(✪㉨✪)/ Baki The Grappler (AR)

Baki The Grappler

Episodes: 24 

Aired Date: Jan 9, 2001 to Jun 26, 2001

The first season of Baki the Grappler focuses on the childhood life of our main hero, Baki Hanma, who is an energetic and a hard headed 13-year-old boy who loves to fight. Day and night he actively searches for any strong opponents from professional boxers, war veterans, monsters to gang leaders etc.
Baki 's reason for his hunger for fighting and to be strong is his father Yujirou. Yujirou is portrayed as the best fighter in the world, he is a scary and intimidating monster  man who is almost something non-human because of his strength and brutality (he can frickin stop earthquakes with his fist). He is the main driving force for Baki to seek more strength and power. Baki's mother, Emi Akezawa, is a lady who is obsessed to Yujirou. She kinda loves Yujirou more than their own son and does everything to satisfy Yujirou. She trains Baki to be a strong fighter fit to be Yujirou's son as per Yujirou's request. BothYujirou and Emi have their own interesting back stories.

Yujirou's Infamous Back!

Baki's oka-san who only cares about Yujirou

Besides the Hanma family, the other characters and opponents of Baki surprisingly have good back stories too. Unlike other animes of the fighting genre where characters were more black and white, in Baki, they are more complex and there are no clear cut between the good and the bad. Each has their own reasons for fighting and the author did a great job of making them have more dimensions and more realistic. Even the most monstrous of Baki's opponents have their good side shown in the story.

The first half focuses on our 13 year old and his quest to beat up living and non-living things alike.

After some tragic events, the 2nd half will show a more mature and professional 15 year old Baki

The fighting is good and no "aura's" (e.g. Nen, Ki, Hamon etc.) in here. Just pure brawling, grappling, wrestling, kick-boxing, karate, boxing and other real disciplines of martial arts. The strength of this characters however are mind bending and somewhat unreal. For example is Baki who is only 13 years old, there are no 13 year olds who possesses a body like that and can beat up bigger juiced up humans and monsters alike. But it is entertaining nonetheless, without their almost supernatural strength, Baki wouldn't be as epic as it is. The 1st half is a street fighting inclined while the 2nd half focuses more on a tournament.

He literally will fight anyone at anytime. from a 100 men..

...to the missing link, he'll have them all taste his fist!

Animation is good but not consistent. Sometimes you'd drool from the great fighting scenes where each panel was drawn to (not perfection) but atleast above average and the animation was so fluid, and sometimes you'd be disappointed by the other fights where they looked like they were drawn by some lazy amateurs. But it was all manageable to watch anyway so I had no problem with it. Sound is okay, I like the background sounds and they fit each scenes.

another horrific looking 15 year old.

Baki loses a lot too from time to time.

Overall, Baki is as entertaining as any fighting anime. It's hard to get bored watching a 13 year old boy with epic monstrous strength beat up bigger, badder foes with monstrous strength of their own. He also beats up non-living things and animals and its fun seeing him wreak havoc. It's not all mindless action though, you'll also enjoy some heartwarming back stories here and there. I recommend this to anyone specially those fans of the fighting genre.

My Personal Rating: 8/10

☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☺☺

OP1: Ai Believe - Project Baki
OP2: Child Prey - Dir En Grey
ED1: Reborn - Project Baki