Baki Hanma

Hanma Baki : Son of Ogre Review Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre felt like a training arc for the protagonist of the series beginning with a prologue introducing a elementary school student to the ethics of Baki's shadow boxing technique and his training narration. The sectional prologue doesn't bring anything new apart from Baki establishing his dominance as a fragment of Mohammad Ali (EP1 18:31 his stance is that of Mohammad Ali's stance over Sonny Liston when fighting Iron Michael) and his rival Yujiro Hanma's dominance on a prehistoric sized elephant. Further throughout the season, we follow Baki Hanma gathering experience to fight against his rivalby arbitrarily forcing himself into Arizona state Prison to fight against Unchained. In my opinion I feel the series isn't what it was before, the content is lackluster and the characters seem to tank hits from each other more than actually fighting. The slideshow explanation of each opponents strengths (like insisting the force of one character's punch is the equivalent to 400 megatons of TNT) defeats the purpose of having the characters (such as Unchained and Guevaro) duke it out to the death. Each character's background were interesting and logical and made the fighting more appealing but it doesn't take 3 episodes to find out who's will is stronger. I feel that the background could have been materialized better but I still appreciate not omitting the shroud of character development that this season had. That being said, Baki isn't true Baki without its overexerting, masculine art style. The quality of the animation and art style has been maintained which is at least a positive note this season. The notorious, iconic Baki confrontation sound track has been revived this season also which was surprising to see during the confrontation of Unchained and Baki inside the solitary confinement cell. Overall, I wasn't expecting a season like this to show up out of nowhere but I am still rooting for Baki Hanma in the upcoming arcs. The series still has its appeals which is why I keep coming back in hope that it improves and less 'talk', more 'action' is induced.

I’ve been waiting for this ever since I heard about it and I can say that I was satisfied. It isn’t as fight heavy as the previous seasons but it does the job. We had Olivia vs Baki, Oliva vs J G-something (I honestly can’t remember his last name),and Baki vs Mantis. The animation was anything special but it wasn’t bad. It’s the standard Baki animation. It’s filled with more of the after picture movement thing. You know when they show you what happened what would happen if they actually animated the whole thing. These twelve episodes were more character heavy with interesting witty dialogues. Iliked how Baki was this season, like he still has his personality but there’s something different about his energy. Like his confidence is through the roof this season and I love it. There’s really not that much to say about it but I had a good time. I loved all the characters that were introduced and the ones we learned/saw more of. If you’re thinking about watching it, do it!

I watched the original Baki the Grappler (2001) back in 2015 and I've watched everything this series has to offer. Before I proceed with this review, I want to give you an overview of the scores I gave to each title so you can understand better if my review will resonate with you or not. Baki the Grappler (TV) - 7/10 Baki the Grappler (OVA) - 7/10 Grappler Baki: Saidai Tournament-hen - 6/10 Baki: Most Evil Death Row Convicts Special - 6/10 Baki - 6/10 Baki: Dai Raitaisai-hen - 5/10 So, as you can see the enjoyment I've been getting from Baki animes as time goes on is decreasing andin my opinion Netflix continues to drag Baki through the mud. Visuals: 1) the animation is very inconsistent, specially noticeable when throws stupid CGI in the mix. 2) anatomically incorrect body designs which shatter my immersion Sound: without being a masterpiece it's the best aspect of this season Characters and story: 1) This season seems to be one of those shows made by incredibly insecure dudes featuring themselves trying to be as macho as they can and failing miserably at it but without being aware of how pathetic they are. I'm so masculine, I'd rather spend time rolling around with half naked dudes all the time and come up with ridiculous excuses to do it more often. I'm so masculine I love golden showers between men. Even the script is cringe. 2) No character development whatsoever 3) you'll see plenty of references to real life events and real life people (Che Guevara, George Bush, JFK's assassination, Mike Tyson, etc.) to try and bring immersion and realism to this season but everything is so over the top ridiculous that it's laughable in a bad way. You'll see someone get physically injured because their shadowboxing became too realistic (shadowboxing is fighting air while imagining there's someone fighting you), someone else shooting a few strands of hair at someone and ripping their eardrums with it and plenty of other stupid BS while a random (yes, random because it changes every few moments) temporary character narrates what's going on, sometimes giving science trivia as if whatever's going on could be plausible. 4) Most fights, which should be the main focus of this season as there's literally no character development as I've said previously, don't happen in real time. What I mean is that these actions sequences are constantly interrupted by unnamed temporary and random characters narrating whatever is happening when we're not watching the actual fights. Imagine you're watching a movie and every couple of seconds you get a close up of a random person telling you about the movie you're trying to watch in the 1st place. My expectations were already low because in my opinion Netflix hasn't done anything remotely good for the Baki franchise but they managed to surprise me. However, I can compliment Netflix for one thing: subtitles. For the 1st time the official subtitles were accurate, except for one small occasion where the characters said 100,000 calories and the subtitle read 10,000 calories instead. All things considered, I hated watching this. It gets a 3/10 from me.