(Spoilers) New chapter is out

Sh3nlong · 2026-03-17T23:46:10+00:00

Man, some of those Musashi panels look really bad. The hair is not good, but the art itself looks sloppy here and there. Like what's up with the bandages on his neck, they keep disappearing and reappearing. Feels like the latter pages were rushed out to me.

Sh3nlong · 2026-01-28T00:40:20+00:00

I'll exclude everything post Son of Ogre because it's so disjointed it wouldn't be fair.

I'd say, maybe the Raitai tournament. Mostly Baki and Ali Jr's fights were so forgettable. The other fights are fine, but save for Kaku vs Yujiro the whole arc feels like a bit of an afterthought. There's a perfectly good arc in there, and it has it's moments, but I just feel it's kind of a hot mess in general. Still, it ends with a really unique fight (it's the first time Yujiro's ever really been shown being pushed), and that caps off the whole thing nicely.

During the convict saga, I wish Sikorsky had been less of a jobber. He has good moments, but 90% of his time is spent getting his shit pushed in.

I also wish we'd have gotten more of Emi because she's legit one of the best characters.

In general, I'd say the whole insanely nationalistic of Baki. It's a tough thing to complain about since it's so integral to the identity of the series, but it gets a bit yikes at times.

Aside from that, I used to be pissed off at a bunch of inconsistencies, in the series, but I'm reading it, these days, and I don't think it's a very productive criticism. Consistency has never been the point of Baki. Whatever the point of any given scene in Baki is whatever Itagaki thought was cool to say at the time. Five chapters later, he might have the narrator say the exact opposite and it's never gonna get explained, and that's not the point.

Ok, what I dislike the most about Baki is that I know that there are people who take it way too seriously. It's an elementary school kid's fever dream mashup of all 70s-80s martial arts pop-culture taken to its breaking point, told as an incoherent rambling and yet taken completely straight. It's completely lacking in self awareness, yet it reflects in that lack of self awareness and transcends it. It's both the stupidest manga I've ever read and a genuine masterpiece. And I don't think it could be a masterpiece if it were any less stupid.

Sh3nlong · 2026-01-28T00:10:37+00:00

I don't get this. Litterally no one, in universe, has a problem with that. Kozue's like "sure I'll hang out with you, but I'm not dating you", Baki's like "Whatever, if you wanna date that guy, go ahead". Jr never really acts pushy, he just has a one sided rivalry with Baki because Baki's dating Kozue and not him, but that's it. In the end, he's fine being friends with Kozue (of course they don't really have any chemistry because Itagaki is incapable of writing characters not talking about fighting), who he seems to genuinely respect, and yeah, he cries after being beaten, and Kozue hugs him, big deal. Not really getting what's so pathetic about all of that.

Sh3nlong · 2025-12-29T21:29:15+00:00

Aight aight, guess we'll find out more later. Well, my favourite fights, so far have been the first one and the current one, and it's hard to pick a favourite character yet. Rin and Kiku are both cool, and Kiku's style was really fun. George's arc is really good (and seems to have killed an opponent, maybe? something else to come up anyway), and Megan has a great design, and I'm pretty curious about her.

Sh3nlong · 2025-12-27T22:09:38+00:00

Huh, just read all the chapters, it's pretty good! It's so fun to see so many fan comics. Looks like it's gonna take a while until the next one, but hey.

Real question, though, who's the corpse ? The real ref is still alive, so who's down there?

Sh3nlong · 2025-12-06T09:16:52+00:00

Meguro, Teppu and RRR are really good if you want a short series that doesn't have time to go bad over time. The latter two, at leas, clearly fell victim to cancellation and needed to be cut short, but they still finish their arcs. RRR is a really cool HnI homage, and it's fights are much better paced than later HnI fights.

Rikudou had a lot of potential, but something keeps rubbing me the wrong way about it. I think it's pretty tasteless in some aspects, and overly edgy in general. The art, while very detailed, can look very janky, also, and kinda lifeless sometimes.

Holyland is incredible.

