Baki the Grappler #1: Warrior Reborn Funimation 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 06/15/2005 Reviewed: 09/20/2005

Back To B Listings

Listen to Dave and Joel talk about this show! (right click to save)

You might not think I'd be the type, with my ranting and raving about "plot" and "focus", but I am a stalwart fan of masculine, testosterone-laden anime. But you could probably garner that from some of my pervious works. I would be quite content in a world of anime that featured only psychological thrillers from Satoshi Kon and ridiculously over the top fighting anime like Fist of the Northstar or Hajime no Ippo. Even now the only fansub I deign to lay my delicate eyes on is the routine-but-awesome Eyeshield 21, the story of a running back who learns what it takes to be a man through dedication to his school's football club. So, obviously, masculine anime must be pretty astounding if it can make me a) get off my lazy duff and download things and b) actually watch a fansub, even though they make me feel a little immortal... though technically only the latter part is true, because my roommate, the inimitable Jerry, is the one that downloads the episode 90% of the time. Some four days later I'll watch it with more than a small amount of glee. It's no Hokuto no Ken, but it's enough to sublimate my urge for muscle-bound awesome battlers crashing into each other until their combined powers bring about the end of humanity. If this is the case then why does Grappler Baki leave me high and dry?

Baki Hanma has been re-imagined since his OVA outing so many years ago, or so I would guess... but I've never read the original manga (and don't care to) so we can never be quite sure who is the more official Baki. I'd postulate that it doesn't matter, because they both suck. Much more serious and downbeat than its progenitor, Baki the TV eschews the jokes and goofy music and (most of) the crotch grabbing that makes the earlier show so memorable to so many people. In Baki The TV we're "treated" to a meaner, redder Baki that has no qualms about wading into a group of a hundred gang members and throwing out elbows like there's no tomorrow. Throughout the course of these four episodes Baki will graduate from gang members to Ukranian wolf-boxers to giant mountain men, finally settling on a two episode-long battle against a nine foot tall ape who shows a remarkable amount of intelligence and technique in the ring. In the background, strange forces are maneuvering to pit fifteen year old boys (pictured left, looking like he's 50) against each other for sport.

On the premise this doesn't sound so crazy, though I must admit I've never thought I had a hole in my psyche that desperately needed to be filled by observing muscle-bound boxers going mano-a-mano with any fauna they can get their hands on. Wolves, monkeys, bats, even rabbits... no animal is safe from the characters in the Baki-verse! I gotta say, 40 minutes of man-on-ape fighting really isn't enough to keep my interest going into this show, especially with the ludicrous phsyiology they relate during its course. Any standard "tough guy" anime is going to have their own thing. Chakras or "shining moments", whatever. Generally these things are either semi-true to reality or ridiculous/evasive enough that the discerning viewer won't worry about. Baki cleverly skirts both options and goes out of its way to annoy you. Apparently all one needs to be a superior athlete in the Baki-verse is the ability to punish themselves enough that endorphins flood into the brain and unlock some sort of higher level of skill. When this happens Baki escapes his pain and the masochistic role is forced on the viewer as he tries to sit through this BS.

All the while the transformation is accompanied by senseless rave music and poorly crafted special effects. These interludes, which I took to calling braingasms, leave the viewer non-too happy about their time spent with Baki. The cost of creating those piss-poor flashes might just be the reason why this thing seems so poorly crafted. Or, at least, that's what the viewer can try to use to justify why the show blows so many foul chunks so frequently. I pretty much thought there was no way the original animated Baki the Grappler could be worse than this new show. I set my blind hopes on the length of the series. Maybe the 45 minute OVA was a fluke, the victim of trying to stuff too much history into too little a time. But I guess I was wrong, they're both equally bad for totally different reasons. As of now there's no glam rockers or cord cutting in Baki the TV, but I'd venture to say that 15 year old Yakuza boxers and giant brawls against even gianter monkeys are more than enough to pick up the slack. Baki the TV is a different type of bad, but it's bad all the same.