Baki the Grappler (Review)
Baki the Grappler Manages to Get Audiences in Solid Choke Hold.
I’m a huge martial arts fanatic, so it makes sense that a series like Baki the Grappler would be right up my ally. After all, the series takes place in a fictional mixed martial arts world in Japan. While I’m hardly a martial arts scholar, I couldn’t help finding humor in the series since it was clear that writer Atsuhiro Tomioka has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to martial arts and the series slowly becomes more and more absurd. Still, I’ve never been one to watch anime because it’s “realistic.”
In typical anime fashion, Baki the Grappler follows a teenager in Japan, named Baki (Robert McCollum), who wants to be the greatest fighter in the world. Over the course of the series, he meets a number of colorful characters from a variety of backgrounds. While the series might start with a rickety footing in reality, as it goes on it becomes more and more absurd to the point where the fighters in it are nothing short of supernatural. Baki goes from fighting middleweight boxing champions to bodybuilding surgeons to mythical mountain apes. Of course, this sets up Baki the Grappler to inevitably become a tournament-style series in the second season, and where it eventually manages to shine the brightest.
As a kid, I ate movies like Enter the Dragon and The Quest up, because they pitted such a wide variety of backgrounds to prove who the best of the best is. This facination eventually bled over to series like Dragon Ball z and Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple. Baki the Grappler embraces this theme in the most absurd possible way as the high scholar at the center of the series finds himself in the middle of an elite underground fighting tournament. Because of this, Baki the Grappler is a series that focuses intently on its characters. That being said, a lot of the characters that do appear in the series are full on stereotypes that would be right at some in Street Fighter game. You have karate experts fighting kung-fu masters and Russian wrestlers doing battle with American boxers. It’s all so absurdly cliche, and, to be honest, I loved every minute of it.
Baki the Grappler is a series that embraces a theme of never-ending escalation. The first season features the character unlocking such ancient and mystical abilities as endorphins, focus, and adrenaline, which just goes to show that the series is talking out of its ass most of the time. However, animation studio Group Tac takes things to the next level when it comes to the designs of the characters. Of course, Baki ends up fighting strong and stronger opponents, but at a certain point, the physiques of the characters just border on the absurd. All of them are muscle-bound to the point where Arnold Schwarzenegger would feel self-conscious around them and their musculature stops making sense at a certain point. Not only that, but there seem to be noticeable inconsistencies when it comes to the proportions of the the characters. Over the course of Baki the Grappler, the fighters all slowly get taller as well to the point where Baki rarely stands above his enemies waists. This is all the more ridiculous because the series takes great care in making sure to give you the stats on the fighters and most of them are just over 6 feet tall, which would make Baki about 4 feet tall at best. However, during the fights, the sizes of the fighters fluctuate dramatically in comparison
Despite these issues though, the animation is pretty incredible. The amount of detail that goes into each character is simply awe-inspiring. While they might be cliched designs, the rippling muscles offset by the grace of their fighting abilities makes Baki the Grappler pure eye candy and no matter how much my brain told me that what I was watching was “pure trash” I couldn’t help powering through the entire 48 episode series in just a few days proving that this series is uncannily addicting.
Baki the Grappler is far from being a good series, but it’s so much fun to watch that it hardly matters in the end. It’s riddled with tropes and makes little to no sense with how OP the characters slowly become in the series. Still, I loved every minute of it and when it ended I found myself desperately wanting more. Baki the Grappler is the very embodiment of a teenage boys daydream (minus gratuitous fan service), and because of that, it spoke to that immature little bastard deep inside of me. Temper your expectations, and it will be difficult not to enjoy this series, especially since Netflix has recently begun a sequel series simply called Baki.