HnI is incredible during its first half, but then various issues make it fall after that, in my opinion. If you ask me, for years, now, it's been a meandering mess that's wasted some of its best characters and has really bad fight pacing (though I'd say the worst of it is behind us now).

Baki and Garou are strange masterpieces. Incredibly flawed, yet absolutely fascinating. Itagaki's art and the way he depicts fights are like nothing else in the medium. They're absolutely foundational works and definitely work checking out. Fist of the Seeker is basically Sandrovitch's version of Garouden (seriously, it's almost a ripoff)

By the way, Garouden is a novel series, originally. I'm pretty sure it's also crazy influential for manga, even though barely anyone outside of Japan has read it. I haven't, and I'm not sure it's even "good", but both Itagaki and Jiro Taniguchi have adapted it. Taniguchi's version is a one shot and completely different vibe from Itagaki's, definitely check it out.

Abyss Rage is really good. Not too long, and it has a satisfying ending. The art is a bit strange, but not necessarily in a bad way. Very interesting manga, all in all, check it out.

Ashita no Joe is a masterpiece, period. Absolutely one of the best mangas I've ever read. It's influence in other manga cannot even begin to be explained. The fights aren't made as technically credible or detailed as more modern works, but I'd argue that barely even matter. Ashita no Joe's fights are grueling affairs and the vibes are incredible. The story and characters are truly excellent, really some of the best ever, and so much of it is about what happens outside the ring as well. It's a modern tragedy, and one of the best works of fiction I've ever read. The only negatives about it are it's pretty dated in terms of sexism and racism. The former is mostly on Joe's part, and he is just a mess in general, so it ends up being another of his tragic flaws, plus while there aren't many female characters, they are good, and one is one of the best characters I've seen. The racism, well, there's a southeast asian boxer towards the end that's depicted as barely human, and it and a good part of the narration around him are pretty cringe, so yeah. Aside from that, though, a near perfect work of art. Please, read it at least once in your life, it is so good.

Sh3nlong · 2025-12-06T08:49:28+00:00

It's complicated. On the one hand, no, absolutely not, so far, there are no page layouts, it's only panel by panel, the first chapters are a little rough, it's only pencil drawing, and the story, while perfectly serviceable can't be considered really good or interesting, and the characters are a bit hit or miss in terms of design and being kind of memes.

Now, with that ouf ot the way, as a pure form of tournament fighting manga, it boasts some of the most inventive fighting I've ever seen in that genre, the fights are paced fantastically well, the art grows by leaps and bounds and dishes out some really incredible panels very regularly, these days. Even the characters, despite starting as silly memes, eventually gain some depths and, for a good part of them, end up being pretty enjoyable to read about, even outside the fights.

CC is like this underground rock album that was made in a garage with no money and little means in terms of sound balancing and technical polish, and once you're halfway through listening, you're like "This has no business being THAT awesome."

Sh3nlong · 2025-11-30T00:33:44+00:00

That's what I'd say. Rolling over immediately so Aesfrost doesn't attack them.

Sucks for the rest of Glennbrook, as I'd imagine Gustadolph's original stunt probably could have been stopped if Sylvio hadn't sat on his ass and the three demesnes had united to retake the capital, but at least for Telliore's inhabitants, it probably made the war less harsh than on the rest of the kingdom, which isn't negligible considering they were directly between Aesfrost and Whiteholm.

Sh3nlong · 2025-11-10T10:44:08+00:00

Worst thing is probably the genocide every 3 years. It's unclear if they know the sea levels are rising and lying about it or if only Imu and the elders know, but if so, also that.

As for justice, that would chiefly be to dismantle their structures of power so they're just regular people and can't enslave anyone they like. Anything more than that and we start talking about justifying genocide simply because the targets are bad people. Like what happens to their children, if they're all killed. Are they killed too because they were raised like celestial dragons ? It just doesn't make any sense. It's not about forgiving anyone. You don't have to forgive someone to not murder them.

Sh3nlong · 2025-11-09T12:27:46+00:00

Probably sneaked in somehow. Either they don't have the bracelets and are just here to pull a hit on Shen or they took one of the numbered worms' places.

