Karate Baka Ichidai

Karate Master: The Hunt for the Lost Classic. The Missing Link of Battle Shonen

Remember the ancient days of early MAL? It was mostly just some European guys acting snobby and dunking on Americans for having not seen all these “essential classics” that got widely released in Europe, but not in the US. We Americans had honestly never heard of Galactic Heroes, Rose of Versailles, Ashita no Joe, and a lot of beloved anime of the 1970s and 80s. We got so thoroughly embarrassed that it helped kickstart the trend of toxic elitism that was the scourge of the online anime community for several years. Of ... course, this isn’t 2009 anymore. I’m writing this review in December of 2023. American anime fans are much better educated now and are well aware of all the essential classics. If you want to hang out on R/anime, you better have heard of Nobody’s Boy Remi. Otherwise, you’ll be widely ridiculed and get some massive downvotes, which is a fate worse than death for Redditors. Surely there aren’t any historically important anime left that almost nobody has seen and that nobody ever talks about. Right? Wrong! There is the story of that one weird shonen that was REALLY popular in Japan and absolutely nowhere else. You’ve probably not heard of it, but it inspired a bunch of stuff that you have definitely heard of. This is the legend... of Karate Master!

The Karate Master manga started in 1971 and was written by Ikki Kajiwara, the same guy who wrote Ashita no Joe, Star of the Giants, and Tiger Mask. The anime started in 1973 and was directed by Osamu Dezaki, who also directed Joe, Rose of Versailles…oh and Remi. You see? There was a reason that I referenced that one earlier in the review! Karate Master was not only a heavy inspiration for later battle shonen, but it inspired the game Street Fighter 1. The character Ryu was visually inspired by the main character of this anime, and his palette swap was named Ken because the protagonist of Karate Master is named Ken Asuka. In the live action adaptation of Karate Master, Ken Asuka was played by Sonny Chiba, whose most famous movie is “The Street Fighter”. Yes, that’s the whole reason the game is called Street Fighter!

The story of Karate Master was directly inspired by the life of famous martial artist Mas Oyama. However, the character’s name was changed to Ken Asuka for…reasons. During the final days of WW2, Ken was fully prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and die as a kamikaze pilot. However, his plane failed to take off and Japan officially surrendered later that day. Now burdened with extreme survivor’s guilt, Ken wanders the desolated ruins of his former hometown and sees that the once friendly people have become bitter and cruel in their poverty and desperation. While the American soldiers are portrayed as utterly awful, the local Japanese people are portrayed being just as awful if not even more so. With no job, home, or family left, Ken turns to using his mastery of karate to become a yakuza bodyguard. While Ken attempts to use his newfound money and influence for good, this plan backfires and he ends up meeting a kindhearted doctor who convinces him to abandon the yakuza and read the book of 5 Rings by Musashi Miyamoto. Ken finds meaning to his life once again through martial arts and trains in the mountains until he can break rocks with his fist. Then he enters the national karate championship and kicks everyone’s asses. It’s one of the earliest tournament arcs in battle shonen…and it lasts only 2 episodes. Ken is deeply disappointed by how weak everyone was and decides “fuck it! I’m going to fight a bull and kill it with my bare fists”. Then after that we enter “the bear arc” in which he decides to fight a brown bear with his fists. The first half of the series has very short arcs! Unfortunately, it’s way better than the 2nd half!

During the 2nd half of the series, Ken tours around America after having beaten every strong human and animal opponent in Japan. Somehow, almost every single person he meets happens to have lost a brother, father, or uncle at Pearl Harbor! Considering less than 3000 American sailors died at Pearl Harbor and America’s population in 1941 was already over 100 million, I think the writer has some incorrect ideas about America’s genealogy. By this point in the story, it’s the mid-1950s and none of the Americans mention Communism even once! Also, black and white Americans have zero conflict. They just both hate Japanese people with an equal amount of burning passion for the 200,000 American lives lost in the Pacific War. By contrast, Japan lost 2 million soldiers in that theater of war and 500,000 civilians and yet none of the Japanese characters resent Americans unless the Americans are just being complete assholes. It feels a little heavy handed by the tenth time that an angry mob attempts to lynch Ken for the crime of being Japanese. There is a real scene in this anime where an 80-year-old grandma impales him from behind with an umbrella containing a hidden blade. All while screaming “Kill the Jap!” The anime and manga really wanted to deliver a message that racism is bad, and war shouldn’t lead to long term hatred between nations. The anime doesn’t exactly do this in a graceful manner, but points for trying. This actually would have been a great opportunity to bring up the fact that Mas Oyama was an ethnic Korean whose birth name was Choi Yeong-eui. Ken could bring up that his people suffered under the Japanese FAR more than the Americans did, yet he bares no hatred towards them because the average Japanese person isn’t worth hating. Unfortunately, the anime and manga never once mentions this. Instead, Ken just fights a different pro-wrestler in every episode and the crowd keeps trying to kill him. Halfway through it feels like Kajiwara got really bored of writing a karate manga and decided to make it about pro-wrestling. That would also REALLY explain why this series ends super abruptly so Kajiwara could write a new manga about…you guessed it… pro-wrestling.

So why is this anime worth watching? The answer is because Karate Master is absolutely fucking insane! He kills a bull with one punch and punches it so hard that one of its horns flies off! Then he gets bored of fighting bulls and decides to beat bears to death with his fists! Kajiwara definitely wasn’t trying his hardest with this one. It’s NOT as well written as Ashita no Joe. However, it still has moments that are genuinely powerful and interesting. Especially in the first 10 episodes. Karate Master doesn’t look nearly as pretty as Joe since TMS was spending all of their budget on Lupin. However, Dezaki still manages to make this one wildly entertaining. The pacing is spectacular, and every episode ends with a cliffhanger. It’s a VERY bingeable anime! The OST only has so many tracks, but it’s extremely catchy and gets the job done! This is a very fun anime and the entire series is free to watch on Youtube with English subs, posted by TMS themselves on their official channel! The series was also brought over and released on Bluray thanks to Discotek. The US got a physical release of Karate Master and there is STILL no legal way to watch Ashita no Joe here, let alone own it on physical media! So America may not have Ashita no Joe, but now we DO have Ashita no Joe at home!

BTW, another amusing thing about Karate Master is that TMS gave it such a small budget that Dezaki decided to insert 3-4 minutes of live action stock footage into every episode! Usually, it's the same clips of people practicing karate. This did allow him to save the animation budget for the big fight scenes, but it at the cost of making it feel like Ed Wood directed this anime!