could say if it's better or equal to Kimura vs Mashiba because one is crazy in its preparation and its antagonist and the other one is the enhancement of a comic-relief in serious business mode and the challenge of the other side, I'll have to digest a long time before I decide.

This season 2 is just as good approaching new or already mentioned aspects with a better and better animation and a fight among the most striking and intense of the sport manga or even of the manga itself, in any case the more I advance in this long adventure the more Ippo rises a way in my top manga.