Baki-dou

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Having recently finished the third manga of the Baki series, I wasn't sure on what to expect from this one. What can possibly up Baki's journey through 3 manga parts, to finally fight his father, Yujiro? With hesitation, but excitement, I gave this a try.

Warning: Spoiler

~Story~ (3/10)

This story frustrated me beyond belief. It reminded me of this one 'popular' book, written by a famous author, which resulted me in almost throwing it across the bus that I was riding in. Guess what, this manga gave me the same feeling. The beginning of the story is great, for the most part. The only thing I found ... a bit off putting in the beginning, was how everyone, and I mean everyone, was bored out of their minds. These same characters and the past manga have made one thing clear: It doesn't matter who you fight, where, when, how or why, a fight can and will happen. Just accept it, because it's part of a fighter's life. Enjoy it while at it. Seeing Baki and the others so bored has taken this message and thrown it out of the window, but I didn't expect it to last for long. After all, Miyamoto Musashi was in the scene. The idea of cloning such a famous historical figure is something that I didn't mind rolling along with. I'm a history buff, and sometimes I like being served the idea of bringing in historical people into present day. They've done it with Pickle, and quite well, so what made this one different? The difference wasn't shown right off the bat. The story draws you in to sympathize and like this character. After all, he was now stuck in modern day. A time so different from his own (400 years!). Okay, some characters come, meet him (to try and make sure that what they heard was true) and pick a fight with him. Fine, what else do you expect from this franchise? But as you keep reading, it slowly dawns onto you how over powered they made Miyamoto. He could go toe-to-toe with Yujiro, of all people! Then one of the characters, a beloved one, ends up dead. Why? Because the arena raised the rule of 'no weapons allowed', because how could they not allow THE Miyamoto Musashi fight without a sword? Then you have a character going around, beating into everybody's heads that he's going to protect them from Miyamoto. He even said it to the famous swordsman himself, that he's going to protect him... from himself? What? Then this same swordsman is let loose onto the world, going around killing the police force, and so on and so forth. Are you still following me? Then let me tell you one important thing about this guy. This man has no honour. He will kill because he can, as nobody can stop him. He will even start to fight or attack those that ask him to stop. He will continue chopping and cutting at someone, even with their backs turned, having decided that the fight has ended. He looks at some of the characters, and sees riches and recognition. By the time you finish, you realize that Baki is barely in this story, and it's no longer a Baki story to begin with. It's Miyamoto, because he's now the 'hero' and everybody must bow down to his greatness.

~Art~ (9/10)

If you have read the first manga, you can see the great differences between it and this one. The art seems to continue to evolve over time, with great detail, love, time and care put into it. No matter how much this manga has disappointed me, I know that the one thing that will not disappoint me is the art style itself. The only small issue I find is that sometimes you find the same exact picture, drawn over and over again, 10X into two whole rows of panels. No change in feature expressions. No change in the background (if there is one to begin with). Nothing is different. What is the point behind it? The first two times it happened, I had to stop and study the drawings carefully. I tried to find even the smallest of differences, but there were none. I can't help but shake my head in confusion whenever I see them.

~Character~ (3/10)

The characters have gone to shit. No joke. There is no better way to describe them in any other way. One character is practically assassinated, while another is a crazy parrot going around repeating the same thing over and over, and Yujiro is made to look like a joke when two things happened. One, as I said before, Miyamoto is able to go toe-to-toe with him. What?! Two, that parrot guy even told him, THE Ogre, that he needs to be protected from Miyamoto and he will do it. Then there are the other characters. Everybody is so bored out of their minds that their unique personalities are no longer there. You can basically describe them as 'background characters', until they fight Miyamoto. They'll have their 15 minutes of fame (if not having died in the end), then they'll go back to the way they were before. There's no more motivation behind their training, if any training at all. They're too busy yawning in their corners, too lazy to get up and fight each other (why not at least for fun?), and even one said that he retired so no one should expect anything from him anymore. What?! Even Baki, the main character that we followed for so long, is a background character and thus subjected to all of this. At one point he said that he needed someone to teach him how to fight, so that he could beat Miyamoto. Why can't he do it himself? Where has all his motivation gone? All he's doing now is just walking around, bored out of his mind and doing nothing productive with his time. You don't see him going to school. You don't see him with his girlfriend. You see only a bit of his training in the beginning, before his main character role was taken by Miyamoto. He just... does nothing. There's no point in him being around anymore.

