Hanma Baki vs. Kengan Ashura

For someone who is a fan of both of these series, this was surprisingly underwhelming. I realize they didn’t have a lot of time in this short production to have strong fights that require some real thought on the part of the combatants, but they really just made this one a character showcase and left out anything interesting from the fights.

Even the animation was surprisingly dull - both Baki and Kengan have done far better - and all the fights were forgone conclusions. Aside from the final fight, there wasn’t even much strategy. It was just meathead fights that barely made use of anything ... aside from character power-ups and demonstrations of fortitude. We get the usual “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd as well as detailed breakdowns of their fighting prowess that is, as per normal, more tell than show. That’s made slightly worse this time by the fact that some of those watchers could put up more interesting fights or at least relate their experiences to heighten the action rather than just opining on the fighters.

Put simply, it’s an ONA that’s weaker than the sum of its parts. It lacks the fight dynamics and most of the visual flair of both series and leans into some of their more frustrating habits as characters interrupt matches just to end them awkwardly, and discussion of fights ends up taking more time than the fights themselves. It’s not bad, but it’s underwhelming and hard to recommend to fans of either show.

While this movie was fun to watch, it was underwhelming too, and this is coming from a Baki and Kengan fan who defends these two shows more than I'd defend my children from a flood. The choreography was weak, all they did was trade blows and telegraph punches, the storytelling was at the level of that of a fan fiction, and the dialogue was just: "What a formidable fighter!", "He's a worthy opponent.", "[Fighter name], it's an honor meeting you.". Overall, not the best watch, but also not the worst, the animation was pleasant to look at and the fan service was effective (at least ... for me), I just wish the outcome wasn't so predictable, but it looks like it is setting the possibility of a sequel, which I hope will not be as of a let down at this was. 6/10

There isn't much to say about this crossover episode.
It delivers it what it promises. Don't expect big things to happen. On the other side this crossover was really entertaining, and I hope there is gonna be another episode, where we can see Hanma Yujiro fighting. Minor spoiler is that probably this anime is set before Hanma Baki beat his father, keep this in mind.
A really big plus for me was that there was only a little narration the main focus in this episode were the figths. That's why I gave this episode an 8 instead of a 7.
If you like Baki Hanma and Kengan ... Ashura this is a must watch for you, I recommend it. If you don't like these kind of fighting animes you probably won't like this either.

Baki Hanma vs Kengan Ashura is a crossover film where the underground organisations of Baki and Kengan Ashura collide. This crossover has been the subject of high anticipation between both communities and it's finally underway - tournament style.

Story & Character: 4/10 & 5/10
This film tries to include all characters in the crossover tournament and it truly feels like a mess; They tried to appeal to every viewer by favouring character appearances instead of battle logic and suspense. As a result the matches were short, rushed and involved the bare minimum background commentary in form of spectators or flashbacks. Instead of calculated fights, Baki Hanma ... vs Kengan Ashura turned into back and forth matches of attrition at best and semi-completed matches at worst. The fight choreography was one thing but cutting the battle short with some cheap plot device like character appearances and rogue fighters really downplays how great this film could've been.


Seeing the characters interact with each other (especially their doppelganger counterparts) is a sight to behold but beyond that this film lacked any new character development. That is not to say that this film should have the most stellar character depth we've seen from any short form anime content; The crossover exists to showcase the strength between franchises. It felt that the goal wasn't accomplished and the characters became part of a 60 minute parade showing off their 5 seconds of fame.


Art & Sound: 5/10
I'm glad this film took the 2D Baki art style predominantly; The aggressively grotesque art style is an iconic visual that suits even the characters of Kengan Ashura. There were moments where the art style turned into 2.5D but the quality difference was hardly noticeable, instead the drop in quality came with less detailed dialogue scenes.

The sound design lacked any intentional thematic songs from either franchise (from what I noticed) and instead used some generic upbeat techno-metal style backing theme. The voice acting was as expected of a modern anime as well as the sound effects.

