Characters / Baki the Grappler

Baki the Grappler | Main Character Index
The Hanma Family | Maximum Tournament Competitors | Shinshinkai Dojo Members

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• The Hanma Family
• Maximum Tournament Competitors
• Shinshinkai Dojo Members

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Main Characters

The Hanma Family

The Hanma family (Baki, Yujiro, Jack and Yuichiro) have their own page here.

Gouki Shibukawa

Gouki Shibukawa

Voiced by: Bin Shimada (JP, Netflix ONA), Vic Mignogna (EN, Netflix ONA Season 1), Kyle McCarley (EN, Netflix ONA Season 2), Carlos Hernández (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

An elderly Jujutsu master who Baki encounters in the Maximum Tournament. A World War 2 veteran with a penchant for mischief and a consumate traditionalist, Gouki prefers to confound his opponents into attacking first, so he can take advantage of their lack of respect.

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• The Ace: Shibukawa is regarded as an expert in aiki, with many noting that anyone else trying to use aiki like he can in a real fight, is basically impossible. Only Yujiro has ever successfully done the same.
• Affably Evil: Evil may be a stretch, given the moral standards of Baki, but Shibujawa is extremely sadistic and deceitful in a fight, and has a history of assassination and death matches simply for his own entertainment. He is also an extremely jovial, even grandfatherly sort, and happy to help Baki any time.
• Blood Knight: In his youth, he joined the military and became an assassin to fulfill his desire for fighting. It hasn't really waned with old age.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He looks and acts like a wacky old man but his aikido and jujitsu are master level.
• Clark Kent Outfit: He is actually pretty well built under his kimono, but for decency he prefers keeping it on. He's still scrawny compared to the rest of the cast though.
• Combat Pragmatist: Shibukawa has shown he's not above dirty tactics, like spitting water into his opponents eye socket to trigger the body's reflexes towards drowning, other sorts of Eye Scream and feigning helplessness to subdue an opponent in the middle of a Hope Spot.
• Cool Old Guy: A nice old man that teaches the police force judo in his off time and can overpower the likes of Oliva.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After beating Doppo in the Maximum Tournament, they become good friends.
• Defeat Means Respect: Grew to respect Doppo for being the first opponent in a while to make him feel real fear in a fight.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: He manages to drag around Biscuit Oliva, one of the strongest characters in the series, by his finger, although he doesn't defeat him. He also disloated the muscleman's arm while being flipped by him.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Shibukawa settled out to found his own dojo after a spar where he resisted his retirement age Aikido master's Killing Intent and made him draw and swing a sword at him.
• Eye Scream: On the receiving end of one, and has a glass eye instead.
• Fatal Flaw: Like most masters, he has a bad case of pride and likes to test his limits. He knows exactly when a fight may end in his death, yet still go through and he won't use his more offensive techniques because he wants to prove his aiki is perfect. He challenged a sumo wrestler six times his size to belt-wrestle one another and is actually shocked he was thrown by sheer power.
• For the Lulz: He became a martial artist and assassin for the giggles and ecstasy of it all.
• The Gift: In an interview he describes Aiki as this.
  "Aiki's in the realm of genius. If you don't get it, you'll never get it."
• Glass Cannon: He isn't as strong and durable as the The Ogre, Hanayama or even the karate master Doppo himself, but Shibukawa can make still someone like Oliva keel over on his knee making him feel his own weight.
• Handicapped Badass: He has a glass eye but is still a precise and strong fighter.
• Imminent Danger Clue: He mentally envisions some kind of absurd obstacle, like a pit of fire or an impossibly huge door, if he is about to walk in to a fight against a superior opponent.
• Logical Weakness:
  • His aikido is good against people he can redirect their attack against themselves like Oliva but against a poison user or a swordsman it doesn't help much as even the smallest contact will either poison or cut him. Jack also defeats him by biting his arms as there is no real way to redirect the teeth sinking in.
  • As his match with Doppo shows, Shibukawa's aiki is formidable but almost entirely defensive, since it requires the enemy to throw attacks that can be redirected. If Shibukawa is the one attacking recklessly, then he's entirely vulnerable to his opponent's punches.
• Manchild: He even acknowledges it, discussing the absurdity of a frail retirement age man like himself going out and picking street fights for laughs.
• Mundane Made Awesome: His Aiki, a real principle in martial arts denoting the ability to feel and control the opponent's center of gravity as well as one's own, is treated as a borderline superpower, as he is able to toss around and even drag people much bigger than he is using it.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Based off of real-life aikido master and the founder of Yoshinkan style of aikido Gozo Shioda.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: He's very short, yet capable of dealing massive amounts of damage, and even dragging Oliva around using his Aiki.
• Pyrrhic Victory: He considers his victory over Kosho this, given that he damaged his glass eye, which is expensive.
• Retired Monster: Gouki was an assassin in the past. He did it for fun more than anything.
• Taught by Experience: His strength and expertise comes from his 70+ years of experience.
• The Unfought: He is one of the few major characters that Baki has never actually fought.
• Weak, but Skilled: The only person among the main cast not rippling with muscle or destroying concrete like cardboard. Gouki uses Aiki/jujutsu, and a more pragmatic approach than most, to take down more physically imposing foes. He started out as a Judo Teen Genius, only to turn to Aikido when he called bullshit on a Weak, but Skilled old man being able to throw a career grappler at an Aikido demonstration. The Aikido master proceeded to throw Gouki on his head so hard he pissed himself, and he never looked back to Judo after that (besides teaching the police in his free time).
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Despite originally viewing him as an amateur, he would grow to view Orochi as this after their match. He admits his superior experience was the only reason he beat Doppo and would have lost if he was the younger one.
  • He has this opinion of Oliva for managing to judo throw him, despite breaking his arm.

Kaoru Hanayama

Kaoru Hanayama

Voiced by: Takuya Eguchi (JP, ONA), Kyle Hebert (EN, anime), Greg Chun (EN, Netflix ONA), Eduardo Fonseca (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

Hanayama is considered the toughest Yakuza in Japan; a silent, stoic type who is famed for never being felled by a single strike.

