The first part of Baki-Dou: The Invincible Samurai only told half the story of Edo period swordsman Musashi Miyamoto’s (voiced by SungWon Cho in English and Naoya Uchida in Japanese) resurrection from the dead through an experimental cloning procedure. When the Netflix series continues with Part 2 later this year, the samurai character – based on a real historical figure – will face off against some of the anime’s most resilient fighters, including prehistoric fighter Pickle, yakuza boss Kaoru Hanayama, and Baki himself. But the slow-burn disorientation that dictated much of Musashi’s actions in Part 1 has now settled into a focused brutality borne of isolation. “In the second part, Musashi Miyamoto is very scary, so you’ll experience that fear from him,” Baki-Dou director Toshiki Hirano told IGN.
Speaking more generally about what fans have to look forward to in Part 2, Hirano teased an action-packed second half. “We start with Pickle, and then you have Motobe, Hanayama, and lastly, Baki,” he said via an interpreter, fresh off a panel appearance at AnimeJapan. “But then in between, there’s a moment where you have this fight. These policemen come in, and that’s a very gory kind of criminal scene, but it’s kind of like a horror-type of sequence. And I think you get the impression of how scary this series could be.”
More: Baki-Dou: The Invincible Samurai – Part 1 Review
Based on Keisuke Itagaki’s massively popular manga, Baki-Dou: The Invincible Samurai is the fourth series adaptation of the Baki story, following two seasons each of Baki the Grappler (2001), Baki (2018), and Baki Hanma (2021). TMS producer Kei Watabiki told IGN that a season of Baki-Dou takes roughly two years and a team of 300-400 people – background artists, colorist, animators, photographers, compositors, and editors – to create.
As with other arcs in the anime, the story follows the battles of Baki Hanma, a teen underground fighter whose initial arc culminates in him facing off against his father, Yujiro Hanma. That fight wrapped up prior to the launch of Baki-Dou, and Hirano confirms that the production team was somewhat worried about maintaining narrative momentum past that epic face-off. “But, for this series, when you start out, you see all [of the] characters are actually burned out and very bored,” Hirano said. “By having Musashi Miyamoto [appear], he’s a very appealing, interesting character. He’s a fun character. So then you see that people do get their motivation, and then now they get their drive back.”
Hirano credits Musashi’s appeal partially to his use of a weapon; that’s somewhat unusual in the world of Baki, which is driven by weapons-free martial arts brawls. “Musashi is a character that wields the sword,” Hirano said. “So it was very difficult to work on animating these swords and the movements too. He’s a human character, but he’s also inhuman in many ways. And also the performance that [Japanese voice actor Naoya Uchida] gives in the show is great.”
“We wanted to make sure that there was some kind of drop or hook so that people would stay hooked.”“
Watabiki confirms that the production team knew from the outset that Baki-Dou would be told in two parts. “So we then have to think about how we break down these episodes into those two seasons,” he says. “And of course, if they are separated into two seasons, there will be a pause in between. So we did not want to conclude the first part in a boring manner. We wanted to make sure that there was some kind of drop or hook so that people would stay hooked.”
Part 1 built to a showdown between Musashi and Yujiro Hanma. Musashi’s signature move – a psychic sword strike with the power of the corporeal – fails to work on Yujiro, who is firmly grounded in the reality of the moment. Hirano calls that scene, along with the death of Retsu, as the Part 1 sequences of which he is most proud. While there isn’t an official winner in the fight, Yujiro’s dominance leaves Musashi with a damaged ego, making him more dangerous than ever heading into Part 2.
The Part 1 finale also teases the return of Pickle, a primal fighter who had previously been found preserved in a saline rock formation…as sometimes happens. His looming face-off against Musashi, another fighter living outside of his original time, is poised to be a highlight of Part 2. “When you look at when you enjoy each fight sequence or scene, there’s a variety. There’s these different renditions or variations of how they fight,” says Hirano of what to look forward to in the coming episodes. “So I’m sure people will enjoy that experience as well. And, as you see in the manga, we have this shocking ending as well.”
When asked about the enduring popularity of the Baki story, which began in manga form back in 1991, Hirano notes that there might be something powerful about the way in which the world of the titular grappler stays the same. “Time stops,” he says. “If you look at shows like Dragon Ball or Conan, it’s basically the same. For Baki, Baki is always a high school student. So in that sense, there’s no time progression. And also this franchise has these universal themes. Presidents do change, so there are some changes or progression too, but it’s something that goes really beyond time.”
