Grappler Baki: Saidai Tournament-hen

Okay; let's all say the word:

“Yet another strongest in the world”.

Makes you think that there must be a lot of misinformation and censorship in the world of Baki for people to always be shocked when a character breaks the previous strongest fighter and reclaim the title.

I'm an avid believer that early Baki, in his 13 yo was the best version of himself, but as for everyone else, this season completely blows anything else away.

The season took the word Tournament and made some of the best entertaining matchups there are. Seriously, an episode could start with the referee declaring the opponent as a Sumo wrestler vs. ... some local amateur wrestling champion and still make it some of the most intense fights up to that point, it's simply a wonder for hype and build-up.

Naruto part 1 Chunin exam is the only tournament that comes to mind that would hold a cancel to this, and that's saying a lot, but once the tournament wrapped up, it blew that out of the water.

I thought I was so aligned and happy with the cast we got in part 1 and then this season introduced a whole lot of amazing characters plus reintroduce some of the most beloved old ones like Shinogi and Hanayama, man the rooster keeps growing and it's such a blast of nonending fun characters to see interact.

This season was pure fight hanger fest, and it was glorious, I hope it was longer.

Overall: 8/10

Grappler Baki II is the second season to the action/shonen show, Grappler Baki.

Story: Well, one interesting aspect about the storyline in this anime is that pretty much all 26 episodes take place in one day. As far as the story itself goes, it's nothing too special, it's just a tournament of 30+ fighters, with some plot twists and flashbacks thrown in to broaden the storyline and characters. Having a tournament in a shonen show is a terribly overused technique, but I cannot refrain myself from admitting that it is a very effective cliche. A tournament is thrilling to watch, since you wonder who will make ... it to the later rounds and who will not. The tourney in Grappler Baki II is, thankfully, not too predictable, so, while the story is a bit bland and uncreative, it is still marginally effective.

Art: It's ok. I'm tempted to simply leave it at that. Character designs are ok, the animation is...ok. Overall, the art department is exceedingly average, not bad not good. The art won't amaze you, but it will not bother you either.

Sound: The soundtrack in the show is done quite well, the songs fit the action well, but towards the end, i found myself wishing for a larger selection of music, since the songs tend to get very repetitve. Pretty much each background piece of music is used in almost every episode at least once. The opening and ending songs were fairly decent in my opinion.

Character: This could have been much worse. There are lots of characters in this anime, and we actually get a decent background about most of them. The problem is that none of them are particularly interesting or genuine, and i found it hard to care for any of the numerous supporting characters. But what about the main cast? Nothing too new, Baki is hellbent on defeating his father, while simultaneously failing to advance an oddly uninteresting romantic subplot that the creators couldn't decide whether to flesh out or not. His father is still a complete bastard, who loves fighting, grinning cockily, and apparently interrupting the tournament whenever he feels like. So, nothing too outstanding in the character department, but again, could have been worse.

Enjoyment: In the end, i had the same basic problem with this season as i did with the previous season. It all just comes down to a bunch of badass looking badasses that fight each other in a badass fashion. It's entertaining to watch, as long as you keep your brain turned off. Admittedly, the fight scenes are well done, but a show can't thrive on just the action segments, it also needs a strong plot and characters, which is the area where Grappler Baki stumbled for me. The show is comparable to an average action film, moderately enjoyable to watch, but rather unimpressive as a complete work. If you are a big fan of shonen shows and action in general, add 2 points to this score, if you have a general dislike for the genre, subtract a couple.

Overall: 6/10

I'd like to say that i'm a huge fan of the first 199 chapters of Grappler Baki, and I really tried here, but this is awful. I only made it through 1 episode, and that was really hard to get through. This covered the small amount of the Maximum Tournament that actually is translated in the manga, and it did so poor a job at it that I was shocked. It skips over some characters personalities completely, and literally every character is mischaracterized, I am not exaggerating when I say that. Not to mention that it fails on every technical level, it's horribly directed, the ... music is oddly unfitting, the colors have this weird early 2000s digital color look that doesn't really work, and it actually has the worst pacing I've ever seen. not to mention it does a pretty bad job of capturing the art style the manga,and seems to censor some of the gore. I wish I could say there was no reason to watch this, but as of now it's the only way to experience the story of the 172 untranslated chapters of Grappler Baki. Can we please get an official release of the manga so that fans don't have to suffer through this?