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• Attack! Attack! Attack!: His entire fighting style focuses around pure offense, something that works very well for him due to his extreme durability and ability to resist pain. It helps that he has monstrous physical strength alongside being obscenely durable. Even the trademark stances he takes for his attacks, such as his signature Destructive Force punch, are little more than just him going through preparatory motions so that he's able to put his entire weight into his attacks.
• Badass Boast: Weaponized. When he was still in high school, a brilliant, but unhinged student had a problem with him due to his preference for fighting bare-handed and using his extreme strength, in contrast to the student's weapons-using, Combat Pragmatist, views, and he set up multiple traps throughout the school all day to harass Hanayama, culminating in him threatening the latter with a handmade crossbow, intending to shoot him with it. Hanayama's response to this? He takes out a bunch of other, infinitely more lethal weapons from under his jacket, such as swords, grenades, assault rifles, and much much more, then downright tells the student he's going to need them if he wants to fight him, as a not-so-subtle way of reminding him of the impossibly gigantic gap between the two in terms of power and strength. This manages to intimidate the student into submission to the point where he urinates himself out of the fear he's feeling, causing him to submit to Hanayama and agree to never attack him again, but not before they clean up all the weapons so they don't get in trouble.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He is almost always seen in a white suit tailored to his enormous size.
• Badass Pacifist: In his Highschool life. He makes a point to not hurt anybody and to solve any physical confrontation while avoiding violence at all costs.
• Battle Strip: He tends to strip down to the fundoshi he wears underneath whenever he gets into a fight, exposing all his tattoos. The most notable example of this is his fight with Speck, but he also does so when fighting Musashi.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Like other fighters, he wanted more of a challenge so he tried to fight Baki in an attempt to get Yujiro's attention, and he did. He got a ruthless beating from Yujiro for it after already being defeated by Baki.
• The Big Guy: The biggest of the Baki's friends at 6'3 and 363lbs (191cm, 165 kilos), as well as the physically strongest. His physical strength is great enough that he's the first human that Pickle recognized as a Friendly Rival instead of food.
• Character Exaggeration: He is subject to this In-Universe, as not only does everyone around him feed into his reputation as an unstoppable brawler, but he is also frequently drawn much above his already huge size for effect and to encapsulate his larger-than-life aura.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: He's immensely strong, typically brute forcing his way through fights with sheer strength alone. His primary technique is his Vice Grip, which can usually explode an opponent's arm by grabbing it and restricting the blood flow. Doesn't work so well on Yujiro though, Speck however isn't so lucky when he got his arm splattered, piece of his thigh ripped out, and lastly his windpipe crushed by Hanayama.
• Covered with Scars: Invoked in a flashback, as he felt his Tattoo wasn't complete without some battle damage and actively went and took down a rival Yakuza family to get em. He was only 15. And the longer the series goes, the more scars he keeps collecting along the way.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Hanayama's habits in regards to old-school chivalry and never beating a man while he's down usually results in him taking grievous injury (to a normal man, at least) and shrugging it off, meaning that even if he wins a fight decisively, if his opponent is tough (such as Speck or Musashi), he's bound to leave with a whole sleuth of injuries.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Originally sought to fight Baki as a way to get Yujiro's attention, and only after being beaten by him do they become good friends. This is best shown during the Death Row Inmates arc, wherein Hanayama ruthlessly grabs Speck by the face and forces him away from Kozue and Baki, who were having a nice romantic date.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: While attempting to preform a pull-up during physical exams, he accidentally pulls up the whole bar.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Always Famous Grouse scotch, either as shots or on the rocks, he'll even chug an entire bottle in one go sometimes. Simple and perfect, just like his fighting style.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Cares greatly for his mother who is terminally ill with cancer, and visits her often. The very first victim of his Vice Grip was his Yakuza father after he hit his mom, whereupon his father expressed his pride in Hanayama's immense strength and resolve before walking off to die in a gang war, never seen again.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Despite being competent in many fields, he is absolutely horrible at math, struggling with even basic grade school levels of equations.
• Eye Scream:
  • How he once killed a massive shark that attacked him when he was fishing. As he was diving underwater to undo his stuck hook, he would be ambushed by the marine beast, only for him to ram his entire arms straight into the eye of the animal and crush the brain.
  • Hanayama is himself subject to this when Musashi takes a katana to his face twice over, cutting in his left eyeball and presumably ruining Hanayama's depth perception in the process.
• Facial Horror: His fight with Speck left him with his cheeks blown out and exposing the sides of his jaws. He wears a face mask to cover it up. He later gets his cheeks repaired, but the author makes a point of leaving circular scars on both cheeks. As he does with every other wound he gets in the entire series, giving him an increasingly scarred appearance.
• Face of a Thug: Looks nightmarish and has a perpetual scowl to his face, but is a lot nicer than his reputation and affiliations would have you believe. This gets escalated to truly insane levels later in the series as Hanayama picks up more and more facial scars. He managed to make a Sumo Wrestler his own size cold-sweat by just looking him in the eye.
  Shachihoko, in a post-fight interview: "Oh man... That shocked the hell out of me. Just, he had a face you wouldn't believe... All these huge scars, from here to here, and here, and through his eye. The ref, he's got to see all kinds of incredible guys all the time. But that face got to even him. There wasn't anything like "fight" or "drive" to his stare, but somehow, I got what it was. I knew then: "I'm being forced into a straight fight to the death".
• Gentle Giant: He takes his time to console Baki when his mother basically disowns him. He also seems unable to refuse a plea for help and despite a gruff exterior he's nice to get along with.
• The Gift: Like the Hanmas, the Hanayamas are ridiculously strong by nature and Kaoru is the strongest of them yet. He threw an Ozeki Sumo Wrestler with one hand and made him land on his feet to make sure the guy wasn't embarrassed in front of Kaoru's school. The Yokozuna at the time was fiending to get this wonder-boy under his wing, but had to pass him over due to his scars, gang tattoos and Yakuza affiliation.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: He doesn't even really need any martial arts training due to his obscene strength and durability making up for his incredibly risky fighting style.
• Jerkass Façade: He pretends to be much rougher than he is and follows esoteric codes of Yakuza honor, such as never working together with the government in any official measure. In reality he's a big softie who plays up how intimidating he is to make sure his authority isn't tested.
• Kingpin in His Gym: He is the head of the most powerful yakuza gang, yet he doesn't believe in using weapons, and relies more on his brute strength and martial arts training to eliminate any threat that stands in his way.
