Grappler Baki: Saidai Tournament-hen

BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT returns triumphantly for a second season and there is more man than ever. Baki is peak testosterone fueled fun and it's a joy from beginning to end. Do yourself a favour and don't up on this!

This entire season is just a tournament arc and it takes full advantage of that fact and brings forth the best you could expect from something like this. Tons of varied and compelling fighters, each with a unique personality and of course a unique fighting style. The different matches all present something fresh and different and the whole season is engaging throughout. There is ... hard hitting action in basically every episode, the storylines are easy to follow and there is sufficient depth to keep this from being just fighting without any meat on its bones. If you love martial arts, you will also love this, as its chock full of ridiculous love letters to them. Some of these fighters are what I imagine those tai chi/wing chun wankers in China THINK that they look like. In any case, I personally love me some good ol' fashioned martial arts mayhem and this anime scratched that itch bountifully.

Now, this season is not without issues. Firstly, the first season already had its moments when the animation drops the ball, but here you can really feel that the budget was slashed significantly. In the fights themselves, it works well and there are some cool moments, but there are plenty of occasions when the animation is quite lacking. The flashbacks and recaps are back too, so that definitely hurts the pacing. Also, this anime is blessed with one of the worst openings I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing. Piss poor 2001 era Nintendo 64 quality CGI combined with a song that is nothing but nonsensical ingurish lyrics over the most un-catchy and devoid of beat or melody track to ever exist. I have no idea how this thing was approved. If the internet were more popular back then, I'm pretty sure they would've seen the backlash and maybe reverted to the old opening, which I would've been fine with to be completely honest.

In conclusion, Baki is not Berserk, it's not One Piece and it's not Death Note. You don't come here for sophisticated storytelling, deep worldbuilding or deep psychological tension. No, you come to see great fights between massive muscular men brandishing all kinds of martial arts, each pushed to realms of absolute absurdity. Baki knows what it is and what it's supposed to be and delivers on its strengths. While this particular anime suffers from some poor management and budget cuts at times, while its age might put some people off, this is still a thoroughly enjoyable experience worth having. Despite its flaws, this is one my favourite tournament arcs in all of anime, with all the good aspects of a tournament distilled to their purest form. So be the bigger man and give this a watch, I firmly believe you won't regret it.

meh. preferred 1st season. this show drags way to long, so much filler. the story is paper thin, you wont find it except the flashbacks from first season and ending episodes. it was quite unecessarily long and mindnumbing. plot twist the story is basically metal gear solid 1 lol...im not even joking. they could have made something far more interesting but the dragged out tournament for 23 episodes was not it at all.

if you are looking for an anime with a tory being told for 24 minutes' you will not find it. Its almost all fight sequences. the story is not even good but ... theres so little of it. the ending does not even satisfy the main purpose of the barebone story. theres so much wrong with this that makes it a huge timewaster.

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?