Overall & Enjoyment: 5/10
I was excited to see the crossover be done with religious justice; Needless to say it was disappointing. The matches could at least have some form of satisfactory conclusions instead of the poorly ended interception. They had a really nice battle line up, I was expecting a sole focus on one or two but they decided to try for a full match and 2 half matches. Yuujirou didn't need to appear and take up 3 minutes of screen real estate for no reason... Overall, 5/10 is a generous rating for Baki Hanma vs Kengan Ashura.

Man, when I saw that this is being made, I grew a third penis (the second one I got from watching Baki). Two of the biggest in the BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT sphere coming together for a grand showdown?!? Sign my ass up right away!

However, the final result is....well.....kind of meh to be honest. This crossover has to go down as one of the biggest wasted opportunities in all of anime. Such an awesome turn of events that these two IPs that are so similar would be under the same umbrella, allowing this to exist. The final product however was thoroughly underwhelming.

In terms ... of quality, it was pretty good. The animation was really solid and the fights looked and sounded awesome. One thing about that though - the music. Or lack thereof rather. Why was this anime so quiet? Outside of fights and a few other scenes, there was zero music and barely any sound effects, giving the whole thing a weird feel.

The story was razor thin, but when the muscle to brain ratio is what it is, what did you expect. Nonetheless, the premise worked great, overlapping elements were used really well and seeing the two old farts organizing both tournaments turning out to be best friends was welcome and hilarious. The setup was all it needed to be and what was left was the action.

The problem arises that barely any of the potential was used. We got only three fights and since this was just an hour long for all three plus buildup and transitions, none of the fights got enough time to breathe and show what they got. A ton of potential crossover showdowns never happened and the ones we did were rushed. Just as it starts to get interesting, the fight ends, because time is running out. It really sucks to be honest.

Here is just a small list of fights that I personally wanted to see:
Orochi Doppo vs Kuroki Gensai (martial arts old farts)
Yujiro vs Agito (final boss dudes, also the fact that they share the same VA will make this very funny)
Oliva vs Muteba Gizenga (for legal reasons I am not allowed to make this joke)
Hanayama vs Lihito (the gripper boyfriends of the MCs)
Retsu vs Sekibayashi (the true MCs of both worlds)
Kureha vs Hanafusa (and zat is how I lost mein medical license)
Sikorski vs Gaolang (Kenjiro Tsuda finally gets the honour of meeting Kenjiro Tsuda)
Alai Jr vs Rei (clash of the simps, battle for the last crump of coochie)
Kozue vs Karla Kure (idk, I just want walking woman moment Kozue to eat shit from a girl that's actually worth it)

There, just a small taste of what was possible. For the record, the three matches they chose were awesome too, I really liked them, that's why I dislike how short they had to be.

There's also one other problem and that's that,in all cases the writers had to sweat a lot to make it seem possible for ANYBODY from the Kengan-verse to have even a lick of a chance against even mediocre fighters from the Baki-verse. Let's be real here, both sides have awesome martial arts, but while Kengan characters have muscles, Baki characters' muscles have muscles. The sheer unbridled bullshittery of Baki is on such an unfathomable level of absurdity compared to Kengan that it's not even close. Like, imagine Yujiro fighting Agito, both are massive and strong and can learn other people's moves on the fly. They fight and fight and fight, adapting, evolving, copying each other's moves, pulling everything they have out of their arsenal. And then at one point Yujiro will be like "you know what, you're boring, I'm sick of fighting you with just the moves I use on women", then he'll hyperextend his wiener to ten meters in length in less than a split second, piercing Agito's skull through the eye socket and dropping him dead. Then the Baki narrator will reveal that Yujiro spent seven years jelqing on top of Mt. Everest while facing north and breathing in deep and this is why he's able to do this. And you could too if you did the same!

Right, in conclusion, you might come out of this review thinking I actually hate this, but that's not true. It was still fun and enjoyable and the action we got was top notch. It's just an hour long, so if you enjoy the type of manly action that both of these series bring to the ring, then there really is no reason not to check it out. I'm just disappointed that we didn't do so much more with the insane potential that there is in such a massive crossover. I hope this one-off thing becomes just a proof of concept and that the creators go back and make a longer form series with more fights, more interpersonal crossovers and more time given to each showdown so that it has enough breathing room to indulge its full potential.