• Knee-capping: Spec shoots Hanayama in both knees in their fight. It's not enough to even slow him down after the initial shock, and not even enough to render Hanayama unable to stand up despite how heavy he is.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: A variation of this trope and interestingly only on Hanayama's side. He's the strongest Yakuza in Japan and therefore a criminal gang leader that's immersed in a dirty world even if yakuza tend to follow a code. Yet, though he's prepared for his opponents to use every dirty trick in the book and while he won't show mercy and has no issues brutalizing or maiming people to a ridiculous degree, he will always relent when his opponent is seriously giving up (just don't pull a I Surrender, Suckers on him or he'll beat you even harder), will always keep it a man to man affair, will not attack until his opponent is up and ready to either defend or attack themselves, and is very straightforward in his approach while never using dirty tricks. He sees himself as just too strong to fight in any other way and the most preparation you'll see from him is remove his suit.
• Lightning Bruiser: His size, strength, and durability are definitely his greatest assets, yes, but what truly makes him even more terrifying is his absurd speed and mobility. For a big dude, he can move Fast. And the only reason why most fights for him aren't completely one-sided (well, more so than they usually already are) is that it's just not his preferred way of doing things.
• Made of Iron: Can take a ton of punishment, especially during his fight with Speck.
• Meaningful Name: The characters for his name, "花山 薫", roughly translates to "Fragrant/Sweet Flower Mountain", symbolizing his enormous stature and Hidden Heart of Gold.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • One of the chapters of the Kizudzura Gaiden is quite literally about him walking home with a fellow student and fanboy tagging along to see just what it's like, and along the way, he causes a gang of bikers they happen across to immediately go from loudly riding their bikes with vicious and enraged expressions on their faces to solemnly turning their heads down and cutting their engines, then going to a noodle restaurant known for it's rowdy customers who fight each other to being as calm and serene as a Buddhist temple with his presence alone.
    • The entirety of the Kizudzura Gaiden counts as this, given it's about Hanayama's day-to-day life as he goes to school and his social life, yet still doing amazing and badass things in the process, such as scaring a cruel teacher who abused the authority he gained from a corporal punishment license to do things like hitting his students hard enough to leave bruises just for dyeing their hair, or sexually harassing them by spanking them for wearing a skirt that he deemed was too short so badly that said teacher immediately cowered in fear and crouched, causing him to not only voluntarily turn in his license but give up teaching altogether when he found out that he'd been labeled the "Tower of Terror" from this incident.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: He is a giant man at only fifteen and is among the physically strongest humans in the series outside of the Hanma family.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Based off of real-life Ando-gumi Yakuza enforcer Kei Hanagata (1930-1963), a Hokkaido-born lifelong street fighter who never used weapons and was arrested by police at least 22 times, well-known for always wearing a white suit, once winning a fistfight against a dozen rival Yakuza, and his iconic chiseled and scarred face.
• Pet the Dog: Even though he's a hero, his response to the Oozeki Raiou, who was visiting his school to scout out a delinquent friend of Hanayama's who is quite the prodigy when it comes to sumo in the Kizudra Gaiden trying to surprise attack him out of fear of his strength is to non-violently throw the latter over himself in a way that made it look like Raiou did a side somersault, complete with clapping afterwards to maintain the illusion so that the Oozeki could retain his dignity in the eyes of the students in the gymnasium they were in.
• The Power of Friendship: Part of the reason he fought Spec was so he couldn't interrupt his good friend Baki's date with Kozue.
• Serial Escalation: Hanayama just become sturdier and sturdier as the story goes on with no real explanation. In the first series Baki and Katsumi could knock him out with multiple strong attacks, by the second series, his fight with Speck has him shrugging off bullets and prolonged beatings with no issue, and later his bones are impervious to swords. The narration also keeps mentioning he never trains, he barely stretches before any of those fights. Justified though, when one stops and remembers that a life of hard brutal fighting WILL inevitably toughen you up over a period of time, no different from hard training. And the enemies Hanayama usually faces are strong enough to make most professional athletes look like wimps.
• Signature Move: The "Destructive Force" punch, which has Hanayama go through the kind of motion you would normally use to pitch a baseball to catapult his enormous, hardened fist into his opponent's face with enough force to knock the pain out of a man with late-stage gout or bloody Yujiro Hanma's nose. This stance is noted for its extreme unorthodoxy because it completely forsakes any idea of defense and purely go on the offense, whereas every other martial artists' stance usually has a healthy mix of both. Predictably, this doesn't work against Musashi who proceeds to just cut him in the waist with his sword while Hanayama was preparing his attack.
• Superpowerful Genetics: The Hanayama bloodline is among the strongest in terms of pure strength. Kaoru is regarded as the strongest of said bloodline and is strong enough to give Yuujiro a nosebleed with a single punch, which puts Kaoru as one of the strongest people Yuujiro has ever encountered.
• Tattooed Crook: Has a full back tattoo of 'A Man Standing Up' which is unique to his family, which the first head got to immortalize the story of a hermit monk staying with the Hanayamas on the night of an attack by Ronin. Said monk ended up putting the young Hanayama boy-heir inside a temple bell and putting it on his back while leaving himself defenseless against the Ronin, saving the future of the family that provided him Sacred Hospitality at the cost of his life. He got passed over by Sumo scouts in highschool due to the tattoo and his scars, something both the Sumo Association chairman and Yokozuna Kinryuuzan express regret over in hindsight because Hanayama was built for Sumo.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Severely downplayed due to him being a genuinely benevolent and well-meaning teenager who made a point to never get into fights, always respect his teachers, and follow all of the rules of school down to a tee, but any teen who runs a Yakuza Family and even does one man raids on other Yakuza groups just because he wasn't satisfied with how his tattoo looks clearly isn't a law-abiding citizen, even if they are a genuinely good and moral person.
• Unbreakable Bones: Not quite unbreakable, but his bones are noted to be several times stronger than a normal person's. Even Musashi's sword swing have a hard time cutting through them.
• Unskilled, but Strong: His fighting style is simply referred to as Street Fighting, but he's so absurdly strong he usually doesn't need much else. A later chapter even states that being born strong, training is as useful for him as it is for a lion; it won't improve much.
• Victorious Roar: He yells at the top of his lungs after defeating Spec after a long and difficult fight.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Played for Laughs. It's revealed that in the Kizudra Gaiden that he's absolutely terrible at math.
• Would Not Hit a Girl: Notably stands down from a relatively meaningless challenge to a scrap with Baki when Kozue kicks him and tells him to get out of their face. With his Yakuza affiliation and code of honor, this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.
• The Worf Effect: Alexander suplexes him to establish himself as the new powerhouse of the Maximum Tournament arc. The only time Hanayama is knocked out in one attack, something not even Yujiro has managed.
• Yakuza: He is the proud leader of the Hanayama Family.
• Younger Than They Look: Despite being a hugely muscular and sour-faced Yakuza boss, he's only 19. In fact, little about his appearance has changed from the age of 15 besides more scars.

