Now I can switch from talking about Paru Itagaki to her far more infamous father. It's not the first time his best-known manga been released in English, but this year marks the first time it has been collected into proper volumes.
BAKI THE GRAPPLER (Gurappura Baki), by Keisuke Itagaki. First published in 1991 and first published in North America in 2025.
PLOT:
Baki Hanma is just seventeen years old, but he has the body of a champion. When he's not training, he's competing in martial arts competitions or squaring off against the karate champion at his high school. Baki's not concerned, though. He's always up for a fight, as each new battle is one more step towards proving himself as the strongest man in the world.
STORY:
Baki the Grappler is not a manga you read for the story. All that happens over the courses of the two volumes in this omnibus is that Baki wins a karate tournament in a single fight and a bunch of old men engage in some intrigue (and a bunch of bloody fights) around him. This is a manga you read for the fights and the strange characters that participate in them. It is basically a manga built entirely out of tournament arcs and your tolerance for those will determine your tolerance for Baki the Grappler as a whole.
What I could have never expected about Baki the Grappler was how nice the title character is. When he's not strength training for hours or running for literal miles, Baki is happy to hang out with his classmate/landlady's daughter Kozue or help out the school boxing coach with everyday tasks at his gym. When he is in the ring he shows off a bit of a sassy side to him, doing things like lightly kissing a fist as he dodges it. This stands in contrast to his opponents, who are all smug, overconfident bullies who don't respect their fighting elders or Baki (much to their peril) and all of them get what they deserve.
This series is infamous for its outrageous feats of strength and the questionable methods used to increase it, but Itagaki delivers it so confidently that the reader just has to roll with it (as do the hordes of people observe it all, commenting on the action in the traditional Speedwagon manner). He also seems content to take his time and let things unfold slowly. Hell, we haven't even learned why Baki wants to be the strongest person in the world. At the very least, it speaks to Itagaki's confidence in his work and the patience of his readers.
ART:
For many years, all I ever heard about Baki the Grappler was how supremely ugly it was, how it was this never-ending parade of hideous giants pounding the crap out of one another with the most bizarre forms of karate possible. Looking over this omnibus, I can't help but feel that reputation has been somewhat exaggerated.
That's not to say that it's not weird looking! With the exception of Baki (who has a curiously cherubic, boyishly handsome face), virtually every guy in this book has a head like a shriveled apple. It's as if their very skulls are weirdly squat and square, with full, heavy lips and noses. These are then set atop these wide, overmuscled bodies, towering over everyone else around them. Even Baki suffers from this to a degree, with the face of a teen and the physique of a bodybuilder twice his age, covered in scars from head to toe.
While his character design sensibilities may be...singular, to say the least, Itagaki's talent for posing and communicating power and movement on the page is impeccable. This makes sense when you learn that he was both an avid artist and athlete in his pre-mangaka youth. According to his editor, he literally studies medical texts as reference for his art. This is a man who clearly understands how the human body can move and how to draw it in a way that conveys not just character but also speed and incredible strength, all while maintaining the clarity and flow of the fight on the page. His visual style may be exaggerated to the point of oddness, but Itagaki could do so because it was built upon an incredibly firm artistic foundation. I'm genuinely impressed.
PRESENTATION:
As I noted in the intro, technically speaking this is not the first time this manga has seen release in the US. Back in the day, it was serialized in the pages of Raijin Comics (although they never got around to collecting it in volumes before the company folded). Media-Do published the entirety of its sequel series (as "New Grappler Baki") digitally, albeit to very little notice.
If nothing else, Kodama Tales is certainly rolling out the red carpet for these books, with color pages in one of the later chapters and a fancy book jacket (complete with promotional obi) for the cover, all in the hope of enticing the crowds who made this series the biggest anime hit on Netflix. I also have to shout out the letterer, Rafael Zaiats, for doing a good job not just at translating the sound effects but inserting them in such a way that they don't disruption to the original characters or the art at large. It's downright seamless work.
RATING:
This manga is published by Kodama Tales. This manga is complete in Japan with 42 volumes available. 10 volumes have been released in 5 2-in-1 omnibuses that are currently in print.
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