Review of Baki the Grappler

There are a lot of things to consider when grading this anime as it has some strong points but a lot of flaws, so let's get started. The story is about a 13 years old boy named Baki who wants to get as stronger as he can be for one purpose: to defeat his father. The story is at weak as it sounds as there's nothing else to support it. In theory there's another reason for this as well, as Baki wants to get stronger to be admired by his mother to finally be loved by her (she loves strong people.......). There's nothing else to sayabout the story as that is all there is to it.

The art is not that bad (given that this is from 2001) and shows what needs to be shown. The details of the body of each fighter are spectacular as it show muscles that I didn't even know they were there. The background is somewhat repetitive as you get to see either the same place of the city or a jungle.

The music falls into what I like to call the almost-annoying-yet-not-so-much category. Every tone brought me to an 80's movie due to the unfitting-ness of it with the anime. There are about 3 types of music and they get abused often enough to really question their selection.

Character development.......an enormous flaw.
There are a lot of characters in this anime due to the fact that Baki has to fight to become stronger. You do get to see some difference between them, however they all seem to be based from a generic character. Almost all of the characters that appear get none to little background to support them nor a motivation for their actions. You get to wonder who the hell is each one as you only know their name before fighting. The second half of the show is worse as a supposed "girlfriend" of Baki comes out of nowhere and all you get to know about her is her name. Even the background of Baki's father and mother is left untouched (except for an episode that "tries" to explain something about them). They could have done a better job if at least with the main characters.

After all this flaws why the hell did I enjoyed the anime? Well, if there's a strong point with this anime it should be the fights. They are well done and show the different kinds of martial arts from the world, so you get to see some action that is worth the multiples mistakes done with this anime.

A warning though; if you're going to see this anime with fansubs (not DVD subs, those may be right) you'd better know japanese, because the available versions of it have such an awful translation that you barely know what's happening (goes from "unfinished sentences" to "things said that are not translated" to "bad translation" to "things that are never said but put in the transation").