>>16400
I had little interest in it until her first rival was introduced.
Hajime no Ippo did it wright, by always making Ippo's next goal clear. Hanakaku actually starts like a slice of life "girls in an afterschool club", and while it's a genre I can dig, I think it's more important to pick a genre and stick with it.
So maybe if they introduced her rival right in chapter 2 or 3, and then did a training arch punctuated with cute stuff, it would have been better