Awesome / Bastard!! (1988)

• One of the first moments comes when Dark Schneider is storming Gara's castle to rescue Yoko. One of the foes he has to fight along the way is Efreet, the supreme elemental spirit of fire. This is a very bad matchup, since Dark Schneider specialises in fire magic, which Efreet is naturally immune to. How does Dark Schneider get around this disadvantage? By absorbing Efreet's Hellion spell and using it to fuel an even bigger flame spell, Exodus, which is hot enough to bypass Efreet's immunity. In other words, he literally burns the elemental embodiment of fire to death. Afterwards, Dark Schneider claims Efreet's power for his own and wields him in the form of a sword.
  Efreet: "How can you summon a flame hotter than the sun!? HOW!?"
  Dark Schnieder: "Idiot! I added my power to your Hellion spell!"
  • The battle with Gara is another moment. By the time the showdown comes, Dark Schneider is injured, poisoned, and almost out of spells, while Gara is completely fresh. When Dark Schneider tries to use his signature Venom spell, Gara immediately cuts off his left arm. Gara then makes the fatal mistake of taunting Dark Schneider by falsely claiming to have slept with Yoko. Enraged, Dark Schneider uses the last of his magic power to cast Megadeath for the first time, totally destroying Gara's fortress and winning the battle.

• After Gara joins the heroes, he proves his worth by singlehandedly defending Metallicana castle while Dark Schneider is away fighting Arshes Nei's lieutenants, destroying several armies of monsters in the process.
  • When Arshes Nei finally makes her move against Metallicana, Gara is the first to face her. Nei attacks with the Raijinken, a lightning elemental in the form of a sword said to be the equal of Efreet. Despite his apparently inferior swordsmanship, Gara holds his own using his Ninja Arts, forcing Nei to get serious. In the climactic clash, Gara unleashes the true power of his own sword, Murasame, hitting Nei with an attack that breaks the sound barrier and shatters Raijinken like a child's toy.
  • The above moment is topped moments later, when Nei reveals that Raijinken's true blade isn't the steel that was broken, but the lightning magic inside it. She then projects a blade of hot plasma from the hilt, dealing Gara a grievous wound that would have been deadly if Dark Schneider hadn't arrived in the nick of time.

• After being temporarily driven off, Arshes Nei returns and quickly proves herself to be Dark Schneider's smartest and most dangerous opponent to date. Infiltrating Metallicana under the cover of a thunderstorm, she eschews any formal challenges and simply bombards the castle with Megadeath, a move that would have killed the heroes if DS hadn't managed to get a Spell Bound up literally seconds before impact.
  • As the battle begins Nei immediately puts Dark Schneider on the backfoot by deploying an anti-magic field, stripping him of his spellcasting powers. She then attacks with a repaired Raijinken, and for a moment it looks like the unarmed DS is about to die... until Efreet suddenly shows up and transforms into the Fire Sword, giving him the means to fight back. Dark Schneider immediately kills the griffin Nei is riding, forcing her to engage him on the ground.
  • In the ensuing clash, Efreet grabs Raijinken and flies up into the anti-magic field, destroying both in the process. A magic battle follows where both Nei and Dark Schneider are evenly matched, until DS's reluctance to fight his adoptive daughter gets the better of him and he gets hit by Nei's Exodus spell. Nei stops to gloat over her victory, only for Dark Schneider to burst from the rubble of Metallicana castle, seemingly unharmed.
  • The climax of the battle has both Dark Schneider and Nei cast the most powerful spell they both know, the dreaded black magic Helloween. Just as Dark Schneider's magic is overpowering Nei's, he realises that she is acting under the Accused curse. Enraged, Dark Schneider cancels both spells, then rips out his own heart so that the blood falls on Nei's cursed fingernail, breaking the curse and sparing her the fate of being turned into a toad. It doubles as Heartwarming as well since it looked as if he truly killed himself to free her, but...

• The obscure PS1 game can give you this description of pretty much the whole cast. As it's obvious every one of them is one of two types. A. Badass sorcerer with a awesome weapon or B. Badass sorcerer that doesn't need an extra weapon because they're that good. Plus after all the strange matter of things you've killed along the way, you probably want to hug all the damn awesome bastards!

• Nearly everything DS does could qualify, but the entire fight with Fallen Uriel is unquestionably the greatest so far.

• Seeing Kazushi Hagiwara gradually evolving his art style. It already looks good early on, taking inspiration from metal album covers and D&D. As he was given more time to develop his craft over the course of the manga's run on Shonen Jump and later Ultra Jump, his art became something truly unique to Bastard!!.

• 34 years since the manga first published, 30 years since the release of the 90's OVA, and 12 years after the manga went on hiatus, Bastard!! made its triumphant return to animation. Produced by Warner Bros. Japan and animated by Liden Films, it is set to release on June 30th all over the world through Netflix.

• The 2022 anime adaptation expanded upon the final battle between Dark Schneider and Abigail; turns out defeating Omega Abigail isn't enough to put him down, as he immediately took Yoko hostage. Then, after being teased in the previous episode, Kai Harn and Sean Ari returns to save Yoko and aids the rest of the heroes in fighting against the Dark Wizard. Just as Abigail about to pull his trump card in the form of a giant monster made up of his undead army, Dark Schneider, who up until this point pretty much missing the rest of his limbs save for the right arm, inexplicably gained a power boost by the fire spirits in the form of new limbs, allowing him to lay the smack down on Abigail once and for all.

• The Hell's Requiem arc starts of with one for Tia, who's Taken A Level In Badass during the two-year Time Skip, easily stop the fight between Kai and one of the Shogun Sorcerors casting defensive barriers around both that the latter cannot break out of without hurting himself. This, plus Kai's deference to her show just how much stronger Tia has become.