I attempted to watch this with a friend who is a Baki enthusiast, who hadn’t watched Kengan Ashura. I myself watched and enjoyed Kengan S1 but as of now I still haven’t read or completed a full season of Baki, but I know a decent amount of what Baki’s about from memes and YouTube video essays. It was an interesting way to view an anime like this since we figured that we could enjoy the action at least, and hopefully attempt to fill in gaps of knowledge where we saw them.

I think this movie’s biggest problem is that, even if you know all the ... characters and their backstories, everything here is just kinda boring and low-quality compared to their original source material.

Kengan’s story isn’t anything amazing, but it makes up for this with surprisingly well-done and plentiful fight scenes, which are especially good for a 3D anime. Baki is Baki and needs no introduction, you either love it or hate it for how gross and weird it constantly is. I personally think Baki is great, but from what I’ve seen this movie doesn’t compare to either of these shows on their own.

The writing and dialogue is pretty awful here, which normally wouldn’t matter so much, but the fight scenes are also kind of mid, especially compared to their former shows. The fight choreography is just really boring, although it is animated decently well. And then you’ve got constant interruptions in the fight where we need to see “very important information” such as scenes where they’re told they have a fight coming up and they’re like “okay”. Like, is this really so important we needed to pull away from the action? Baki does stuff like this too but at least with Baki it’s consistently interesting or funny, here it’s just kinda boring.

This might be a pet peeve of mine, but it also really annoyed me how they CONSTANTLY reused the same shot for audience reactions for moments in the fights. Something will happen in the fight, and it’ll show the Baki side reactions, then the Kengan side, with maybe a close up here and there. Otherwise it’s just the same image of multiple people sitting in the stands with one of them talking. It just feels like very low production quality.

Another weird thing here is the fact that since this is mostly in the Baki animation style, Kengan characters appear in 2D here. For the most part they actually look alright, but there were some characters I legitimately could not recognize at all due to the art style change. But I understand why they did this and I think it was a fine choice to make.

I should also mention here I basically had to skim through the dialogue because, yeesh, this is some really bad writing. Super contrived, it just seems to be a situation where they’re fighting for almost no real reason. Character interactions are almost interesting, but it feels like the writers were too afraid to take risks. All the characters are super polite to each other with like “whoa that guy’s really strong” and “how did you get those muscles?”, and that sort of thing. I have a hard time believing their interactions are even real since everyone mostly just stays in their own lane. For how crazy Baki characters are they are oddly reserved when it comes to actually affecting Kengan characters in any real way. And vice versa.

Without spoiling anything, I can mention there are 3 fight scenes, and the last one features the series protagonists duking it out. They’re all about the same quality-wise, but the last one is definitely the most hype since we are already invested in Baki and Ohma as characters, at least if you’ve seen their source material. I will say that while I expected the final fight to resolve the way it did, I’m still really disappointed with the lack of resolution. I won’t say who won, but just keep in mind this movie is really afraid to take risks, I’ll just leave it at that. Though I will admit it’s really fun to watch them fight as kind of a death battle hypothetical.

For Baki X Kengan Ashura, I don’t think I can recommend this to a casual fan of either series. The dialogue and slower parts will feel like annoying wastes of time, ESPECIALLY if you don’t recognize who’s talking or you don’t understand their motivations. That said, if you’re a big fan of both, you’ll likely find enough to enjoy here to make the experience feel worthwhile. Besides that, I’d recommend just watching each of these shows on their own merits, as they’re both pretty good.

In many ways this movie feels more like a commercial than an actual movie, which seems kind of redundant since there a high chance people watching know the source material for both of these franchises, but I digress. Decent movie, watch if you have a deep interest in the concept of a Baki/Kengan crossover.

Very middle of the road, it's not bad but it's not good either. The runtime makes it so all the fights feel underdeveloped, and fan favorite characters are reduced to cameos. Overall it feels like this ONA is fan service with no substance. As Baki or Onma will make a move and the audience will be like "they are doing the thing". The animation is average, the fights don't stand out. And overall it just feels really rushed to fit the 1 hour run time. It has some fun moments for fans of Kengan Ashura and Baki, but is missing the hype and excitement.