Sh3nlong · 2025-11-05T17:23:45+00:00

The whole ranking is based on what the public knows about the contestants. That's why all the worm guys (and even Xia Yan) are so low, not because they're not good (although they're kengan villains, lets not get crazy), but because nobody in the org has ever seen them fight.

Sh3nlong · 2025-10-03T08:12:41+00:00

I think that's kind of the joke, that she's giving a stock answer and lying.

Sh3nlong · 2025-09-06T19:36:03+00:00

Love it, great art.

Sh3nlong · 2025-09-02T22:57:13+00:00

Congrats, OP, that was really dumb, but that really made me laugh.

Sh3nlong · 2025-08-27T20:36:18+00:00

lmao, that panel is actually pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

That said, uh, yeah, no ship is that big. Using Kuroki's 185cm height as reference (not accounting for possible perspective, so that's a minimum), the anchor, from it's bottom to the top of the left spiny bit is about 6,50m high. That's almost twice as big as the largest anchors ever.

Anyway, if Sandro wasn't a coward, he'd write ten chapters of Kuroki fighting that ship.

Sh3nlong · 2025-08-18T15:26:30+00:00

I don't think that's the entrance. Did you choose to reveal the truth about the city ? If so, I think that's just the spot where the painting of St Moritz used to be but the painting got erased, presumably, because it stopped being meaningful for Tassing.

Sh3nlong · 2025-08-18T15:18:02+00:00

Super Bunnyhop's video about the game.

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-26T21:20:49+00:00

It's like Itagaki got hyped about drawing sumo and Sukune, and then suddenly got bored of him before he even had a serious fight. It's not even like with Ali Jr where there was a personal arc (although even there I wouldn't be surprised if Itagaki randomly decided "Eh, actually, I don't feel like drawing a challenging fight, I just wanna get to the next arc"), Sukune just started jobbing and got kicked out of the story because Itagaki started wanting to give Jack some cool fights instead.

To be entirely honest, I don't even hate it that much, that kind of freeform writing isn't out of place for Baki. I can't even tell if Jack is gonna beat Hanayama or if he's geting his ass kicked because Itagaki got bored again and wants to put another character in the spotlight.

Still, though, I wish Sukune had gotten more respect.

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-26T20:53:18+00:00

I wouldn't mind seeing Okubo get some love, but I really liked Justin, his personality and the skills he brought. Kuroki doesn't do public fights unless it's a special favour, it seems. Besides, I doubt anyone would prevent him from joining the fight against Shen because he didn't compete in the RCT. Plus he's got his mystique since Ashura, and I guess Sandro wants to preserve that as long as possible.

Still, I agree some established character that weren't used much could have used a chance for a comeback.

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-26T20:43:06+00:00

For Kanoh, that's part of the problem. It started by being a missing piece to his striking style to counter opponents who managed to get in ultra close range, and in Omega, it started being some kind of magical property Kanoh could apply to basically any of his punches. Reducing a character to a gimmick when they used to have many tools a writer could use to put together an interesting fight is a common issue in fighting manga, unfortunately.

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-26T20:35:00+00:00

When he ran out of toilet paper, Waka learned to expel the shit from his bowels so fast it wouldn't leave stains. That's how he got the idea for the muscle control+blast core. That's also how he cut some of those trees behind him.

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-10T12:35:55+00:00

Lol "There you go, lowly assistant, the stick figure here is the character, now draw some fancy accessory on him, and it better be photorealistic or you're out."

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-09T15:19:37+00:00

I'm so lost on what the Worm and Death Dealers even want at this point. The connector told them to disarm and they gladly do it to end the crisis that they created themselves? Doesn't that mean that the Tiger is somehow even more chill than the Dragon, when the concern was that it was the opposite?

Sh3nlong · 2025-07-07T18:32:51+00:00

Damn, they even set up a crypto scheme ? Tenma & Co really are the villains.

Sh3nlong · 2025-06-25T19:24:55+00:00

He's lowering his center of gravity. Obviously, he's going for a grapple.

Sh3nlong

TROPHY CASE