2/5

Thought this looked and sounded interesting but I just couldn't bring myself to pick it up while it was available to me.

Judging a manga (as they can go for 30, 40 volumes when they are popular; or if you are "One Piece", forever) by just its first volume is a difficult thing. Sometimes the story starts amazingly but afterwards it deflates. The other way around happens too. However, a good start is always going to help in making a person interested in the story.

And here is where I am a little bit on the fence about this first volume of "Baki", a manga that has had an anime adaptation that can be found on a very popular streaming site. Because I would read a second volume if I had it right by my desk right now, but at the same time I felt this first volume was not particularly original or compelling to give it more than 2 stars. Because what Itagaki does here is just introduce all the bad guys that are going to fight our 'hero' breaking out from different facilities in a totally over-the-top and risible but at the same time too easily way, which gives a sense of repetition. How many incredible fighters can come back from death, kill like 200 million guards and go to Japan for a fighting tournament? Yes, there is a limit. At the same time it is easy to read and engaging enough that, as I said, I would start the second volume of the series right away to see where the story was going, while worrying that it actually was going to fall into a repetition pattern with almost close to zero character development.

The drawing style fits the story, even if a little bit over-the-top too and with a couple of characters that were a little bit difficult to differentiate (maybe because their behaviour, movements, were exactly the same). It is kind of ugly, but what you would expect for this kind of manga (the deaths are little bit messy, though).

If you like fighting manga, you will probably enjoy this (and you are not queasy, by the way).

I loved it! I was pulled into the story right away and fell in love with the drawing. Can't wait to know the rest of this story! Anyway if you love stories about fighting, criminal fighters, blood, death, you will love this series. It's pretty violent so be aware of that before you dive into the book.

'Baki Vol. 1' with story and art by Kisuke Itagaki is a manga about a seemingly amateur fighter and a group of killers heading his way.

Baki shows up at school with bruises all over. Meanwhile, a series of death row convicts are making impossible prison breaks. They seem to all be unstoppable killers. All are heading to Tokyo and express the same reason: A taste of defeat.

It definitely feels like a good preface for a massive series of fights. We get a small taste at the end of the manga. The art is fun and the violence is brutal and cartoonlike.

I received a review copy of this manga from Akita Publishing Co., Ltd, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this manga.

I knew about Baki and especially the original series before this continuation. I've never read the series though, even when I love sports series. Perhaps the reason is that the spirit of the series is so 1980s, even though the original and this are from the 1990s. Oh, how was shounen different then... Anyways, Baki is about Baki Hanma, a guy, who's a master at fighting. Everyone is afraid of him. In this first volume all these criminal fighters from around the world escape their prisons in order to taste defeat aka they supposedly want to get beaten by Baki. That's about it with the plot and content. A lot of blood and sweat is spread and people die. So, basically the series is very violent and looks like Street Fighter.

The art looks crude and something that fits well with the theme and style of the series. Baki looks weird though and Itagaki perhaps isn't the best when trying to draw a normal face. The muscles and all look very threatening and the blood and gore looks good, if you can really say that. There's hardly any fighting yet, so that would be awesome to see. Not everyone's cup of tea surely and somehow I have the feeling that we will mostly just see fighting instead of a real plot.

Baki is the top martial artist after his victories in the arena under the Tokyo Dome. This new Baki series takes place after that. 5 dangerous convicts, from different nations, all escape their prisons, some after failed execution attempts. They all are coming to Tokyo for the same reason. They want to taste defeat. They all are missing the stimulus of being challenged. Each feel that the answer to their boredom is to challenge Baki.
Volume one is the introduction to each of the convicts as they begin the journeys to find the challenge they all crave.
I really enjoy this series.
Thank you to Akita Publishing Co and Netgalley

3 stars *may change

Itagaki's art style is so incredibly goofy... Like there's really no other word. It makes me laugh whenever I look at it for too long because of how insanely caricature-like it is while also making every character as ripped as possible. Anyway, I cannot believe it's taken this long for an official English printing when I swear this manga is older than me.

*Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of the English translation.

Baki is a sequel to Keisuke Itagaki's Baki The Grappler manga, which some of you may remember ran in the short-lived English manga magazine Raijin. While you don't really need to have read that, or seen its anime adaptation, whether you enjoyed either of those may give you a better idea of whether or not you're up for this series, which follows teen martial arts master Baki on his further adventures. Another good litmus test would be Fist of the North Star, because this feels fairly similar and features art that feels like a cross between that and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with its unrealistically musclebound men and impressively gross acts of physical violence. Seriously, if limbs bent the wrong way or brains spilling out of shredded skulls aren't your thing, this isn't likely to be the fighting series for you.

If you can stomach the violence, however, there's a good premise being established, with five vicious killers converging on Tokyo in the hopes of finally being defeated. No one's said it yet, but Baki's doubtless the guy they're aiming to fight. That makes the biggest downfall of this volume its status as a set-up book, especially if you aren't already invested in Baki as a character. There's a clear formula to the book as well: we see each dangerous man in his home country be prepared for either execution or to meet his lawyer before he breaks out in a spray of carnage and leaves a note saying he's headed for Japan to finally know defeat, rinse and repeat. Between chapters we cut to Baki and the man who runs the dojo having a conversation at Baki's school. As a storytelling method, it isn't terribly compelling.

It seems very likely that this is done because readers are assumed to already have an interest in Baki and seeing him defeat new and even more sinister opponents, and in terms of a sequel series, that's fine. The issue is that only the first forty-six chapters of the previous series were ever released in English, making Media Do's release of this one feel a little nonsensical.

Baki is an ultra-violent adventure series about a high school boy who has risen to the top of the ranks of ultimate fighters. But in this second arc of this series, Baki has a new challenge in front of him: a group of elite, extremely violent and skilled fighters haven broken out of maximum security prisons in N. America, UK, Russia and Japan, and they've got their sights on fighting and defeating him, or if not that, then to "taste defeat" for the first time.

Baki has been a cult favorite in certain circles of manga fans because it is so over-the-top intensely violent. Similar to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki in that it has the protagonist face an huge group of ultra-strong, ultra-violent enemies, Baki however lacks Jojo's sense of style, humor and heart that beats within Araki's wild and intense fighting scenes.

Baki is definitely a page-turner -- as I got to the end of Volume 1, I was eager to read volume 2 to see what this is all leading up to. But if you're on the queasy side as far as gore and flesh-mashing , bone-crunching fighting scenes, then Baki is probably not your thing.

As a side note, the typesetting in this book is terrible. The inter-chapter scenes where "synchronicity" is explained is white text on a textured black background, and it's very hard to read. Also, there's a dumb error, spelling noted psychologist Carl Jung as Carl "Yung" -- something a diligent editor or translator would have caught and avoided. This should be corrected immediately, as it diminishes the credibility of the rest of the translation.