Doppo Orochi

See him here.

Retsu Kaioh

Voiced by: Rikiya Koyama (JP, Netflix ONA), Kaiji Tang (EN, Netflix ONA), José Antonio Macías (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

A Kenpo practitioner from China, seemingly born for the task of being the greatest Kung-fu master of the modern era. He is proud and composed, but in combat becomes a flurry of masterful technique. So impressive is his martial arts skill that he's gained quite an arrogant streak around it. But underneath, he's not really that bad of a guy.

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• The Ace: The greatest Kaioh since Kaku and Kaku only peaked way later in his life. He was the first to awaken Baki's Hanma instincts even after Baki shadowboxed and planned out the entire fight in advance and Baki initially wants him as a sparring partner in his training for his impending match with Yujiro. Even Yujiro regards him as a master and the first true opponent Baki has ever faced.
• Aesop Amnesia: He clearly didn't learn anything from trying to fight Pickle. As once Musashi shows up, he wants to fight him too (knowing full well that he plays for keeps just like Pickle). This ultimately gets him killed.
• An Arm and a Leg: He lost everything below the knee on one leg after Pickle ate it. He regains the leg Pickle ate after being reincarnated.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: A literal description of him in the first series. Does nothing but Kung Fu, while angrily proclaiming that Kung Fu is the best. After the Maximum Tournament arc he drops the arrogant part and becomes one of the nicest characters in the series.
• Baritone of Strength: He has a very deep and intense tone of voice, courtesy of Kaiji Tang, Ed Blaylock, and Koyama Rikiya he's regarded as one of the strongest fighters in the series.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: How he best Doyle. The aforementioned inmate is an assassin and has many hidden weapons in order to give him an advantage over his opponent, believing that anything is fair in a fight to the death. Retsu proceeds to then give him a taste of his own medicine by bringing weapons and tricks of his own, and he proves to be far more adept at using them than Doyle.
• Blood Knight: He actively seeks out the menace de jour almost every single time, and sets the Boxing world ablaze by pulling a stunt in front of a famous boxing promoter just to get a good match. His desire to prove that Chinese Martial Arts could beat anyone with a sword ultimately gets him killed, and even as he lies dying from Musashi bisecting his stomach and spine, he's still thinking of what he could have done in the fight and how to better his chances against a sword next time.
• Boxing Battler: He gets scouted by Don King after picking up boxing more or less just to try it after recovering from Pickle eating his foot and ends up having a series of exhibition matches against the heavyweight champion and several title contenders. By Baki Dou he's beaten the champion Wilbur Bolt and hangs up the gloves, retiring from boxing without defending his title.
• Bruce Lee Clone: He is one of many based of the martial artist. In fact his name before taking up the Kaioh title in Chinese is Lie Xiaolong^note Bruce Lee's Chinese name was Li Xiaolong.
• Chef of Iron: A master of Chinese Boxing and Chinese Cuisine, He feeds Doyle as he's in recovery from the blood loss after standing guard over Retsu's unconscious body, and his medicical full course meal and a whole bucket of sugar water is what restores Baki from his emaciated state.
• Climax Boss: In season 2 of the anime, being Baki's opponent in the semi-finals.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • During his match with Katsumi, who immediately squared up to hit Retsu with his Mach 1 Straight Punch as he approached, Retsu used a Kenpo breathing exercise to expand his lungs, then used the harsh exhale to spit in his eye and punched him hard enough to send him flying while Retsu's unorthodox move had him blinded and distracted.
  • When Doyle tries to ambush Retsu in the bar, which ended up backfiring horribly when he beat him to the punch by throwing a knife in his eye before going from Booze Flamethrower to throwing knives and skill based weapons.
• The Comically Serious: He is more uptight than the rest of Baki's friends but does some really absurd stuff sometime, such as throwing a windmill punch out of frustration.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • After losing to Baki in the Maximum Tournament, he became one of Baki's closest friends and allies.
  • He is also good buddies with Katsumi after defeating him in the tournament.
• Fearless Fool: His wanting to fight Miyamoto Musashi after what already happened to him against Pickle reeks of this. And needless to say, it leads to his undoing.
• Handicapped Badass: He became this after Pickle ate his foot, but with a peg foot and still having most of his original leg and knee, he isn't really worse off with it and even learns to weaponize how precise the power in his punches become from stomping down and rapidly spinning while using it against Joe Crazier. He regained the foot after he was reincarnated.
• Heel–Face Turn: While never really a bad guy, he grows from an exemplary stereotype to one of the kindest, most caring people in the series.
• Hero of Another Story: After Musashi kills him, he is reincarnated and gets his own spin-off series.
• Hot-Blooded: Contrary to stoic appearances, Retsu is a very passionate man.
• Master of All: His full mastery of every venue of Kung Fu gives both amazing punches and kicks, lethal grappling moves, but also a lot of unorthodox options of attacks like weaponizing his braid, acupoint attacks, finger strikes and toes that are as flexible and dangerous as said fingers, and blinding an opponent with a harsh exhale. He's also trained in weapons, including the really odd ones like nine-section-staffs.
• Mushroom Samba: "Smoking" Joe Crazier's left hook is so soul-crushingly powerful it basically sends Retsu half-way to the Shadow Realm on his feet, resulting in an entire chapter and a half where Baki's art gets Super-Deformed, depicting the fight Retsu is in as if he was deep in a psychadelic trip.
• Nice Guy: Retsu is a very caring individual who likes helping out his friends as well as having a code of honor amongst fighting and always shows respect towards others.
• Outside-Context Problem: He is this for the fantasy world he ended up in. Most isekai protagonists are Otakus that rely on their pop-culture knowledge for survival. He is a master martial artist that can curbstomp most monsters with his bare hands.
• Pride: His Fatal Flaw. In both Son of Ogre and Baki-Dou Retsu always wanted to prove that 4000 year old Chinese martial arts can still uphold it's name, even if means going up against a prehistoric caveman or a legendary master swordsman. It gets him killed by the latter.
• Single-Stroke Battle: At the Maximum Tournament, he defeats Katsumi in a single punch after blinding him by spitting in his eye to blind him.
• Strong and Skilled: Retsu is one of the most skilled fighters in the series, and also built like an absolute fridge of a man. A lot of attention is brought to the fact that his muscles are insanely symmetrical in their shape, giving him all-around explosive strength and an agility second only to Baki despite being a full 40 kilos heavier than previously mentioned Featherweight.
• Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: To graduate as a Kaioh, he beat an obsidian boulder into a perfect sphere with his bare hands. In his Boxing career, he even lampshades that he thinks gloves hold him back because he just wants a fist that's as tough and unbreakable as possible. One of his main motivations to go against Musashi was to prove that it was possible for a skilled fighter to best an equally skilled swordsman. It didn't work out for him and it costed him his life.
• The Stoic: Outside his love of martial arts, he's not a very emotional person.
• Trapped in Another World: After his death at the blade of Musashi, his spirit found itself transported to a medieval fantasy isekai. And yes, despite being trapped in a world of monsters, demons and dragons, he is still among the more dangerous things there; absolutely manhandling things like a King Hydra barehanded.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After the Maximum Tournament, he's easily one of the kindest people in the entire series. He's even, especially on friendlier terms with Katsumi after nearly an entire season of the two hating each other's guts.
• The Worf Effect: He defeats Katsumi Orochi at the Maximum Tournament with one hit to show he is more than just your average Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy. He is much later murdered by Musashi Myamoto to show how dangerous and ruthless the samurai is.
• Worthy Opponent: Yujiro sees him as this for Baki, saying that four thousand years of Chinese martial arts is what is needed to awake a Hanma.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In his spinoff, Retsu is reincarnated in a Fantasy Isekai. That doesn't mean he's going to stop acting like a character from a martial arts series, which results in him picking fights with pretty much everyone even seemingly strong.

