Garouden

Garouden is the manga adaptation of the famous Martial Arts franchise of the same name, if you are a Baki the Grappler enjoyer you probably has heard of this series due to them having the same Artist and Martial Arts enthusiast, Keisuke Itagaki, and well, you wouldn't be wrong if you guessed that both of these manga are extremely similar to each other, to the point that nowadays, Garouden has been retconned to be part of the same universe as Baki, the series also suffers from the same issues and problems i have with Baki so it's similarities aren't that great of a thing. The Art:Itagaki's art style is very "peculiar" and odd looking, for some it can look ugly, gross, unappealling, etc, but i really like he's artstyle, i'd even say it's one of my favorite art styles in the manga industry, the over-the-top expressions and the easy to follow action scenes are extremely satisfying and easy to get through, the art has an certain fluidity to it, you can also see a lot of the artists evolution through out the years, since the series started in the mid 90s and only "concluded" in the early 2010s. 9/10 Characters: Tanba Bunshichi is the main character, and he is alright, not great just alright, he is a cocky dojo crasher who only lives for fighting, he also doesn't really care about honor or any traditions since he isn't above using dirty tricks to win street brawls, but much like in Baki the side-characters are the ones that steal the show, but in Garouden this is taken to a even further extent because there are entire story arcs that Tanba is barely even a side-character or isn't even present, like in Tatsumi's arc or the "Fist and Twist Tournament arc" where the Wrestler Hiroshi Nagata is pretty much the main character, the main "Villain" if you even could call him that is Shozan Matsuo and he is build up to be one of the Strongest Men in the world but a fight with him never happens so he doesn't really do much aside from Organizing the Tournament. 5.5/10 Story: Well not much to be said here since what moves the story are the fights which don't have much writing except for the Martial Arts stuff and characters reading their opponents, the best story arc by far though is Tatsumi's arc, where we actually get some clever writing and some emotional stakes it is short but it serves as a pretty good backstory for the character, the following arc is the Tournament, where Grapplers and Strikers test their skills to prove who's the strongest of them all, it is very similar to the Maximum Tournament in Baki the problem here is that the battles are extremely short, lasting for only 1 chapter, 2 if you are lucky, which is very small in comparison to the Maximum Tournament which had fights last for at least 3 chapters, most fights are extremely one-sided and predictable too, the moment the 2 fighters get revealed you can already tell who'll win, and this becomes very frustrating after nearly 100 chapters of just that, the final arc is nothing to write home about, since it never actually got a conclusion, the manga "ends" before it could do that. 6/10 The "Ending" It seems the Garouden manga was always on and off about chapter releases since Itagaki was working on his own manga he probably couldn't keep up with it, so volume releases were basically more than a year apart from each other, so the manga kinda was in a hiatus until it was confirmed it ended and wouldn't be receiving anymore chapters, the manga basically ends on a big cliffhanger. Overall Enjoyment This a pretty fun Fighting Manga if you turn your brain off, it has it's problems but they aren't that big of a deal, if you like Baki or Tough you'll probably have a blast with Garouden, it also has a pretty cheap but decent 3D fighter for the Ps2 so you can enjoy some even more Garouden content. 7/10