My favourite underrated anime is most definitely Baki. I’m not entirely sure how underrated this anime actually is, but seeing as how I rarely see anybody talking about it in this and other anime Spaces I’m going to assume it’s pretty underrated.
So why do I like Baki so much? For a few different reasons actually, but I’m going to choose 3.
- Fights
Now, there are other anime that have similar types of fights, but since we’re focusing on Baki, it’s honestly such a breath of fresh air to have a combat anime where there are no powers involved (For the most part). Just old school, gore beat downs. As a fan of the UFC, it’s great to see something similar in anime form. Some may find it to be rather one-dimensional, and I respect their opinion, but I personally love to see something like this. Pure physical strength rather than abilities and energy based attacks is always refreshing.
2. Stylistics
The tournaments that take place in Baki are so fun to watch, and one of the main reasons for that is that everybody has their own style of fighting. Retsu Kaioh is a Chinese Kenpo practitioner, Orochi Doppo uses Shinshinkai Karate, Baki himself is a grappler etc. They say styles make match-ups, and this is most definitely true in Baki. Seeing how different characters use their own fight techniques against each other is so interesting to see, especially since I’m a fan of UFC like I said earlier.
3. This Guy
If you have no idea who this is, his name is Yujiro Hanma and he is probably the scariest anime martial artist I have ever seen. I mean seriously, if this guy existed in real life we’d probably all be dead by now. To say he is a complete badass is a severe understatement. Literally the whole world of Baki knows his name. He was fighting the US military by himself as a teenager…. And he was winning. They even had a character that was based on Mohammad Ali, and he was scared as hell of Yujiro. He’s a heartless, cold-blooded maniac whose only goal in life is to cause extreme physical pain to those who seem strong. This man literally snapped his wife’s spine and killed her right in front of his own son. He’s a psychopath. Baki’s main goal is to grow strong enough to one day defeat his father, but right now he’s a long way off that. This guy is so ripped he has a 6–pack growing from his back…. His freaking BACK.
Let me make a scenario with this:
Goku: So you’re Baki? I’ve heard a lot about you, people say you’re a strong fighter.
Baki: Sure I am, what about it?
Goku: I love a good challenge, I wanna see what you’ve got. I can tell you’re holding back, so let’s skip the warm-up.
Baki is confused by this challenge, but is somewhat amused by it, especially due to the odd appearance of the unintimidating man before him.
Before Baki could speak, however, the atmosphere shifted, as a bright glow surrounded the fighter, an intense pressure overwhelming Baki. He didn’t know what it was, but this was not normal. A moment before, it felt like he was having a conversation with any regular man. Now, it felt like he stood before a god.
Goku moved towards his opponent, giving him an extremely light flick on the head, expecting it to not deal any damage, but to get the boy to retaliate, as it seemed that it wouldn’t be easy to get a fight out of him.
Unfortunately, Goku did not expect to then see a wall of red. Blood, organs, and brain matter, with a small mixture of white from the bones, skyrocketing through the air. The entire upper half of his body was gone, and a crimson mist soon inhabited the air.
“Oops, guess I should go get the Dragon Balls.”
Good matchup, but I would have to give it to Deku 7.5/10
I believe they both have lightning level speed and reaction speed, although if Baki uses his cockroach tackle, people perceive it as teleportation.
Striking strength, they can both dish out a lot power in their blows, but Deku takes this. Mostly due to this:
That is quite a punch. He did this at 100%. When he uses 5% - 45% He’s usually capable of making huge dents or destroying metal/stone walls and pillars.
Durability, I think they are quite similar in this, but I would give Baki the slight edge. He can take a LOT of punishment. If he gets hit hard enough he does take damage, but he keeps pushing himself and fights through the pain. While Deku does the same, Baki has just been through a lot more in my opinion.
So, if Deku goes up against Baki using 5%-45% I would say they are evenly matched. But if it is 100% Deku I would give the win to him. I feel that his blows are going to be quite devastating to Baki. Of course Baki can dodge and counter him with some kind of hold (most likely a choke hold) that would leave Deku out of commission. Also, to back this up, remember that fight between Baki and Pickle? Baki was owning that fight for most of it, until he decided he wanted to just go blow for blow with Pickle, who is much physically stronger than Baki and this is the result:
(Bad image, sorry)
Baki was clearly outmatched. So if Deku goes 100%, I would say it’s a pretty sure win for Deku.