Motobe Izou

A stocky, gloomy fellow who is also a Jujutsu master, specifically in the use of traditional japanese weaponry. Physically the weakest of Baki's friends, he overcomes this primarily through ingenious strategy and skill. And of course, when there are no rules regarding weapons, there are few alive who can match his skill with a blade.

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• Acrofatic: Despite having quite the gut, he's one of the best weapon masters in the series and quite fast at that.
• Always Someone Better: He's this to Yanagi when it comes to the use of weaponry in a fight, as he gives him such a one-sided fight that it's almost literally just Motobe bullying the crap out of Yanagi and countering everything he does.
• Cassandra Truth: As a fellow warrior, he understands the kind of threat Musashi poses, as he plays for keeps. But no matter how many times he keeps warning the underground fighters not to challenge Musashi, none of them listen. This leads to Retsu dying.
• Combat Pragmatist: Is one by default as a weapon master, but he even outshines Yanagi in this department. What does he do when Yanagi takes out his Kusarigama and starts spinning it around? He just walks next to some Monkey Bars, causing Yanagi to cease his spinning when he realizes he can't swing without getting his chain tangled and giving Motobe the opportunity to attack. When he fights Musashi, he comes at him with every weapon he can think of and most of them are distractions on top of hiding armor under his clothes. He also straight up tells Musashi either he accept his challenge or he is gonna shank him in the back.
• Cool Old Guy: He beats Musashi to protect all the other fighters.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Reconstructed. He genuinely manages to defeat Miyamoto Musashi, who is shown as being one of the strongest characters in the series and even capable of injuring Yujiro by pulling out all the stops on him, but gets greatly injured while doing so, but manages to survive and recover nonetheless.
• Irony: Motobe Izou, a practitioner of Jujutsu, a martial art developed for the purpose of use by Samurai on the battlefield, fights more like a Ninja.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: His hand to hand Jujutsu is subpar, and he isn't that much of a threat when he doesn't have a weapon, as well as treating most fights like a competition instead of a duel between two warriors. When he prepares himself, he can give both Jack and Baki a serious beating.
• Master Poisoner: He attempts to poison Musashi with booze and cigarettes laced with fugu, which is scentless and translucent, but Musashi sees through it.
• More Expendable Than You: As far as Motobe is concerned he is just an old master-at-arms, every other martial artists are gifts to their art like the Orochis being the two suns of karate and Gaia being the master of environment. That's why he is fine being looked down and getting hurt first since he can die and the world wouldn't lose a prodigy.
• Multi-Melee Master: Favors katanas but he has plenty of other weapons ready for the job.
• Ninja: Although he isn't explicitly labeled as one, he's very ninja-like in terms of his skillset and general pragmatic fighting style, as well as using archetypical ninja equipment such as Kusarigama and smoke bombs.
• Only Sane Man: During the Musashi arc, Motobe takes upon himself to protect the other fighters from Musashi, but also from themselves, as they are not treating the legendary swordsman as seriously as they should. It becomes apparent to Motobe that even Yujiro might get injured badly by trying his usual antics on Musashi.
• Truth in Television: Although one might believe that Jujitsu is exclusively a bare-handed martial art thanks to the watered down for safety reasons version of it used in combat sports. Jujitsu does indeed involve the use of weaponry, due to it being developed by Samurai for close-quarters combat in the battlefield.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: He's nothing to talk about compared to the other fighters whenever fighting bare-handed, but he's a menace whenever he gets to wield weapons and truly fight with no holds barred.
• Walking Armory: From chainmail to Katanas and ancient Japanese weapons, he's ready to go up against someone like Musashi. He'll use explosives if he has to.
• Weak, but Skilled: Despite being one of the physically weakest fighters his skills are capable of going toe to toe with the most powerful fighters should he be equipped with weapons.

Mitsunari Tokugawa

The 13th head of the Tokugawa clan^note As he points out to Musashi, he's not a direct descendant but simply the elderly heir of a side branch of the family that survived to the modern day, and quite possibly the richest man in Japan and the owner of the Underground arena. While he himself isn't a fighter, he's extremely knowledgeable on martial arts, and has the money to create many of the tournaments seen throughout the series.