~Enjoyment~ (3/10)

I'm so disappointed in this manga part. It had such a great promising beginning, but you are slapped in the face by the time you get into the middle. And when you get to the middle, you are so deep in that you can't help but keep going. You have to, because you tell yourself "it must get better from here!", when it never does. It gets worse and worse. I went from a 7/10 to a 3/10 by the time I finished this. I've read a lot in my short life. In all of these years, only two books made me want to show disrespect to them by throwing them across the room (or bus, on one occasion). This one makes me want to do it, but also close it and mourn the loss of good story and characters. I can't find myself wanting to read the next part, because of how horrible this part has treated its predecessors, their accomplishments and the characters. Everything that we've grown attached to, grown to admire, love or even be distasteful towards, is now gone. The only way I can describe it is that this manga will leave you feeling soulless. I know that it sounds over-dramatic, but this is the experience that I got from this.

~Overall~ (3/10)

I do not recommend this manga to old and new readers of this franchise. I refuse to acknowledge this as canon to the original, but rather an alternative universe. There's simply no way that these characters and story has gone so off the deep end, in the way that they did. The franchise has ended with the fight between Baki and his dad, and that's a fact. Anything from here on out, is an unknown, which you can turn your back to and walk away and not miss a thing.

Read this at your own risk. If you do, good luck.

Preface: If you like this manga, I have no qualms or issues with you. I just feel this needs a review of some sort to really warn people as to what they are getting into. Longtime fans especially but newcomers as well. Though if this is your introduction to Baki, I think you might enjoy it more, but it just depends.

Story 3/10: The synopsis pretty much covers the story and Baki has never been a story heavy series by any means, but I feel like it is appropriate to discuss it this time around honestly. Following the outcome of Son of Ogre (Baki part 3), ... the main cast you know, and love are all bored out of their minds. No fight could ever compare to THAT fight, so they seek new ways to entertain themselves. Tokugawa hatches a crazy plan to revive/clone someone based off a piece of their skeletal system. That someone being Miyamoto Musashi. Whether you know who he is, is irrelevant to enjoying the story. He is basically a big deal and that is all you need to know. Expect zany antics from a man born centuries ago instantly thrown into modern day Japan. I would say hilarity ensues, but not much is truly funny as the story goes on. What makes the story so bad that I had to give it a 3 out of 10? It isn’t the setup or beginning, considering the world of Baki it makes enough sense that you roll with it. The issue is the middle and ending. The middle is full of fights with outcomes you are already aware of and the ending just blue balls you for a lack of a better term. It feels like everybody got robbed in terms of the story department as time went on, with all our time being wasted, which is something I absolutely hate in manga. I am both glad that I didn’t read this on a week by week basis as it was released like some people but at the same time, I am also frustrated that something with such a solid start could turn into something so well below average.

Art 10/10: This is peak Itagaki art. I don't think his art can get any better than this, it fixes the flaws and work arounds that I had issues within Part 2 and Part 3, making everything essentially feel and flow like a good action manga should. Characters look disgustingly muscular and that is a good thing! Everybody from the previous parts are highly recognizable despite the shift in how he presents them. Fights are easy to follow, and the two-page spreads have reached an outstanding level of detail to come out of this series. Everything looks ridiculous and it just adds more intensity to the already beloved series.

Character 5/10: Characters? What characters? Baki-dou is essentially character assassination the manga. Most, if not all the returning cast are heavily neutered in terms of personality. The funny quips or interesting quirks you remember from the previous series? Pretty much all gone. Everybody has tunnel vision and that is to fight Musashi, even if they know they can't win they still want to do it and sometimes under the dumbest conditions (you will see what I mean). They make the dumbest decisions for the dumbest reasons and they obviously end up getting embarrassed for it. The embarrassment was so strong at one point, I actually felt embarrassed for one of my favorite characters in the series getting beaten in such a stupid way. Gone is fighting for honor or respect or upholding some sort of code, we just want to see Musashi fight and show off his skills! Oh, he uses swords? No problem we will just lift the ban on using weapons in a strictly martial arts-based fighting arena, nothing could go wrong! I will admit that though there are some surprising developments with one character in particular, a man achieving an almost godlike status despite having the worst track record in the series. I won't say who but boy is it silly and not in a good way. Musashi is slightly interesting, only slightly though. He can be boiled down to pretty much a singular word and it isn't positive. He has swords, he knows how to use them, and he wants to use them because you didn’t get between a man and his swords. Get used to him being the main focus and pretty much only him.

