Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 26 “The Centennial Tournament”

Well…we made it. After five weeks, we’ve come to the end of our journey with Baki Hanma who was more some guy that we happened to drive by and wave to rather than an active participant on our trek.

As much as it’s seems as if I’ve been hate-watching this for the past couple of weeks, things weren’t all bad. The first half of the series was awesome and exciting, but just seemed to completely lose its way and become oatmeal. Total mush with nothing of substance.

I’m really not expecting a lot out of this finale. Which sucks because I’d like to see this go out with a bang, but I just don’t believe that to even be an option at this point in the series.

When we left off, Baki was mortally wounded, but was being healed by noted shaman Andre Stallone (not his real name, but may as well be) when Kaioh Retsu comes back from the dead after digging himself out of the earthquake crater to become Baki’s new guardian and…I dunno…what do you do with kids? Take them to the zoo? Sure. Retsu’s going to take this dying teenager and his girlfriend to the fucking zoo.

Oh, and did I mention the Chinese are here in a goddamn helicopter? Because that’s a thing. Let’s find out what any of this has to do with Muhammad Ali.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 25 “God and the Devil”

Welcome to the penultimate Baki episode recap! Five weeks is a long time to stay consistent and I give you all a lot of credit for coming back each day to keep up with the happenings in Tokyo.

For half of that time, this show has been a jumbled mess with no real direction or apparent endgame and that certainly continued in yesterday’s episode where it was revealed that there’s some kind of history between Yujiro Hanma and – I still can’t believe this is a thing – Muhammad Ali.

Yep. THAT Muhammad Ali.

They can’t possibly have the rights to use the character of Muhammad Ali, can they? I mean, it’s on Netflix; someone must have noticed. But…really?

Look: there’s two episodes left. I shouldn’t let this drive me crazy, but here we are. Going crazy. I just…ya know what? I’m not going to do this. I’m just going to hit play and see where this takes me. You do the same.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 24 “Defeat”

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.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 23 “The Real Attack”

It’s time for your Wednesday cartoon watchalong and we keep rolling with Netflix’s Baki. Just four episode remain and honestly, this has become a hate watch for me. Part 1 was fine. It was something that was new to me with intense action sequences and a pretty easy to follow story: a bunch of guys are brought to Tokyo and are competing in a no rules, no holds barred, anything or anywhere goes fight to be the best in the world.

Since getting to Part 2 (Episode 14), everything has gone out the window and it’s become just a bunch of bullshit thrown on screen to take up time and go nowhere. I don’t even know where some of these grudges causing new fights are coming from as characters are just thrown together and then given full episodes (or longer!) to fight or tussle, but not advance any part of the story whatsoever.

Each character pairing at this point feels like some kind of independent happening that has no consequence for anything else occurring within this universe anymore. It’s rough. But at least it’s almost over. That’s all I have to motivate me to continue this: it’s almost over. Maybe you think I’m nuts and that this show is legit. Please hit me up and tell me why. Not even being sarcastic. I want to know what you like about this show. Open my eyes to something I’m not seeing. For now, it’s Episode 23 on a Hump Day watch.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 22 “Clash of the Alphas”

Welcome back to another cartoon recap! We’re getting toward the end of our run with Netflix’s Baki, but as the Macho Man would say,

This has become a strain to get through, but we’ve come way too far to turn back now. The only thing we can hope for is for things to pick up and begin to make some semblance of sense before we close out and move along to the next show.

Even the fight scenes have become less impressive as we’ve gotten further into things here. I don’t know if that’s because they blew their wad early into the series or if they’re just less striking purposely, but when the story was slow, you could usually hang your hat on a badass action sequence and that has gone away for the most part.

Maybe that’s also because we’re just recycling fighters to an extent and are already familiar with their specialties and go-to maneuvers, but regardless, they just don’t have the same impact.

So we check another box on the road to completion today. Being an adult means finishing the tasks in front of you and watching cartoons is no different. With that, we move to a fresh episode of Baki.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 21 “Punishment”

Welcome to our final week of Baki recaps! We’ve made it to the homestretch so let’s get right to business and close this out.

