In recent years, and especially thanks to streaming, we are having a huge resurgence of many classic manga and anime series that had been out of orbit for years. This same year in Netflix we’ve had the return of ‘Spriggan’ and ‘Bastard!!!’ with its new series, but before reviving these franchises, the platform fully entered the ring with one of the most influential stories in the world. martial arts genre.
Thanks to the 2018 series, ‘baki’ is living a second golden age that still has a lot of anime ahead of it. But long before reaching streaming and this second rebirth, the manga of Keisuke Itagaki had a first anime series adaptation in 2001 with ‘Baki the Grappler’.
How to become the strongest man in the world
‘Baki the Grappler’ begins the story of baki hanma, a thirteen-year-old boy who trains very hard to become a great fighter. The his mother, emi akezawais a rich woman who has never shown him much affection, but who puts all the effort in the world so that he can get to measure himself with his father, Yujiro Hanma.
During his workouts, Baki is measured with all kinds of rivalsbe it in street fights against dozens of thugs, a member of the Yakuza, a professional boxer… Everything is little to increase his strength, and over time he ends up participating in an underground fighting league against the most powerful fighters in the world.
So far everything is in order, and the approach does not differ too much from other fighting manga, or even action manga in general. But if the first arcs of ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’ and its peculiar tone were already crazy, ‘Baki the Grappler’ is a riotous testosterone fest where anything can happen.
Everything about ‘Baki’ is a constant hyperbole, with increasingly powerful opponents and impossible techniques, and unexpected narrative twists. You’ve got everything from a man who can stop an earthquake with a punch because it’s bad for him at the moment, to another fighter who has achieved his bodybuilder physique with an experimental drug, to giant apes out for revenge…
And that ‘Baki the Grappler’ is the most contained part of the story, but it doesn’t fall short when it comes to absurd moments that take themselves very seriously. From the outside, a lot of this anime may seem completely ridiculous, but you have to accept this anime as it is if you don’t want it to be impossible to digest.
One of the things that they can take back from ‘Baki the Grappler’ is precisely all this excessive action, with infinite and excessive combats where the limits seem to disappear. Yes, in the series we have certain character developments, especially in Baki himself, but the plot and everything it can bring is completely at the service of the action.
The important thing is NOT to participate
‘Baki the Grappler’ it’s a show focused on martial arts and the characters’ love of fighting, and it’s not ashamed of it at all. And even so, all the characters have their own history and motivations with which they get you to empathize with them even if you want (and need) to get their faces blown up in the next scene.
So if we are looking for a more sensible and story-focused series, perhaps this is not the best anime to start with. Especially if you’re not especially a fan of anime with tournament structures, ‘Baki the Grappler’ can be quite heavy.
This first series in particular is divided into two seasons of 24 episodes each, with the first half focusing on Emi and Baki’s family drama as he begins his training. Perhaps this arc is the most interesting, precisely because it is the most diverse in terms of structure, while the second half already focuses on a first tournament, and so does the second season.
so all this Baki’s overcoming story training to be able to overcome his father, learning different techniques and finding new allies… well, he loses a lot when we fully enter the tournament, and we also lose the good rhythm with which this first anime series begins.
One of the virtues of ‘Baki the Grappler’ compared to the new series is that, despite the fact that it strays a bit from the original manga drawing’, it has a very successful and dynamic animation. Especially during the fighting, and that leaves us with some very expressive characters.
Unfortunately, the level drops a lot from the first to the second season, which becomes much more static and endless by focusing solely on the ‘Maximum Tournament’ arc. Still, this round of chapters also leaves us with some of the most impactful combat in history, and also adds new layers to the internal drama of the Hanma family.
It may not be an anime for everyone, but if yours are the explosive anime with lots of action and impossible muscles‘Baki the Grappler’ is an indispensable classic that knows how to build the tension chapter by chapter and gives us the impressive combats it promises.