To begin with, the series was not conceived for new watchers in mind. It was done as a continuation of the previous seasons already adapted of the series. So if you choose this specific season to be your starting point for Baki, be warned that, while enjoying violence and nonsense is gonna consistently keep you entertained if that's what you are looking for, there's a wide mass of characters that will be introduced at you that you will not know, and the series due to its pace and particular arc this adapts, will be a very sporadic and chaotic mess of an experience. If those are pet peeves for you, you might want to consume Baki first either through its manga or the prior anime seasons. The violence and nonsense I can guarantee will be there regardless of where you choose to start from.
Now, why do I think Baki is nonsensical?
Well, let me give you a bunch of examples of some of the milder things that happen in the series, since I want the big ones for you to see on your own: By punching a person, a man cleaves another man's meat off of his face right into a perfectly round meatball. Another man runs on water. While trying to do pull-ups, a man is propelled about 2 meters into the air, alongside the bar they were holding onto, because he is that strong. Another man vomits a grenade. Two men jump one entire floor's height, quite comfortably.
Welcome to martial arts, scrubs. You might feel spoiled, but trust me, these things are actually quite mild by comparison of some of the shit you can see while watching this series. It truly barely just scratches the surface.
Now there are two arguments that the series does attempt to make from what I have watched, and I would like to discuss both. A martial artist's true strength is equal to their capacity to adapt to every situation without prior preparation for that specific scenario. Your strength is only equal to how many chaotic situations you would be able to come out victorious at a moment's notice without being aware that they will occur. While I can actually agree and somewhat admire this mentality over strength, the way the argument is made is quite convoluted because it runs in parallel with the other argument this series tries to make. Victory and defeat is decided by the participants of a confrontation. Until both sides agree on who is the victor and who is the loser, the confrontation does not end. That makes the concept of strength quite a metaphysical and subjective term which can be applied to pretty much every style of confrontation conceivable.
Now how do these two arguments fall flat? Because in Baki, willpower and the initiative to want to get towards is a result is the only thing needed to turn what you intend into reality. If one of the core things you want to display is strength, in order to truly measure strength you need to portray situations in which characters are caught unaware and cannot adapt. The person that is caught the most offguard loses. But in Baki's universe, the truth is that the person that ends up to be willing to give up first loses. Regardless of how many times they have been overpowered, outwitted or outnumbered, in Baki's universe if there's a will, there's a way. Anything is possible, it's not even a matter of you believing it is possible or not. It just is. Being stubborn about what you want does not equal strength. It might motivate you to pursue strength, yes, but just because you want it enough, doesn't mean you will have it because of your limits.
As a result the battles don't end up being a battles of might, or battles of the minds. They are confrontations of each participant's willpower and perseverence. He who admits defeat first loses. Or dies. But don't worry since you can will yourself not to die. This ends up giving the series free reign to be as violent as it wants and the fact that willpower overpowers the physical realm in Baki, that's the source of the nonsense. These arguments are also played into the romantic subplot of the series and flatten its impact completely because the romantic subplot feeds into the willpower reliance that exists and that is its only purpose. So if you value romance to any degree in a series, this one's dumb. It's really dumb. But personally, I found it hilarious for that very reason. But I shall not spoil you by explaining why.
As far as I am concerned, I enjoyed Baki. I did not need Baki to be logical in order for me to be consistently entertained by big muscly men brutally trying to defeat each other in whatever ways they deemed apropriate that most people would not. I would've definitely thought higher of it if it had made logical sense. But I understand that's not what Baki as a series is about. As Baki is, it feels incomplete. It lacks elements that make me care about what is happening on screen. I could not care about the result of any of the fights because everything in the ongoing process was obvious that is gonna proceed until someone gives up. Regardless of how thoroughly destroyed their bodies ended up being. But when the only element driving your characters forward is their willpower, they feel empty. They are shallow representations and excuses to create confrontations. The result is irrelevant. Eventually the characters that best represent what the author thinks are gonna win because those characters will be willed into a winning position. I could enjoy what was presented, but not fully.
There are some elements that are obstacles to consuming Baki as an enjoyable experience, even if you enjoy violence and nonsense that much. The biggest is the fact that the fights are portrayed through both CG animation and 2D animation. Now think what you will about CG, be it positive or negative, but when you have a fight occur in both 2D and 3D, where a character is hit in the face by a choppy 3D texture and they react with a 2D close up shot, then the fight continues in 3D whenever the fighters aren't getting a close up, you will feel cheated out of the experience because what you see is continuously inconsistent. Another thing is the fact that Baki seemed to have a very limited budget and as a result, especially by the end of the series, it ended up having very long flashbacks to things that happen previously in the series, for as much as 5 minutes even. The fact that the series has very limited budget also resulted in the series having a very limited soundtrack, which ended up being reused in a number of situations. Due to how limited the OST was, the flashbacks seemed exactly like the same experience played in exactly the same way as in the prior episodes, minus the blue tint, and it was very obvious that they were padding for time. Plenty of the animation being composed of still shots with moving backgrounds or close ups with motion effects of the characters also make the limited budget quite obvious as well, which is a shame, because the events that occur in Baki with a higher budget could be quite a spectacle to behold. And some of the sound effects for how punches and certain body parts get hit got quite repetitive since they got reused a bunch. So take note of these faults as well while watching Baki. Not all episodes are like that, and some of its more crucial moments are delivered without these faults holding the series back, but, these faults exist in the series.
To sum up, watch Baki if you find appeal in violence and when you thoroughly enjoy when something that is nonsensical is presented to you. Avoid it if you need good production values and you need to think highly of the experience before you. You can end up liking Baki, but respecting its rationality is not something I see happening for any viewers whatsoever. Baki can be intriguing so long as you only choose to observe what is happening rather than think what is going on. It was crafted as an experience for you to enjoy. And the two elements I presented in the question at the start of review, are exactly what this experience is rooted upon.
