Welcome back to another Baki episode recap! Just a few days remain before we can put this show to rest and move on to something that hopefully remembers what it’s actually about.
In yesterday’s episode, we got more new bad guy vs. old bad guy stuff with one of the newbies cutting off one of the oldie’s hands. His dangerous hand. His poisonous hand. The hand that rocks the cradle. Hands across America. Hands up, baby, hands up, give me your heart, gimme, gimme your heart.
Sorry, got lost for a second
Yanagi is now worthless since he had his hand cut clean off by the newly-arriving Izuo Motobe. Whatever, man. These writers are going to do whatever they’re going to do and they don’t care about what some guy with a cartoon blog thinks about it.
Either way, it seems like curtains for Yanagi as Yujiro Hanma is on the scene and is encouraging Yanagi to pack it up, pack it in.
As with all episodes, we shall pick up where yesterday’s left off. Let’s go.
Season 1, Part 2, Episode 24: Defeat
Blood is pouring from the open wound where Yanagi’s hand used to be, yet he tells Yujiro that it’s not up to Yujiro to decide the fight. Yujiro laughs and is like, “Fuckin A, boy, that’s true, I ain’t had shit to do with this.”
Yujiro tells Motobe to make up his fucking mind, but then Goki Shibukawa shows up and is all, “why are you fuckbois making this old man get out of bed so late?” Yujiro gets it and finally just kills Yanagi so they can all have a glass of milk and call it an evening.
I…ah fuck it, who cares.
Out in a cave that looks to be in the middle of the ocean and not anywhere near the docks where we last saw him, Hector Doyle is coming to grips with being blinded when he’s interrupted by the presence of Biscuit Oliver who has miraculously resurrected from being hit by a fucking meteor. Fuck it, who cares?
Oliver knocks Doyle the fuck out and captures him which means that all five of our escaped death row inmates have now tasted defeat. In what is the most anticlimactic way possible, the five characters this show used as the backbone of building up villains have now all been taken out and not a single one was because of Baki.
Speaking of Baki, while all this chicanery is going on he’s at home with Kozue having soup. Must be nice. But Baki doesn’t want seconds of soup and he’s being a mopey fuck so Kozue makes him take off his shirt and it appears that Baki has lost a lot of weight and given up because…look, I’m not going to pretend I have any fucking clue what’s going on right now. The dude went from not wanting seconds of soup to it being a miracle he’s still alive right now.
I. Don’t. Know.
Kozue runs out of the hospital crying and sits on a bench to be alone when some weird guy comes along and gives her an old M.U.S.C.L.E. figure as a good luck charm. He’s definitely up to something, but honestly, I don’t care in the least.
OK, so it turns out Baki’s in the hospital because of the poison from Yanagi’s strikes that got into his bloodstream. He shrugged it off as nothing at the time, but it’s finally caught up with him. Modern medicine can be of no help. Baki, everybody…the absolutely worst and most useless title character in the history of anything.
Oh, there’s a new story going on where a guy named Dave – a championship pro fighter – meets up with the guy who just gave Kozue the MUSCLE toy for a sparring session. It’s…nothing I care about or anything that impacts the actual story.
We cut to a journalist pulling up to a mansion as he has a scheduled interview with a legendary fighter, a great idol: Muhammad Ali. Yes…THAT Muhammad Ali. Ali takes in a question from the writer, but answers with his own: “Have you heard of Yujiro Hanma?”
Back at the hospital, Baki is cutting out. Kozue is furious, but Baki is all, “I’m a loner, Kozue. A rebel.”
And cut somewhere else where Yujiro is standing with the guy who gave Kozue the toy and then beat up Dave the boxer. His name is…you guessed it…
Frank Stallone
Oh…I mean…Muhammad Ali, Jr. Because, of course it is.
Final Thoughts
There is so much WTF going on in this episode that I don’t even know where to begin.
OK, let’s start with the death row inmates. This show was introduced and built around the escape of Doyle, Dorian, Yanagi, Spec and Sikorsky. Dorian was a massive force over the course of multiple episodes where it seemed as if he was being built up as the major threat to Baki, but even that was misguided as Baki is apparently not even the major good guy, but just a bit player in this series.
Anyway, Dorian had a good run before Retsu finally defeated him and left him in a childlike mental state. Spec gave us some of the better fight scenes in the entire series before Hanayama made him taste defeat.
I’ll even go as far to say that Yanagi’s demise was fine, just nothing special. But Sikorsky and Doyle? Oof. What a disappointing way to close out both of those characters. Sikorsky, especially, by losing to Gaia in the arena in such a terrible fashion where he begged relentlessly which was completely out of character for someone who kept coming back for more against literally everybody.
Next: Biscuit Oliver comes back from the dead to apprehend Doyle in a cave in the middle of nowhere that looks like some place Voldemort would have hidden a Horcrux.
I was clearly told that Oliver was dead after being hit by a stray meteor that didn’t harm anything else in all of Tokyo, but here he is just showing up like it ain’t no thang and finishing out his mission as the last of the five has been rounded up. He can go back to his prison palace in Arizona now unless another fucking meteor knocks his plane out of the sky on his way home.
I guess this is setting up for some kind of final confrontation between Yujiro, Jack and Baki Hanma, but where the hell does Muhammad Ali come in?
Like THE Muhammad Ali. That’s fucking wild. Why in the bluest of fucks is he here? And Muhammad Ali, Jr? He probably wants a shot at Baki too. Dude, I have no fucking idea what is going on in this show and yet, this episode was pretty damn interesting in a train-wreck way.
Don’t get me wrong: NONE of it made any sense, but it was so fucking wild and off the wall that I couldn’t wait to see where this was heading.
We have just two more episodes to go so who knows what’s next? I’ve been trying to figure out possible storylines since the beginning and I’ve been so completely way off that there’s literally no sense in even trying anymore. It’s time to just sit back and accept the next 60 minutes for whatever they choose to give me and deal with the ensuing headache afterward.
Until next time.
Joe
Twitter: @MaxSexPow
Email: ShoesOnSports@gmail.com
Car JoeMeZ 