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• The Alcoholic: If he's not having tea with someone he's talking to, Tokugawa will be going shot-for-shot with them, including slamming down scotch with Hanayama.
• Batman Gambit: Had Yujiro subdued with tranquilizers and sedatives while he was wading through his fighters, though it was Baki's idea since he doesn't want any of his friends to die and suffer at the hands of his father. Tries to do the same thing to Pickle only to be stopped by Doppo who demands him to let the outcome to continue.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's usually all for trying whatever his host is offering him in terms of food, drink and tobacco, but even he had to sheepishly decline when Yanagi's master offered him a joint.
• Fiction 500: Chances are if money can buy it, Tokugawa can pay for it. This goes up to and including making the current Japanese Prime Minister his personal Butt-Monkey at least once per series and funding a wildly expensive and impractical venture to clone Miyamoto Musashi.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of all people, he ends up being this for the Miyamoto Musashi arc, as him throwing his money and connections around are what led to the titular samurai being cloned/resurrected and Musashi killing a lot of people, including Retsu.
• Idle Rich: Living in a very large estate, spectating fights and owning an underground fight arena is pretty much his entire business. He also oversees a highly-funded discovery of the caveman known as Pickle and the cloning of the World's Best Warrior of the late Sengoku and early Edo periods.
• It's All My Fault: Blames himself for Retsu's death.
• Jerk Ass Has A Point: He's usually one of the friendliest people around, but when Doppo and Baki both lost their respective initial fights to Dorian and Yanagi, he was not happy to say the least. As two of his top fighters, he believed that there was no way either of them could be beaten so easily by street brawlers, with him being even harder on Baki since he was the champion of the underground tournament. He even says that the biggest reason why most martial artists lose to opponents weaker than them is because they don't take the fight seriously. Which is precisely what Baki did against Yanagi.
• Keet: He's surprisingly energetic and loveable for a guy who runs a brutal underground fighting ring.
• Large Ham: Very dramatic in both his antics and what he's willing to do to put on a good show in the Tokyo Dome arena.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: He's a very small old man.
• Never My Fault: When Pickle defeats Retsu and is planning to eat him, Tokugawa tries to call out Dr. Payne out for actually expecting him to just sit there and let Pickle go through with this, only for Payne himself (who was against the whole thing and warned Tokugawa numerous times to call it off from the start) to throw it back in Tokugawa's face stating that he and Retsu knew the risks, but still went through with it anyway. Tokugawa's response? "NO IDIOT!!! YOU TOOK ME SERIOUSLY."
• Non-Action Guy: Never does any fighting of his own, but is very knowledgeable in the world of martial arts and enjoys spectating battles. He is the tournament runner and owner of the underground arena, where many big fights of the series are held.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He can arrange a fight between people and endangered species with his money and connections.

Kozue Matsumoto

Voiced by: Sora Amamiya (JP, Netflix ONA), Cherami Leigh (EN, Netflix ONA), Karla Falcón (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

Baki's girlfriend. A quiet and shy girl, she has no combat experience or training, but she will support her boyfriend no matter what, even if she's come to hate the world he now lives in.

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• Adaptational Badass:
  • Played for Laughs in the Baki Domoe parody strips, as she's regularly depicted as overpowering and overwhelming other characters, among other things, such as a Running Gag of her recreating many of Yuujiro's scenes, with her in the place of the Ogre. An example of this is her recreating the scene where Yuujiro chops Yuu Amanai in the collar bone so hard that it deforms his chest, but with a crossdressing Pickle in place of Yuu, and it should be mentioned that Pickle is reduced to uncontrollably crying as he screams in agony at the top of his lungs as Kozue does so, or taking out Baki in a single hit when he tried to fight a cat that heavily resembled him for scratching Kozue, even though she didn't mind it, namely by recreating the scene where Yuujiro flexed all the muscles in his body to defend from Baki's Benda and then sent him flying with a single slap, complete with her own version of the veiny Nightmare Face he made while defending himself.
  • A later strip has her deliver the same headbutt that Biscuit Oliva used to knock out Ron Shobun with. On Oliva himself, due to being enraged by the stupidity of the clothes store he owns having clothes designed to easily tear off by flexing really hard when Baki went there to go on a date to a restaurant with her, making her stronger than Baki, Pickle, and Biscuit Oliva due to effortlessly defeating all three with just one hit each.
• Everyone Has Standards: While she isn't into fighting like most people, she finds it pretty pathetic Ali Jr. can't accept his defeat at the hands of Doppo Orochi.
• Holding Hands: When Kozue and Baki realize their feelings to each other, Baki tries to hold her hand. Kozue has to teach him how, as the freakishly strong Baki never realized how to do something delicate as holding hands.
• Out of Focus: After the Muhammad Ali Jr. arc she makes little appearances.
• The Power of Love: While Hanayama at first fears Baki's engagement will make him weaker, he's forced to admit Baki is growing even stronger. Yujiro clearly states that having to defend someone's else for the first time in his life made Baki subconsciously desire to get stronger.
• Shipper with an Agenda: While her mother is quite hands off on Kozue's dating Baki, Yujiro Hanma makes a great point to ship them together, believing a woman like Kozue will grow up to be able to sire a strong son for Baki and help the Hanma family reach new height of moral and physical strength.
• Surrounded by Idiots: While she knows there is nothing she can do about it she is really frustrated with the fighters throwing their lives and limbs without a care in the world. Even more when they aren't even taking the fight seriously despite the severe beating they give each other. However this comes from a lack of understanding why they gamble their lives on a single fight, but to the extent it's their way of life and have sacrificed normality for the sake of their dream of fighting and growing stronger as time progresses.
• Swiss-Army Tears: When combined with Kaioh Lee's tears, she managed to undo Baki's poisoning.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Not that she can do much, but she will step up to people seem to be endangering Baki. Even if these are people who can kill normal humans like flies.

Primary Arc Antagonists

In General

• Arc Villain: It goes without saying, but they are the main antagonists of their respective arcs. Though "villain" is probably a stretch, seeing as how most of them were never outright evil or truly bad people at their core to begin with.
• Affably Evil: Though most of them aren't necessarily good people, outside of Kaku Kaioh (before his fight with Yujiro) and Musashi, most of them are just neutral characters out to pursue their own goals, no different from the protagonists. Even Pickle isn't so bad. He's just too primitive to realize that his way of life is frowned upon in modern society.
• Always Someone Better: (Overlapping with Always a Bigger Fish) The majority of their respective arcs always has them being this to every other character not named Yujiro (but even he still struggled against certain ones like Kaku and Pickle).
• Defeat Means Friendship: See also Heel–Face Turn. As most of them were never truly evil to begin with, they usually end up on better terms with the main characters after their fights.
• The Rival:
  • The real best way to sum them up when it comes to most of their reasons for fighting the other characters. For example, Mohammad Ali Jr. wanted Baki's title (as well as his girlfriend). And Biscuit Oliver himself would never have fought Baki at all until Baki deliberately came looking to provoke him in the first place.
  • This especially applies to Yujiro, as, with the exception of Ali Jr., they've all made Yujiro sweat a little. Special mention goes to Pickle actually overpowering Yujiro in a strength contest and Kaku and Musashi being two of the only people to ever make him bleed.
• The Worf Effect: For the entirety of their respective arcs, they're virtually untouchable. Once that arc's over however, and its time for the new opponent in town to show their stuff, well....

Kaku Kaioh

The Kaioh of Kaiohs and the supreme grandmaster of Chinese Kenpo who, even at his highly advanced age, is widely considered one of, if not the best martial artist there ever was.