Since getting to Part 2, this show has gone completely off the rails, but now that Baki has punched his V-Card he’s ready to become the fighter we’ve all heard he could be. People get motivation from all sorts of things and sex is one thing that is tried and true in society so good for Baki.

When we left off, Baki was taking on the dual forces of Yanagi and Sikorsky and they quickly realized that he was now too strong for either of them to take on single-handedly so they were going to have to form their version of Voltron if they had any chance at defeating the young fighter. It’ll still be a tough nut to crack because sex has leveled up Baki to serious levels, but these bad guys always have some tricks up their sleeves when they are in fact wearing sleeves.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 20 “Saga”

Welcome back to another cartoon recap as we close out our fourth week of Baki on Netflix! As I’ve said, this has become a tough watch since moving into Part 2, but with just a week of episodes left to cover there’s no turning back now.

To recap, Doyle has blown up the Shinshinkai Dojo which killed nobody, but somehow, Biscuit Oliver was killed by a meteor and Retsu was killed when he fell into a crack in the ground during an earthquake that apparently claimed no other lives nor has left any damage anywhere else in Tokyo.

I’ve said it from the beginning, but this show is really the anti-tourism advertisement for Tokyo. High-powered monsters fighting in the streets and now the addition of meteors and contained earthquakes? FOH, bro. No thanks.

Counting today’s, we have seven episodes remaining and it’s amazing how my tone has shifted for this show. Where as I was once excited to get to the next episode and see what would happen next, I’m no dreading it and just pushing myself to get to the end since we’re close enough to see the finish line. Yikes.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a solid half-hour here to close out the week, but once again, not getting my hopes up.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 19 “Admission of Defeat”

Another day, another episode recap on your favorite blog! We’re closing our fourth week of Baki and I’m anxiously awaiting the conclusion. This show has become a tornado of mish-mash and I don’t even think the writers knew what was happening from episode to episode.

Remember Biscuit Oliver? He got a big push for a few episodes and then got completely taken off TV. Baki? It’s his fucking show and he’s like the least important person in the whole damn thing! I just don’t understand anything. Maybe I’m not supposed to.

Is this what anime is like? I’ve said that I’ve never really been into anime so maybe it’s great to the people who actually like it. I was really digging the first half of this series, but it’s just taken a turn and made it hard for me to stay invested it.

We’re dealing with the fallout of Doyle having blown up Shinshinkai so maybe that will get fun. You know Doppo Orochi ain’t gonna take this lightly so maybe that fight will be awesome. Let’s find out.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI E. 18 “Thanks”

Welcome back to another episode recap as we wind down all the available episodes of Netflix’s Baki. Season 1, Part 2 has been a major disappointment thus far and, if I’m being honest, I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon.

The story has just been wildly all over and it’s been very difficult to become invested in any kind of arc or character. Maybe that’s too critical for what’s just supposed to be a beat ’em up action show, but why would I care about the fight when I don’t care about the people fighting?

In addition, the show seemed to blow it’s wad on all the good action in Part 1 so while, yes, this is still nuts in most situations, it doesn’t compare to the stuff they’ve already shown us. Maybe things will get better. Who knows? Maybe all these characters that the show has forgotten have huge resurgences. I’ve lost my confidence in this. Let’s see if it can get it back.

Daily Cartoon: BAKI Ep. 17 “Dad!!”

Welcome back, friends. It’s another Baki recap here and things are slowly but surely swirling down the toilet. Things have gone completely off the rails and with only ten episodes to go, I honestly don’t have all that much faith that they’ll get it back on track before then.

When we left yesterday, Hanayama was trying to convince Baki to come get beautiful girls and leave “her” behind. “Her” meaning Kozue who was none too happy that Hanayama didn’t even respect her enough to say her name.

Doyle was also greeted by Kosho Shinogi who is a friend of Katsumi Orochi known for “cord-cutting” technique which means he can slice through things with karate chops. Kosho is desperate to be in this tournament and insulted he wasn’t asked earlier. Why wasn’t he asked earlier? Because the last time he was in one, he got his shit pushed in by Baki.

I mean…sounds like enough of a reason for his invite to get lost in the mail.

We’re on the countdown now. Ten episodes to go so let’s get with this and do that work.