Enjoyment 5/10: Believe it or not, this manga is actually still decently enjoyable but for all the wrong reasons.Samurai stuff is typically pretty enjoyable in anime or manga, but here it just seems to be as lackluster as everything else. Going from Volume 1 to about to about Volume 8, it held a solid 9 in my book. Following major events, and I do mean major, it devolves to about a 7.5. Still decent but after that one decision? It becomes a bit difficult to sit through. It makes it to about Volume 10 before things start taking a weird and not enjoyable turn. A good fight gets interrupted and you are just left dumbfounded by the sudden involvement of one character. Despite being terrible at martial arts he is apparently able to match the swordsmanship of a master level Samurai. Insane. I know but roll with it and keep believing it because the author isn’t joking. It is right around here where I sort of just mentally checked out of the series and kind of stopped caring about what I was reading, which is no easy feat mind you. After the fight between revived clone and sudden weapons expert, you get more or less just throwaway chapters that don’t really add anything of note except for maybe an exchange between Hanayama and one of his goons which ends up being pretty hilarious. Though the biggest thing that bugged me was the violence in Baki-Dou. Anybody who knows even the slightest bit about Baki is that it is a series with crazy violence. I would say the violence gets toned down with each series but that isn’t my point. There are these inclusions of “what it would feel like to be cut by Musashi” panels, which do exactly what I just described. They are extremely explicit, and it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. The problem lies in the possibility of such actions and then those actions not being carried out. A bit hard to follow I know, but Itagaki shows an explicit scene of violence, showing he can draw such a scene and intense violence is allowed in the publication, but that same level of violence is never actually seen in actual fights or conflicts between characters where it would actually matter. It feels like wasted panels and leaves the reader baffled as to why you would include such violence but never actually implement it in a meaningful way. Still, there is at least one good fight in it so if you want to see that then maybe it is worth your time.

Overall 4/10: I actually had this at a 5 when I first finished it, but after some careful consideration I thought it deserved lower. It just left such a bad taste in my mouth that I can’t help but really give it such a score. I wouldn’t say it is the worst manga I have ever read, and I still think Baki as a whole is a pretty fun series, but this is just such a mind numbingly bad part to an otherwise enjoyable series. I would say avoid it, but even then you might just read it to see if I was overexaggerating or not.

If you love just watching Baki be Baki minus the Father-Complex then you'll like this. It's divulged into a fight-fest where Baki is just fighting whoever to quell the boredom and if you can get down with that then you'll enjoy this ride.

Do not look for character development from Baki or any of the famed cased outside of a few new injuries of a slightly different outlook on their life.

It's Baki, look at the beautiful art, the muscles and everything else it has to offer.

At this point the main climax has happened, Baki has already fought Ogre and is now growing up into the ... stoic Baki-boy we've all known he was going to be.

After the Masterpiece that was Hanma Baki, I decided to take a break from the series. This was mainly because aside from a certain subplot, Hanma Baki was really a perfect conclusion. I knew Baki-Dou would be fighting an uphill battle trying to justify a continuation.

Baki-Dou actually acknowledges this directly, as all of the characters are bored out of their minds despite doing some incredible training. Compared to that battle between Baki and Yujiro, the insanity of earlier parts of Baki has become dull.

