ThatAnimeSnob

Notice: This review covers all three major arcs.

First arc

A typical shonen series is about hyperactive boys training endlessly in order to become the best in a specific field. Well guess what; this anime is also like that. It’s about a boy that wants to be the best fighter and to surpass his father, the strongest man in the world. The catch is, it’s way more focused on being brutal than telling a moral message about friendship or spicing things up with something other than fighting.

If you got tired of watching fighting shonen or sport series that are wasting a lot of time on not being about the action, Grappler Baki is where you go to, assuming you can tolerate bad animation and horrible openings. Seriously, if you want to get your blood pumping when you begin watching an episode of pure manly action, you don’t throw a lame pop song, sang by a girl in the opening.

And I get why they did that. Females in the series are damsels in distress, existing only as rewards for manly men who beat the crap out of each other. Listening to girl singing while the protagonist is training hard is telling you subconsciously that everything is done for the pussy and that all the pain and suffering the hero is going through will have a reward at the end. It’s just a cheap hook to keep teenage boys watching a show about guys who want to be the strongest for the sake of being the strongest.

You also don’t use cancer CGI models. I get how it saves money, but if you don’t bother to render them properly or cover them by drawing over them, then it looks horrible and not awesome at all, which happens to be the main appeal of the show. I mean, if you can somehow look past it, it’s still amazing for its brutal fighting, which includes all sorts of nasty attacks no typical shonen would use. Scratching the eyes, biting the ears, kicking the nuts, attacking without a warning, and so on. The early episodes were merciless, as there was no honor in fighting and winning was the only thing that mattered.

Second arc

Unfortunately this was diminished in the second arc, where everybody was fighting before an audience with a referee and you had to follow a few rules because you were doing it to prove how powerful you are and not to win no matter what. In fact, the second arc took away most of the charm in general and became an almost typical fighting tournament, despite constantly saying it is dangerous and merciless.

Even the plot was damaged because of it. During the first arc things were moving at a reasonable pace. You were following a single character as he was travelling around the world and facing all sorts of challenges with no rules or referees to limit what you are allowed to do. It also had meaningful character growth, as Baki gets constantly stronger and learns new tricks. The handful of opponents he faces get some screen time as well so their backgrounds can be fleshed out.

The second arc ruins everything. There is no actual growth since nobody there gets stronger from his battles. There are also about 30 fighters, most of which are one note, and they all get a rather equal amount of screen time when it’s their time to fight. Meaning you don’t focus on someone for too long and because of their sheer number almost nobody feels important or memorable. Also, every battle takes place on the exact same arena, which quickly becomes repetitive and dull to look at. Also, you can’t use dirty tricks, field tactics, or dirty tricks, because there is a referee and rules to follow. The fights are still kinda fun but there is very little engagement.

And I have to stress how darker the first arc was, despite having a lot more absurd elements during its battles. Everybody was constantly grumpy and ready to choke the life out of their enemies, while the only relevant female was the psychotic mother of Baki, constantly mistreating him so she can have sex with his even more psychotic father. It was edgy at times, but it was also much more enjoyable than the second arc that had a comic relief midget and a dull schoolgirl acting as a generic platonic girlfriend.

What I am getting at here, is that although the story was never something special, the first arc had a linear plot where every major character was somehow significant and was getting fleshed out. The tournament arc had everyone waiting for their turn on the ring. Until then, they had nothing to do besides being spectators who were stating the obvious for what is going on in the current duel. There is no plot to speak of and it quickly became boring. The show is all about muscular guys training and fighting each other just to see who the biggest badass is. In vacuum they are all different and cool, but when binging the show you clearly see how none of them feels important because of their sheer number and lack of permanent focus.

I also have to point out how a big part of the appeal was also Baki’s relationship with his crazy ass father. The two of them are the flagship of the whole series, and we don’t get much of it. Baki stops evolving in the tournament and becomes almost of a blank self insert. His father’s backdrop gets fleshed out, but he is still not doing something other than being a jerk who keeps making his son suffer as means to keep getting stronger.

Third arc

Things seem to improve during the third arc, since the plot goes back to be being about dirty fighting, field tactics, and stealth. It is quickly proven to suffer from the exact same pacing issue as the second arc, with the addition of constantly cutting away every few minutes. Basically, a bunch of convicts go after Baki but they are constantly bumping on the 30 fighters from the previous arc. So again, there is no focus on a few characters. On top of that, since those 30 fighters are no longer standing idle as spectators, they are now constantly jumping in to intervene, or the convicts constantly do tricks to escape and leave the battle inconclusive. On top of that, a fight that is at large is constantly stopped and the scene changes to show us what someone else is doing at the time thus ruining the fun.

Basically, the third arc has the same problem that plagues all stories that go past a tournament. You either never again show the fighters that took part in it, thus making it even more clear of how meaningless it was to spend time on them, or you keep them all around and you need to find something for them to do. The cast was now over 50 fighters doing their daily routine or bumping onto the convicts, making the plot extremely fragmented and unfocused.

On top of that, even if you somehow make a compilation of the fights so they will seem uninterrupted, they are still going to be horrible to look at. The CGI is now everywhere and it makes the characters look like something out of a Playstation 1 era. The android animation is also extremely cheap, as most motions are essentially stills that slide instead of actual motion. Most of the badassery is lost because of it.

I also need to point out how messed up the power scaling is. You never get a clear picture of who is stronger than whom, with the only exception being Baki’s father, who is the strongest man in history. At one scene it seems like A is stronger than B, only to somehow be proven weaker than C, who lost to B. For example, in the first arc Gaia was referred to as the second strongest person in the world, and then the second arc introduces all those fighters who are supposed to be even stronger. Then the third arc introduces the convicts, who are supposed to be even stronger, yet they all get defeated by the lower end of the fighters of the second arc.

The dirty tactics many are using could be used as a justification for why some can get the upper hand in cases where normally they would lose. But as it turns out not even that makes much sense, since the convicts are all crazy powerful on their own, and their dirty tactics are actually making them underperform. Plus, Baki gets a power up in this arc not through training or through some realization but because he lost his virginity. I kid you not; the show treats sex as a power up.

We also don’t get an actual finale, since the story ends without a resolution and it’s yet another case of go read the manga, where you get a whole bunch of arcs that keep going forever. There is never any clear objective or end point, making the whole thing being literally about endless pointless fighting.

Down to it, Grappler Baki is cool at points, but as a whole unfocused and badly directed and animated. It stands no chance next to better produced titles, even if their action is nowhere close as brutal.