I have fond memories of my childhood tuning into Toonami to catch the then-newest episodes of Dragon Ball Z, as the muscle-bound Saiyan (and occasional human and Namekian) characters engaged in exaggerated fisticuffs with the equally ripped likes of Frieza, Cell, Buu, and so on. As my tastes in anime expanded in the years since, I learned to appreciate fights of the less beefy nature, or even stories with no physical fights at all. But when I heard about Baki, I thought about a possible, alternative David from a different timeline where I only looked for more fighting muscle guy stories that only embraced the sheer vigor of two burly, sweaty, vascular men with 2% body fat constantly crashing into each other. Maybe in that timeline, I find the energy to actually exercise on a regular basis. But my point is that this show, Baki, and its current iteration Baki Hanma, is very much a FIGHT show first and foremost. If you are not into the punchy punchy, or sometimes bitey bitey in this case, you need to get off the bus now. And if you ARE, things are gonna get pretty intense.Aside from seeing random clips here and there or glimpses of pages online, I’ve only seen the previous season of Baki Hanma, and that was only to get ready for this review. There are like fifty-something episodes of “Baki”, series before this that may have been rebooted at some point, and I just don’t have time for that. THANKFULLY, it was pretty easy to get what this show is about just from watching Baki Hanma: Baki is a skilled teenage fighter, he wants to beat his even stronger bad Yuujiro, someone who is apparently so strong that he is under constant surveillance and has to sign a treaty every time America gets a new President. In the previous season, Baki’s efforts to grow stronger involved shadowboxing an imaginary giant praying mantis, taking President George W Bush in order to get thrown in prison, and then saw Che Guevara get beat up by an even muscleier guy before beating THAT guy and going home. And at the end of that season, some unrelated scientists unearthed a fully preserved caveman from the cretaceous period, which leads us to now.Said caveman, who is named Pickle because of how he was preserved in salt, proves to be an actual MONSTER of a fighter, becoming a fascination of the observing scientists as well as the most skilled fighters on Earth. As the arc goes on, several martial arts specialists take Pickle on in intense combat, each finding out soon that they bite off more than they could chew, as well as getting something literally chewed off by Pickle in his strange caveman code of honor, all until Baki enters the ring. In fact, if there’s something I think is lacking in this and the previous season, it’s the focus on Baki himself. I know what his main goal is, and we definitely get plenty of scenes about him contemplating fighting someone as savage a fighter as Pickle, but it’s the other fighters involved, including Pickle himself as he adapts to the modern world, that get the T-rex’s share of character development as they all push themselves beyond their limits to fight the caveman…and then Baki steals the show at the end after they’ve all warmed the guy up. This is not unlike instances in Dragon Ball where Goku would be sidelined for some reason and the other main cast would be getting the interesting character bits, but I’m not so sure I want that replicated here, especially in 2006-2008 when the manga chapters for this were first published.Still, let it not be said I was not entertained by Baki Hanma and the Nibbling Neanderthal. The fights are most definitely made to feel uniquely brutal and gripping, even if they can sometimes lean into straining credulity for what is supposed to be about relatively normal fighters with no special abilities. In terms of a main theme or message, it seems to be about showing…how modern man has lost some fighting ability from Pickle’s time, but has gained much in how they’ve made so many new forms of fighting. It’s actually kind of unclear and I was honestly a bit distracted by the fights themselves and seeing how they were fighting a friggin caveman. This arc is pretty solid all the way around, and aside from a bit of continuity lockout and a few unnecessary story choices I won’t get into, it’s pretty dang good shonen. And in just a few weeks, we’ll see the second part of this season, the much anticipated final battle between father and son, so see you when we get our hands on that!