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• The Ace: To say he’s easily the most skilled fighter in the series, Yujiro notwithstanding, is the understatement of the century. As a master of Chinese Kenpo who’s been training and honing his craft for more than 100 years, his skill, technique and mastery far surpasses that of every other known masters in the series such as Retsu, Shibukawa and Doppo. Every character who knows him treats him with nothing but respect and admiration, even his enemies, and not a single person ever sells his skills short, not even Yujiro, of all people.
• Always a Bigger Fish: When Katsumi and Retsu were agonizing over how to throw a punch that would truly break the sound barrier, they turned to Kaku for advice, who proceeded to laugh at their petty lack of wisdom and demonstrated how to cut an egg perfectly in half without disturbing the yolk with the tip of his fingers to help them understand and show that Kaku didn't even think it a problem worth obsessing over.
  "You want a hundred joints? A thousand? A million? No problemo, my friend, you can add as many as you want."
• Animal Motifs: Snakes. His wrinkly skin looks scaly and during his fight with Yujiro, he purposely dislocates his jaw like real snakes can. There's also his Shaori, which has him relax his entire body and become ultra-flexible, just like the animal. Hell, even his status as a Pint-Sized Powerhouse can be seen as him being much like a venomous snake: small, but more than capable of killing way larger animals than them thanks to their venom, much like how Kaku can easily defeat people much bigger and stronger than him with the ungodly amount of technique and experience he's racked up over a century's worth of non-stop training.
• A Lesson in Defeat: He used to be a pure strongman like Oliva who looked down on martial arts, both due to being so physically strong that he could do things like wrestle bulls, and kept winning fights against martial artists to prove that martial arts was a hoax. Then a truly skilled Old Master showed up one day and beat Kaku's ass blue and yellow, causing him to renounce his old ways, throwing out all his lifting weights and focusing entirely on martial arts.
  "Then one day, I met the real deal. An old withered man in his sixties. His power could hardly even be called "power", but I was beaten, kicked and bloodied."
• Badass Boast: Offers to beat up the entire American-Japanese alliance by himself to the Chinese competitors, and going by the stunts he pulled off against Yujiro, he would have probably made good on it. He also has an amazing internal one when he's leaping in to throw Yujiro on his ass with a combo.
  Since my birth, more than a hundred and some years have passed. For 50,000 days, I've been devoted to martial arts... the longest career ever. Longer than anyone. Harder than anyone. Even more than this punk.
• Cherry Tapping: How he defeats Sanwan Kaioh, namely by pantsing him and flicking him in the nuts, which incapacitates him instantly.
• Cool Old Guy: He's an elderly wheelchair-bound man who might very well be the oldest person alive, and is still improving his martial arts to this day. He can give even Yujiro a run for his money.
• Counter-Attack: Kaku Kaioh's specialty, being able to redirect the force of attacks towards him with startling ease. Even Yujiro's attacks can be used against him.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: One of the very few people who could make Yujiro, fully squared-up with his Demon Back on display, spit his own blood.
• Defeat Means Respect: After their fight, he and Yujiro develop a mutual respect for each other. With the emperor even bestowing the title of Kaioh onto the Hanma.
• Determinator: Even after one hundred years of training, he refuses to give into old age. He even fakes a heart attack to force a draw to leave the score 3-1-1 instead of a clean 4-1 for the Japanese-American team. Even before seeing him in action, this level of dedication to throwing hands was enough to earn Yujiro's respect; The man went out of his way to hold a Rousing Speech to the Chinese crowd who were mourning their team's defeat before even getting to see the old man fight.
  Yujiro: "If I am defeated here, NOOOOONE of our previous three victories will have meant a thing!"
• Evil Old Folks: He is a hundred and forty-six years old and can easily trade blows with Yujiro thanks to decades of practice. He also started as cruel, arrogant and slightly racist.
• Faux Death: He fakes his death by stopping his heart to survive a killing blow from Yujiro.
• Foil: Serves as the first real one to Yujiro. Where Yujiro considers everything but strength an impurity in a fight, Kaku thinks everything but technique is an impurity in a fight. Thus, they spend a lengthy amount of time discussing their completely opposite views on martial arts with their fight serving as a demonstration of the greatest of both sides: Pure strength versus pure technique.
• Formerly Fit: In his youth, he was an incredibly muscular man, but nowadays, he has so little body fat and muscle mass that his ribs are visible and his body is built like a pipe cleaner.
• Glass Cannon: Played with. For Baki "standards", he's not that tough due to his extremely advanced age, but the strikes he does endure from Yujiro would have probably killed anyone else on planet Earth and he was still able to convincingly fake his own death "due to natural causes" to the ring doctor.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Defied. As he's primarily focused on mastering his emphasis on pure technique, and he's had 100 years to do so, he stands out above many other masters in the series, to a pretty scary degree. He's officially one of the only people in the series who gave Yujiro a hard time in a fight, and even spooked him for a bit.
• Horrifying the Horror: Once he starts showing the true depth of his abilities, he actually becomes the first and only character in the series to briefly and very visibly spook Yujiro, and even leaves him with no other choice than to, of all things, dodge and block some of Kaku's attacks instead of taking them head-on.
• Humanoid Abomination: By sheer single-minded training for a measure of time more easily measured in decades than years, Kaku has turned himself into one. Despite being frail enough that his chopsticks started feeling heavy decades before he enters the story, he has such adept control of his body's relaxation that he can fake his own death via heart attack at will, while able to resuscitate himself with the same ease. By the present Kaku should be ash in a pot in realistic terms, but despite being possibly the oldest man alive, Kaku has turned himself into this trope by sheer skill.
• I Have No Son!: After his son's flash defeat against Baki, just after he promised to kill him to save the Chinese team's face, Kaku tells him he is not sure if he is really his son and he should drop martial arts forever.
• It's All My Fault: Blames himself for Retsu's death, for allowing him to fight Musashi.
• Killer Rabbit: He's a thin, frail-looking old man, but has an unimaginable level of skill that he continues to develop this day that make him an absolute nightmare to fight. And he even manages to instill fear in Yujiro and force him to fight seriously.
• Logical Weakness: His redirection technique requires him to completely relax his body to absorb a blow. Yujiro plucks one of his hairs immediately before striking disables it as Kaku instinctively tenses up at the feeling. Smashing him against a wall is also an effective way to hurt him, but only if you do it in such a way that he can't just land with his feet to the wall to disperse the attack.
• Lost in Translation: His title of "Kaioh" is spelled using a different Kanji than the other ones to indicate his supremacy, as his title is spelled "海皇", meaning "Sea Emperor", while all the other Kaioh use "海王", which means "Sea King". This is averted in the official translation, which translates his title as well as the rest of the Kaiohs into English, making him into "Sea Emperor Kaku".
• Master of All: Imagine everything about Retsu, only cranked up to a million!!!!
• Miniature Senior Citizens: He's very short, looking like the size of a child next to almost every character.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: As a young man he was massive, and extremely powerful even if he still had a small frame. At present, he's downright atrophied, and can barely lift chopsticks or support his own weight. Not that he needs physical power, as shown below.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Muscles Are Meaningful for raw strength, but Kaku believes that physical power is the lowest form of martial arts. Kaku is weaker than even a non-martial artist, but his technique and insight are so perfect that he fights without using strength.
• Nightmare Face: Probably why he keeps the Cool Shades on; When Kaku gets serious, he looks like a shriveled up demon with a roar on his face.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Not only did Yujiro's massive initial punch do absolutely nothing to this guy, but Kaku found the time to leave his Cool Shades hanging off of Yujiro's wrist.
• Old Master: Quite possibly The premier gangster grandpa of martial arts Manga, being almost three times Orochi Doppo's age and twice Shibukawa's. Kaku is so physically "weak" that his chopsticks began to feel heavy sixty years ago, and he's still training, improving and adapting to create the ultimate martial arts body and can blast Yujiro through the air in one punch.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Non-literal example; He indirectly gives Katsumi the tools to fight Pickle by teaching him how to break the sound barrier with martial arts, causing the young man to maim himself fighting Pickle, barely surviving. Then he teaches Retsu how to use Shaori against a sword, causing him to recklessly challenge Musashi to a duel that results in Kaku having to see one of his best students put to rest.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He quickly incapacitated a Muay Thai fighter just by literally catching him with his pants down. He's about a third of Yujiro's size, yet can send him flying like he weighted nothing.
• The Rival: The first person in the series who can actually be called this, but he's this to Yujiro, due to their different views on what's more important in a fight. It also helps, that he's the first guy since Orochi to actually give Yujiro a challenge.
• Signature Move: Shaori, a technique involving relaxing the users body to the maximum that only he can use to it's fullest extent. He can use it defensively to become completely limp and reduce any impact from a strike to nearly nothing, or offensively to relax his body to the point where he can almost break the sound barrier only to then become tense with the resulting explosive power when he strikes, with Baki comparing it to the kind of explosiveness used for pitching, batting and jumping. His One-Inch Punch while using this principle is shown to almost shatter the Arena's concrete walls.
  Yujiro: "You sly old fox, I knew something was up..."
• Space Whale Aesop: After his stint as the main threat of the Raitai Tournament, he has taught several of the main characters techniques that took their martial arts to an entirely new level by sharing some of the wisdom he's been itching to have students talented enough for. Both Katsumi and Retsu immediately went on to fight unwinnable battles emboldened by the techniques Kaku had taught them, and their own talents saw them learn the technique in a matter of days, but not perfect it. As a result, Kaku's teachings inadvertently causes Katsumi to maim himself trying to close the gap against Pickle, and Retsu to be outright killed thinking his Shaori was enough to avoid the slashes of Musashi. The ultimate lesson is, these are skills to be mastered over a lifetime, not to be recklessly used against an impossible opponent for the sake of a sick fight.
  "He died thanks to the "wings" I gave him."
• Took a Level in Kindness: After losing to Yujiro in the Raitai Tournament, he becomes far more affable and casual, and also gains a laid-back sense of humor.
• Training from Hell: He describes his martial arts training as this, as it produced results far slower than his muscle training ever did, and he had to grit his teeth and helplessly watch as his muscular, chiseled body shrink back in, day after day until the skin sagged from his bones.
• Troll: Stopped his own heart to prevent Yujiro from delivering the final blow, managing to trick him in the last second before restarting his heart a few minutes later. Even Yujiro had to admit that he found it Actually Pretty Funny and crafty.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Prior to his fight against Yujiro, he revealed that he used to be this, focused entirely upon building up his muscles, and looking down on martial artists, until he encountered a truly skilled one, who defeated him. That defeat was what prompted Kaku to invert this trope, training to perfect his skills, while allowing his muscles to degrade, until he reached the point of where he was so frail, he could barely pick up his bowl and chopsticks to eat, but skilled enough to toss more powerful men around like they weighed nothing.
• The Unfought: For Baki, at least. Kaku is currently the only primary arc antagonist to never face the young Hanma directly, and for good reasons. Given the sheer gap in their skill levels, and the insane fight he put up against Yujiro, Baki wouldn’t have lasted a minute against the old Kaioh, leaving it up to Yujiro to be the one to face him.
• Villain Has a Point: As racist as he was as at the start, he wasn't wrong to be angry about the title of Kaioh being given away so easily to subpar fighters. As the tournament proved (and ignoring the foreign fighters' absurd strength), MANY of the present day Kaiohs simply don't live up to their hype and reputations, something that even Retsu and Yujiro can't help but agree with.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Due to the Five Inmates fitting an entirely different build altogether, He's the first real Arc Villain the series ever gets. And this oldhead is no pushover. He makes an absolute joke out of everybody he squares up with. Baki himself never even got to fight him. And likely for the best, as Kaku was so far out of his league at this point in the series, that it took the likes of Yujiro to face him (and even HE had trouble with the old man).
• Weak, but Skilled: He is over a hundred years old which sapped all his strength but by pure skill he can deliver blows that can send Yujiro flying and even take full powered hits from the Ogre by relaxing his body to completely absorb them. He even asserts that this is arguably the point of martial arts, stating that they were created to allow the weak to stand up to the strong. As such, when mastered, martial arts would allow even children or old women to stand up against vastly more powerful opponents such as Yujiro.
• World's Best Warrior: He's practically peerless as a fighter and martial artist due to the obscene amount of skill and technique that he has been developing over the countless years of training he underwent, and is still continuing to this day. And it is clearly shown when he manages to fight on equal grounds with YUJIRO FRIGGIN' HANMA, and forcing him to actually put effort, such as actually blocking and dodging Kaku's attacks due to the very real threat he poses to the ogre.
• Worthy Opponent: He and Yujiro come to see each other as this after their fight. While Kaku himself could never match his strength, he still proved to be crafty enough to basically force the match to end in a draw. Something Yujiro doesn't even try to deny. The old emperor even bestows the Hanma with the title of Kaioh, stating no one will complain if he uses it. Though Yujiro basically rejects it stating that even if he had defeated the old man, no one would've accepted it anyways. Finally capping it off with the elder Kaioh requesting for the two to have a rematch in 100 years, something Yujiro nonverbally agrees to as he laughs to himself.
• You Have Failed Me: Severs the hands of three elders with a single chop for giving the title of Kaioh to subpar fighters.