So what's a better way to drum up interest than to clone Miyamoto Musashi with the help of scientists and Tokugawa's sister? ... Characteristically insane of the Baki series, but I think there were some issues. This Musashi storyline makes up the entirety of Baki-Dou (198 Chapters) and is really directionless. Most of the story is just Musashi fighting the extensive backlog of Baki characters. He loses against Yujiro and... Motobe. Yes, Motobe. I think having Motobe in the spotlight is interesting because Motobe, just like Musashi, uses weapons. However, Motobe's made a bit too overpowered here, considering he was a low ranker of the Maximum Tournament. He talks about how he's gonna protect the likes of Baki, Yujro, and Pickle. And somehow, he wins. But Musashi wasn't being serious or something so the story continues.

The conclusion is a fight against Baki and Musashi where Tokugawa's sister sucks Musashi's soul out of him, effectively killing him. Musashi is then put on ice indefinitely. For such a long saga, this was a bit anticlimactic. Nothing felt gained in this arc and it wasn't particularly fun either. I don't think one particular thing ruined this arc. It was a combination of its length, lack of rising tension, unimportance to the overall series, and other issues. There was one thing that I haven't talked about yet though: Retsu.

The subplot with Retsu was the only thing that wasn't really resolved in Hanma Baki. It seems others weren't huge on it, but I was excited to see the battle between Retsu and Usain Bolt. The thing is, the battle was mostly offscreen. After becoming the champion of the world, Retsu just quits. That's a bit anti-climactic. Then he goes to fight Musashi and DIES. Yes, the first major death since Emi. You'd think this would leave a massive impact, but it felt less resonant than Retsu losing his leg in the Pickle arc. Aside from removing a character, this death means nothing in the story.

Even the art wasn't quite as good as in Hanma Baki. Although I'd say the posing is stronger, it lacks a lot of the toning and volume that made it incredible. There's also a weird paneling choice that's used often where the same drawing will be repeated multiple times with no changes. Sometimes it seems to be used for comedic intent, but often it seems to be used for no reason. I also have to shout out Musashi's design. It's an incredible mix of bizarre and intimidating.

At the end of the day, I somewhat enjoyed Baki-Dou, but it has a lot of issues I can't overlook. It has many of the issues in the Inmates Arc, but it also has only one character and very little tension or commentary on fighting. Many Baki fans will enjoy it, but I wasn't impressed.

Baki-dou can be seen as something of an epilogue to the events preceding Hanma Baki, which more or less concludes the story of Baki and many other characters in a dramatically satisfying way. As a result, Baki-dou is left with answering the question of "what now?" And the answer is a perhaps expected level of absurdity involving light science fiction elements to bring fourth even more stronger opponents for the main cast to face-off against. The power creep is very apparent and this would seem like a 'jump the shark' moment for the series, but that would be discounting the many other points where Baki ... has reached into the absurd - although this time it is more pronounced.

By no means is this manga bad. I don't think it is absolutely necessary reading for a Baki fan, but those who do will most certainly have a fun time. You get to see old fan favorites interact with some legitimately sad send-offs and triumphant battles. I will say, this iteration of Baki is by far the most bloody and gore-y as weapons become a prominent piece in many of the fights taking place. I would recommend this to any fan of combat sports manga and Baki fans wanting more of the same.

Baki-dou is an integral installment within the expansive Baki series crafted by Itagaki. It is advisable to commence your journey from the inception of the original series. Positioned as the 4th or 5th segment of the Baki saga, depending on classification, Baki-dou stands as a narrative that can be comprehended independently, devoid of prior acquaintance with its predecessors.

Baki-dou unfolds as a captivating kung-fu martial art battle series, bearing resemblance to the acclaimed Kengan Ashura. The portrayal of characters within this series is notably distinct, with fighting maneuvers meticulously depicted. Across its span of 22 volumes, Baki-dou successfully sustained my engagement, holding my attention steadfastly. Admirers ... of Kengan Ashura and Fist of the North Star are poised to find immense satisfaction within the pages of this enthralling saga.

Once again Baki Delivers with a strong, and very cool entry.

Although I would agree that after Reading Baki: Son of ogre, this part of the series can be a bit far-fetched and/or slow, I still believe it delivers one of Baki's principles of never stop answering the most ridiculous fighting what-ifs in the coolest way possible.

In this entrance, a central part of the story is the revival of a legendary japanese samurai, and camparing him to modern day martial artists and swordsmen. So if you are into that, you will love it as much as any of the other parts of the manga.