This shit is so stupid, I love it, couldn't help but smile through the whole thing, also I love that they didn't even try to match the styles , the animation wasn't anything special, the characters stayed on model most of the time and there were some nice cuts here and there, but it was so weird to see the kengan characters on 2D, they looked surprisingly good, but that's to expect when they don't move too much , the story it's nothing, but to be honest these kind of OVAs don't need a good story, if you watch this, you watch it to see ... two buff dudes from your favorite martial arts manga beating the absolute shit out of each other, and it kinda deliveted on that part, the matches felt a little short, so if they decide to greenlight another one of these, I hope they make it longer, because one hour and 2 minutes it's not enough, and even tho it's just a promotional ova to promote the two animes , at least it was a fun watch , it had the good amount of fan service (even tho everyone was overly friendly and polite)

Generic, boring, and horribly written. The worst parts of the film (and likely the most anticipated parts) was the fighting. The fight scenes were not only badly animated, but was also drab, slow, and extremely predictable. The fights were basically, guy hits guy really hard and gets small lore drop as to why they hit hard. Then, other guy hits guy really hard and gets small lore drop. Finally, both guys brainlessly hit each other non-stop until someone loses.

As independent anime, both the Baki and Kengan series do a fantastic job at creating engaging, fun fights that match their own style and storytelling. However, ... with this collaboration, it felt like they attempted to mix both writing and fighting structures into one, but horrendously failed the execution.

Story 1/10, Writing 2/10, Animation 3/10, Overall Experience 1/10

Well, this was something...

I anticipated this cross-over but could already feel that it was not going to be very good.
It was doomed from the get-go as they would have to please Kengan fans as well as Baki fans.
This is not doable, as Baki characters are way more powerful than Kengan characters.
While most Kengan characters are slightly above Peak Human (wall level) most Baki characters are more around Mountain Level.

Story: 1

The story was actually awful, trying to fit in this mess and make it a sensible competition would be hard enough.
But they tried, and failed, to combine the universes and act like the characters ... have known each other before.
It would have probably been better if they did no story at all and just let the characters fight against each other.
There was also a big pacing issue, as the narrative structure of Kengan was used but all those Flashbacks and Explanations just can not fit in a time frame this small.
And the worst thing was it being the first part of a series of movies as well as this being hinted everywhere.
That let's this whole thing just feel like a big cash-grab.

Characters: 6

I found the characters pretty well portrayed even for the amount of time given.
But the characters chosen to fight were kind of all over the place.
Baki and Tohma were logical enough but the other two match-ups could have probably been used better than this.

Art: 4

A Baki-style animation was chosen, which was definitely the better option, with little to no CGI.
This was exactly the decision I hoped for, although it had more animated series quality not really movie quality.
The fights were not really dynamic, as many times it slid into something like a slide show which really impaired the enjoyment of the fights.

Enjoyment: 7

Even with all of that I really enjoyed this cross-over.
As I love fighting Anime and especially Kengan Ashura.

Overall: 3.8

As a fan of the "Baki" series, I had high hopes for "Hanma Baki vs. Kengan Ashura," but it was a letdown. The animation quality was inconsistent; some fights looked great, while others were rushed and choppy. Character development suffered too, as the depth and motivations of Baki and the Kengan fighters were barely explored, making it hard to care about the battles.

The pacing was off, with unnecessary dialogue dragging down the excitement. Instead of a cohesive narrative, we got random matchups that felt disconnected and forced. And did I already mention the horrible animation?

Overall, the film missed its potential as a crossover. Fans seeking ... a compelling story and engaging characters may want to skip this one.

Wow, this was the most exciting bit of fan-service i've seen in a while. IMO this should've been about 4-5 episodes with a handful of fights. I know they're making another one with the cliffhanger at the end but still, I wanted to see the Fifth Fang and Gaolong fight someone so bad. One thing that didn't sit right was how a character would just spontaneously know another character's technique or certain characters would know each other, and while this WOULD make sense if they co-existed in the same universe it still annoyed me a little.

Regardless of that, when Kuroki pulled up I was ... still sat in bed like a little girl, twiddling my feet together and giggling. This was better than anticipated!

