happy valentine's day everyone!!

these past few months i've finally been tackling my (show) watchlist one-by-one. most of it is anime...

my two overall favourite genres of anime (and the ones i tend to gravitate towards) feel like they're on two completely opposite sides of the spectrum. one is existential psychological horrors - bonus points if it's a little bit confusing at surface level and you have to really pay attention to piece together the plot. e.g. evangelion, serial experiments lain; i also recently finished madoka magica and i WILL make a separate blog post on that one day because i'm insane about it!!! there's a lot of symbolism that stuck out to me.

...and the other genre being meathead shonen. i'm a huge sucker for MCs powering up and unlocking a new form to defeat the next strongest foe. and lots of fighting!! (especially if energy beams are involved). my main hyperfixation has been dragon ball for the past 2 years and i fear if the show was more accessible to me as a kid (afaik it didn't air on any cartoon channels in the uk mid-2010s) i would have gotten into it a lot sooner. my favourite episodes of MLP were always the ones where the unicorns/alicorns would fight each other DBZ-style (but i didn't realise it was inspired at the time) with energy beams shooting out of their horns ... like it was the coolest thing ever to 9-y-o me. and ten years later i still feel the same way LOL

i love shonen as well because even though the main appeal to most people are the fights, there's often a lot going on beneath the surface regarding the characters and their relationships with one another. dragon ball is an excellent example of this. the little things you notice.. very random example but i love how you see vegeta develop a sense of respect towards gohan + his strength and ability as a fighter, especially in the cell saga. vegeta initially wanting to go to the tenkaichi budokai at the beginning of the buu saga to test his strength against gohan, who he knew and respected as the current strongest fighter on earth. him being frustrated at the fact that gohan would prefer to study and live out his personal aspirations rather than hone his skills. vegeta APOLOGISING to gohan multiple times(!!) throughout the series if he made a mistake or if his abilities fell short... i could talk about this all day + it's not what i mainly wanted to talk about in this blog so i'll stop here but you get the idea.

i mention these two genres because after finishing madoka magica i moved onto watching baki the grappler. which. is the complete opposite side of the spectrum. it's objectively not as good as madoka but i find myself really enjoying it anyway, but for a completely different reason to the former.

baki is fucking ridiculous and it's the reason i wanted to watch it in the first place, after seeing all those insane clips from it online about a year ago. i haven't even gotten to the recent(ish) season yet - i'm only halfway through the first season from 2001 ! but it's still insane. the cast is insane. 99% of the characters are JACKED, including the teenagers (who tend to look over twice the age they're supposed to be). like do you expect me to believe that this guy is 15 years old?!

side note that's hanayama, my favourite character so far. he's just so cool and i really love the friendship he's developed with baki. he's one of the many characters that chilled out a bunch and gained a newfound sense of respect for baki after fighting him but it feels that their bond seems to be stronger than the others(?) probably because they're around the same age.

what i also love about baki is that it feels like shit just happens with little reason or explanation beforehand. baki is about to fight his father (yujiro), an earthquake coincidentally starts at the same time so yujiro punches the ground really hard and it stops? sure! baki's fighting two guys at the same time, he leaves a gash in one of their faces which reveals his face is a mask - he rips it off to reveal he's an identical twin to the other guy? sure! the 'medic' of the group he's fighting turns out to have a split personality, with the other being an acclaimed fighter who calls himself "gaia the earth god" who can control the flow of adrenaline within his own body? sure!! it's so entertaining!! i never know what bullshit they're going to throw at me next!! i love it!!!

but the crazy thing about this anime is that, on top of how ridiculous it is, i genuinely care for and am rooting for the characters. i WANT baki to get strong enough to defeat and dethrone his wicked father. i WANT baki to get the parental love he craves and deserves from his mother. i WANT emi (baki's mother) to be loved and appreciated for who she is and not what she can do for other people. and even though yujiro hanma is an objectively horrible, evil person, i like him as a character just because of how awesome he is. not in a 'cool' way, but rather in the way that he is just so powerful; strong enough to kill a giant polar bear with his bare hands (and he will do it FOR FUN), strong enough to defeat the world's strongest fighters in seconds - other characters dub him as the 'King' or the 'Ogre'/'Demon' and the names are fitting. this guy is barely human. he's the top of the food chain and he knows it. he's above the law, above humanity, above the natural order.

and his design reflects that:

his wild, red hair. his grotesque face and musculature. his unnatural build. you really feel like he's a demon in human form...!!

i may make another post on this series once i finish it. i really really like it (if you couldn't tell...)