Baki. He has been training intensely from the age of 3 years old. At age 13 Baki had a twelve hour long warm-up. Now Deku trained hard, but a twelve hour session just to get him ready for his real workout is not something Deku could have done. Also at that time, Baki was throwing himself off cliffs, going against trained soldiers for training, fighting a massive ape, and was able to carry a Bench press set along with other supplies from Tokyo to Gifu, a distance of 234 miles (377.1 km), and then from the base to the top of the Hida mountain range, an elevation of 10,470 ft (3,190 m) . Again, among his “regular” camping supplies which are stated to be at least 5 kilos (11 lbs), Baki was carrying a bench press set. A bench set, as in a bench, a 25 lb or 45 lb bar, two 45 lb weights, two 35 lb weights and two 25 lb weights, totalling 235 lbs to 255 lbs or 106.594 kg to 115.666 kg (which he then proceeded to take out and use after carrying it up the mountain) not to mention all of his other supplies. Again this was at thirteen years of age. Whereas Deku, who started his training around 13–14 years old, was struggling to even push a tire, and nearly died trying to Bench Press two or possibly four (the artstyle makes it a tad unclear) approx 25 lb or 11.33 kg plates. And since then, Baki has only gotten stronger and has been training way harder, to the point that at 18, he runs about 25 miles daily as a warm up, before engaging in strength training that he makes as intense as possible so that he is more prepared to endure physical pain in his fights, and that’s not even taking into account his special training right before a fight, where he enters himself in single style tournaments (in this case Karate) where the strongest practitioners of those styles gather, just so that he can fight them in order to become a master as quickly as possible.
Who's stronger physically, Baki Hanma or Joseph Joestar?
Lets go
Ok, so Baki was able to apparently fight with Yujiro
and held his own pretty well
however he was still weaker than him. This is probably the best feat I could find with scaling, Yujiro is likely the strongest Baki character to date, so this was hella impressive.
He’s also beaten Biscuit Olivia
who regularly trains by weightlifting massive helicopters
Now on to Jojo
Joseph was able to completely stop Santanas rib blades that tried to crush him with a strength of 825kg/cm2 in place with his strength.
which equates to 11734.3 PSI or about 12000 tons of pressure if you do the math.
Pre training Josephs punches also had more force than Dynamite
This falls in line with him able to keep up and match Pillarmen, who are all strong as hell, as Araki stated they were several times stronger than any Vampire as Vampires were to humans, on the level of literals gods.
The weakest of them was even stated to be stronger than Dio
In the EOH game Jonathon states they are above any Zombie or Vampire
To give a better grasp even fodder zombies and Vampires in Jojo are retatrdedly strong able to make building like craters when weak with no blood
Strong Zombies can shatter large Cliffsides
other Zombies like Jack the Ripper collapses large tunnels by simply throwing a carriage at high speeds
Zombies are below Vampires, who are again exceedingly below Pillarmen, who Joseph has matched in striking.
Joseph durability is also crazy, like when he got hit and launched on the giant boulder that took him and Ultimate Kars all the way to orbit.
Which would absolutely mystify a regular person and may be the greatest durability feat in Jojo even including stands.
So it depends on the way you look at it, if you allow weird Baki outliers like Yujiro apparently stopping an earthquake even though nothing like that is ever replicated, then Baki is probably stronger, however if you stick to consistency then it’s gotta be Joseph since he has better quantifiable feats.
Hope this helps.
Let me talk about by two bois Kaoru and Baki. I don’t know if many people realize just how unbelievably strong Kaoru is. Spoilers if you haven’t read Baki. Yes, non-manga reading plebians beware.
Kaoru could easily be in the top 5 fighters, excluding Yuchiro who might be as strong as Yujiro. This is a bold claim to make and I’m sure you want to know why I think this. Let’s talk about Kaoru.
A common misconception is that Kaoru is just naturally strong and doesn’t train. Not true, yes Kaoru was born with insane potential, but he constantly trains to grow stronger. Kaoru is one of the most powerful natural-born fights in the verse, relying only on his brute strength to win fights. I would argue that Kaoru is probably the only non-Hanma that could potentially rival Yujiro with time.
Let’s look at some of Hanayama’s fights. Hanayama is able to match Pickle with brute strength. Though he probably wouldn’t have won a fight, this is still impressive.
Hanayama is one of 5 people who pushed Musashi to use lethal force. To explain, most of the time Musashi holds back and doesn’t kill. Most of the Baki fighters never draw out Musashi’s power. The list of people who do this is Baki, Yujiro, Retsu, Pickle, and Hanayama. Baki states, that Hanayama had a 50/50 chance of beating Musashi.
Musashi is a character who was able to fight even with Yujiro for a short time and was even implied to be capable of killing Yujiro, though this is debatable. In either case, Kaoru is one of 5 characters who made Yujiro bleed. Baki, Kaku Kaioh, Musashi, Doppo and Hanayama. It’s possible I may have missed some but that is a short list nonetheless. Point is, Hanayama is a beast of a character.
Now, long story short…Baki wins.
Baki is just too strong for Kaoru, too fast, too durable, too skilled. Baki is one of few characters to tank a full power punch from Yujiro and actually live. And Baki didn’t just take one punch from Yujiro, at one point in the fight he fought Yujiro evenly. No one has ever pushed Yujiro as far as Baki. Hanayama is taken out with a couple of palm strikes from Yujiro. This just doesn’t match Baki at all. Baki has defeated Pickle and Musashi. Hanayama may be comparable to base Baki, but even then I’d still give the firm win to Baki.
