Baki

Watch Baki if you find violence attractive and when you really enjoy being presented with something that doesn't make sense. Avoid this if you need good production values and need to think hard about the experience before you. You may end up liking Baki, but respecting his rationality is not something I see happen to any viewer. Baki can be intriguing as long as you choose to watch what's going on instead of thinking about what's going on. It was designed as an experience for you to enjoy.

The Raitai tournament arc is easily one of my favorite arcs in all of Baki, the level of detail and animation made me enjoy it much more than I enjoyed reading the manga, and when there was a good fight, the fight was always top level, this arc has some of the best action in the entire series, but what held it back were some disappointing fights.

I started watching this show because the plot summary that netflix gave made me interested. The idea of death row inmates all coming to fight one guy sounded really interesting (netflix made it sound like it wasn't a competition but they all just suddenly wanted to kill him because they heard about him and wanted to fight him and he had to fight all of them) the real plot is still interesting though, the death row inmates, a couple other people, and Baki all fight each other in a competition that doesn't have a set time or location so a fight can start at any moment meaning you have to always be on your toes.

So what's the problem? Well Baki isn't all that interesting of a character and we barely find anything out anything about him in the first episode because it spends most of the episode showing the inmates escaping. Obviously, we are mainly here for the fights but a show or movie needs a good plot before, during, and after the fight or else the fight and the character(s) in the fight(s) won't be as interesting. Just imagine how uninteresting the world tournament in dragon ball would be if we barely learned anything about Goku before the tournament and/or if the plot before, during, and after the tournament wasn't good either. Some people could make the argument that since the reason you are watching the show are for the fights and so I should focus on that instead of the plot, well the problem is the fights aren't even entertaining to watch. I don't mind pure martial arts based fights(I love shows like cobra kai and orginal dragon ball that was mostly martial arts at least at first).

I didn't even finish the show because I just stopped caring about it. Maybe I will finish it in the future but right now I just don't want to watch it because it's just not engaging or entertaining.

I'd rate it higher, but the season ending just feels extremely unprofessional, I might alter my rating once the second season is out, but regardless, it's a sloppy ending for an otherwise rather good series. I'd highly recommend waiting until March for the second season before watching this.

"Baki" had the potential to be a very good anime.

The story of a boy training to one day beat his own father could have been brought up really well.

Unfortunately, this potential was not used.

"Baki" somehow can't decide whether it wants to be a pure fighting anime or a deep anime.

Sometimes you have the feeling that you can't get out of the exaggerated fights and sometimes you have the feeling of falling asleep because nothing is happening.

The main character also just seems stupid and testerone controlled.

That's why I couldn't watch the anime to the end.

If you're looking for good fighting animes, I think you'd definitely be better off with "Kengan Ashura" or "Megalo Box.