I was really looking forward to this since I really enjoyed kengan. I like Baki much less but it's still decent. This is much closer to Baki than it is to Kengan which is a bad thing imo. Even the animation is more akin to Baki. All of the characters have dumber reaction shots and statements like Baki as well. The fights aren't as good as I was hoping, the characters talk to much, neither gaolang or agito fight at all. Just a huge disappointment imo. It was painful forcing myself to finish it, just like a lot of Baki was.

Haven't written a review in god knows how much, but I decided to write one today. It's going to be quick and simple:

Story: 7
Baki is not a show popular with it's in depth stories or whatever, but this single movie-episode? surprised me. Because it is a combination of 2 different shows the dynamic is great(since they are very similar). We got some sneak peeks at the end of the episode,where the prisoners from season 1 are shown.

Animation: 6
Animation hasn't every been a strong part of Baki, but this time it really flopped. It was basically a slideshow. The art is still great, so I bump ... the score a little. They also managed to integrate the 3D look from Kengan into Baki, so that was cool as well.

Sound: 7
Sound was a bit funky. There were moments were a single sound effect was repeated 10–15 times in a row. The music wasn't diverse, but it was still good.

Characters: 8
Classic Baki characters. If you have liked them up until now, you will like them here as well. The Kengan characters are very similar so they were a nice attribution to everything.

Enjoyment: 8
I still enjoyed it a lot, but that may be because I am a Baki and Kengan fan in general, so the two combined is pretty epic. The episode was a bit too long with all the dialogues and backstories, but that's just classic Baki. It could have been a 30-40 min episode, not 60.

Overall: 7
It isn't something groundbreaking and new, but it's a fun watch.

Boring and uneventful. The only thing to possibly look forward to are the events that take place after this tournament, and that is a big maybe. Just seeing it from a story/plot point view there were no big revelations or anything of awe.

Like the typical Baki plot, they fought, overexplained what was going on in the fight, one person hit the other, the other did a move, people gasp, and someone won. No single fluid consistent play of skill or fighting done in a way to truly display the art of fighting.

There were no good fight scenes. They talked through half the fights and ... there was no intensity to anything that was shown. Kengan Ashuran by itself has better fights scenes that Baki and this merger leaned more towards the Baki style of writing and fights. Long winded, big talks, and very mediocre choreographed action.

As a crossover between two of the most popular martial arts anime, I was curious to see how they would adjust the different power systems and introduce the characters, as well as how the animation would turn out. They managed to achieve a good balance between the powers and character introductions.

(In my opinion, this isn’t a big spoiler, but it does talk about what happens in the Baki and Kengan series.)
The Baki characters are extremely overpowered in a realistic fight against the Kengan characters. In the Baki series, characters can stop an earthquake with a punch, take bullets like nothing, or instantly heal by punching ... a boxing bag. In Kengan, you might see characters dodging bullets with their wrists, but that’s about it. Despite this, the crossover makes both universes feel equally strong, which is a significant achievement. While watching, you mostly forget about this discrepancy and can simply enjoy the show.

The introduction of the characters was okay. To be more hyped, it's recommended to know about the two universes, but that’s probably obvious. There are some brief introductions, but they are really short.

The animation is more aligned with the Baki style, which is good! If it were mixed with the Kengan Ashura animation, it would only be half as good.

An important note for Kengan manga fans: the fights are more like Baki fights. They aren't as many specific, realistic MMA-style fights; it’s more about over-the-top punching and dramatic battles.

Summary:
For anyone who likes to escape from the day, it was a fun watch. You can enjoy it with friends or alone. Fans of fights in Baki, Kengan, or DBZ will have fun with it.

The story isn't particularly unique, but even though it was predictable, I enjoyed it because I like this genre and set-up. The art style is fitting for the story, enhancing the action and atmosphere effectively.

The characters were well-rounded, possessing both flaws and strengths. They weren't unusually strong or smart, which added to their believability. They reacted to situations and events in a realistic way, which made the story more engaging.

Others will likely enjoy this series, especially if they appreciate well-executed fight scenes and the tension created by the clash of ideals. The fights were great and the clashes of ideals were on point, creating an ... oddly good atmosphere. I would highly recommend this series if you're into fights and high testosterone shows.

To all those who didn't enjoy the show I wanna say: Womp womp lil chiggas