Muhammad Ali Jr.

The sole son of the famed Muhammad Ali, Ali Jr. is an arrogant American boxer who claims to be the world's best.

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• All for Nothing: After all his training and effort to preparation to fight Baki, he gets his ass handed to him and has to be saved by his dad, and has nothing to show for his efforts. He even admits to Kozue that ultimately nothing came out of trying to fight Baki.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: An arrogant boxer guy, in his case. He even goes as far as to say that he's perfected the art of boxing, only for the rest of the arc to show that he isn't nearly as good as he thinks he is.
• Artistic License – History: Muhammad Ali does have a son named Ali Jr. (born 1972), but he was hardly an only child (nor was he Ali's only son), being the fourth of nine children, and took up making films and a museum about his father's legacy instead of boxing professionally.
• Awesome, but Impractical: He's practically the embodiment of this trope, due to being a certifiable menace whose punches are capable of knocking out most of his opponents in one hit, and his footwork is nothing to sneeze at either, yet he suffers from a cripplingly low endurance and the lack of the same mindset that the rest of the cast have that also holds him back, causing him to be repeatedly defeated by nearly everybody.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He acts cordial and friendly to everyone, including his opponents, but in actuality, he's really just a spoiled egotist who thinks all his opponents are beneath him.
• Blood Knight: Subverted, as while by all means he likes a good fight, he doesn't go as far as the rest of the fighters in the Bakiverse. He has not completely based his life around beating and getting beat up like the others and doesn't really want to.
• Boisterous Weakling: He is a competent fighter as long as him and his opponent doesn't treat the fight as a serious life-or-death situation. Once the rulebook is out and he faces a merciless fighter like Jack, he doesn't stand a chance.
• Boxing Battler: Although he doesn't call it boxing but his own martial art invented by his father. In practice it is still boxing but with lower punches allowed.
• Break the Haughty: By the end of the arc, he's reduced to a sniveling sobbing mess.
• Bullying a Dragon: He doesn't take the Hanma family as seriously as he should.
  • When he was a kid, he decided to box the big adult talking to his father for fun. Yujiro was surprisingly restrained when he simply send him flying across the floor with a flick of his finger, then told him to stop crying since he was the one who picked the fight.
  • Common sense dictates that usually hitting on someone else's girlfriend and asking her to marry him would've been an automatic death sentence, especially when it's right in front of their significant other. Jr. not only does this, but does so to Kozue, Baki's girlfriend. At the time, Jr. was lucky that Baki still retained his Nice Guy demeanor (Granted. This was partially on purpose as Jr wanted to fight Baki, but was turned down. And thus, at least part of his flirting with Kozue was a means to piss Baki off and goad him into fighting). However, when they get in the ring, Baki never bothers with even trying to entertain him or his pride, basically manhandling him the moment the fight began, then smashing in Jr.'s testicles the moment he finally decides to take the match seriously, followed by Baki bashing his head in and attempting to break his neck before Ali Sr. had to intervene. To cap it off, Baki then uses his win to challenge Yujiro, effectively making everyone involved completely forget about Jr.
  • After his wins over Gouki and Doppo he decides to pick a fight with Jack, since he was the last opponent Baki faced during the tournament. Jack gives him his first brutal taste of defeat by absolutely trouncing the guy while shrugging off all of his blows.
  • Then Gouki and Doppo decide to have a rematch when Ali Jr. hasn't fully recovered and go all out on the kid. Jr. just thinks they are sore losers, is too prideful to decline and gets destroyed by the old men.
• The Cameo: He briefly appears in the "Kengan Ashura" crossover with his father.
• Combat Pragmatist: Zig-zagged. On the one hand, his willingness to use low blows is very dirty by boxing standards. On the other hand, his base being boxing and his experience being sport, Jr. is unwilling or unable to fight as dirty as his opponents, which becomes a massive disadvantage against stronger foes.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Ali Jr.'s biggest weakness is that he treats all fights as sport: he is so used to fighting in a ring that he doesn't understand the full gravity of a street-level, no-holds-barred fight. This is part of why he kept losing is that he was far too used to fights where a referee would call off the fight after he fell unconscious or when he thought his opponent went to far.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • His Humiliation Conga started with Jack, who No Sells all of his punches and beat him within an inch of his life.
  • At the hands of Baki, who gave him a concussion from a right hook, then a kick to the crotch causing him to writhe in pain, which leads to Baki stomping on his face repeatedly until he couldn't fight anymore. Baki had him by a chokehold in an attempt to break his neck, until Ali Sr. stepped in to prevent stop him from killing his son by sucker punching Baki off of Jr.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: Invoked, Baki says it looked easy because it went fast, but if Jr.'s punches landed he would have lost, which is why Baki made it quick.
  • His fight against Jack could be seen as one; his first punch forced Jack to take a knee, visibly shocked at the power of the blow. Every punch after that one had far less effect, however.
• Dance Battler: A few fighters comment on how he moves like a dancer. His footwork is one of his biggest advantage as he can close into punching distance with speed and grace.
• Decoy Protagonist: The second half of The Great Raitai Tournament arc focuses almost exclusively on Jr., as he goes through a classic, if condensed, Shonen plot. He faces off against a variety of strong fighters, triumphing in his first couple of battles, only to be humbled by his fight against Jack, before his previous opponents come back and humble him further. He's then humbled even more by his mentor/father, and then motivated to persevere and keep pushing. He undergoes a brief Training from Hell montage in preparation for his showdown with his destined rival, then faces off with Baki in the ring, where... Baki promptly crushes him in a matter of seconds. Afterwards, he's almost completely forgotten by the other characters, his brief fight completely overshadowed by Baki finally delivering his challenge to Yujiro and Yujiro accepting, and Jr. has been reduced to inarticulate blubbering, his pride and confidence utterly destroyed by his brush with death.
• Determinator: He keeps getting back up even after horrible punishment. This is Deconstructed as his inability to know when to give up makes him come across less as valiant and awe-inspiring and more like an arrogant asshole. After all, the people he goes up against are individuals who fight to the death on a routine basis- failing to admit defeat against them when they willingly spare you is basically spitting in the face of their mercy.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Not intentionally, but he was lucky he didn't get his head torn off by Yujiro when he smugly told him he was happy that he wasn't hurt before walking out of the hotel.
• Entitled to Have You: He believes that by defeating Baki, he will win Kozue, who he views as the number one woman (regardless of her consent).
• Fatal Flaw: His strikes are dangerous and his footwork makes him nimble enough to get in reach but he is too laid back against fighters that are willing to kill or die for victory. As well, his immense Pride means that while he is a good fighter, he isn't nearly as good as he thinks he is, and this means that people are able to exploit his weaknesses very easily.
  • The first time his flaw is shown is when he fights Doppo and can't land blows mid fight. Doppo explains it's because his body realized the fights changed from a training spar to a real fight. Ali Jr. is still able to get the upper hand thanks to his footwork and Doppo not pressing the advantage.
  • His fight with Jack ends with him seriously injured because Jack just powers through his punches and he refuses to give up when he can't win so Jack brutalizes him until he can't stand.
  • His fight with Baki ends in a flash because Baki has already planned to kill him while Jr. only relied on finishing him with one punch like usual.
• Fearless Fool: Poor kid just doesn't realize what he's really getting himself into by challenging Baki and his friends. Until Jack comes along.
• Foil: To Baki, both can be arrogant prodigy sons of great figure in the world of fighting. The main differences is Baki is focused to beat his dad while Jr. is pretty aimless in his thrive for power or to charm Kozue. When Doppo challenge Baki to a fight Baki declines because he doesn't see the point or how it will make him stronger while Jr. will accept a rematch even if he can barely walk out of pride. Also Baki gets his arrogance beaten out of him multiple time by Yujiro or other fighters and accept those defeats while Jr. only gets humbled after fighting Jack and doesn't learn much from those defeats.
• Glass Cannon: While he is durable he takes too long to recover from hits. In boxing it wouldn't be much of an issue since the fight is interrupted when the person is down but in underground fights his opponent are going to keep pounding him until he can't fight back.
• Hopeless Suitor: To Kozue, who, while friendly, really doesn't seem all that interested in him, and has to turn him down multiple times until he gets the hint.
• Humiliation Conga: After his fight with Jack, who makes Jr. regret his no giving up attitude, almost everyone he defeated before come back to punch his face in since he is too wounded to fight back and too prideful to give up. His own father decides to pick a revenge match on him when he still needed crutches. It is topped by Baki beating him with one punch and a Groin Attack with his dad having to step in before Baki would have broke his neck.
• Hypocrite: Understandably calls Orochi and Shibukawa out for not being able to accept their initial losses to him, and challenging him to a rematch while he's injured. But then when they win those rematches (which Jr. could've refused), he has the nerve to claim to Kozue that he didn't actually lose. Even she doesn't buy it.
• Jerk Ass Has A Point: Arrogant, spoiled, and self-centered as he is, he's not exactly wrong in calling Gouki and Doppo out on challenging him to a rematch after beating them both fair and square once already (with Doppo himself even making his initial fight with Jr a fight to the death). Not helping the fact that they're both now challenging him again after he's already been injured by Jack. This even extends to his own father challenging him, who even calls him a coward whose just making excuses not to fight him. But by this point, Jr could hardly stand without crutches.
• Lightning Bruiser: Fittingly enough for a boxer, his speed and agility are top notch, and his punching power is nothing to sneeze at either.
• Killing Intent: Averted, he doesn't have any serious desire to kill his opponents, apparent in the anime where he doesn't get a Red Eyes, Take Warning moment unlike the other fighters.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Though he is extremely talented, and is probably the most skilled boxer in the series, at the end of the day, he's still an inexperienced rookie when it comes to street fighting and likes to pick fights with veterans far above his weight class who've been regularly fighting tooth and nail for their lives in brutal non-sport environments for years. And by the end, comes to realize the hard way just how outclassed he truly is against the other characters.
• One-Hit Kill: One good hit delivered by him is an instant knock-out against pretty much everyone he faced except Jack, and even Jack was staggered a fair bit. Deconstructed as the arc goes on, however, as Jr is so used to ending his fights this way, that he isn't prepared to face someone in a drawn-out fight who's either got a good enough read on his style to dodge his punches, or is merely strong and tough enough to just power through them altogether. As a consequence, Jr fares very poorly in all his fights for the remainder of the arc.
• Red Boxing Gloves: He sometimes wears blue boxing gloves.
• Sore Loser: He refuses to admit that Doppo and Shibukawa defeated him.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: The point that he's not nearly as unbeatable as he thinks he is never seems to get through his head.
• Tongue Trauma: Jack's final punch to the face nearly split Jr's tongue in half. Which is his own fault for sticking it out to him anyway.
• Underestimating Badassery: He doesn't treat his opponents as seriously as he should, including the Hanmas, and especially Baki himself. This marks the start of his downfall when he foolishly decides to challenge Jack of all people, who promptly knocks him down several pegs in the most brutal fashion possible.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Make no mistake, he genuinely is a very talented boxer who has incredibly powerful punches that are capable of taking out almost everybody in a single hit as well as excellent footwork, something that pretty much every character comments on. The only fly in his soup is that he isn't used to the no-holds-barred, potential life-or-death fights that are commonplace in the Baki universe and lacks the killer instinct to truly do meaningful damage, leading to him having a number of crippling weaknesses that severely reduce his effectiveness as an actual fighter, such as issues with recovering from hits, and an inability to truly go all out on his opponents due to him not taking them seriously.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Unlike other antagonists in the series, he disappears completely after his arc is done with no explanation. While it's later shown in a flashback that he finally gave up on Kozue after she comforted him after his fight with Baki, he's still a complete no-show in later arcs.
• Writing Around Trademarks: In the original Japanese he is named "Mahomedo Arai" (as opposed to Muhammad Ali's Japanese name, "Mohamedo Ari"), and the Netflix subtitles have him as "Mohammad Alai Jr.". The manga fan translation keeps his name as Muhammad Ali Jr.
• Worf Had the Flu: Discussed and defied. He makes this claim to Orochi and Muhammad Ali Sr. as he's still visibly injured from his earlier fights with Jack and Shibukawa. Only for them both to throw it back in his face and say he's just making excuses. Doppo and the rest of his close friends regularly fight against the worst that the criminal underworld has to offer, and simply "not being in their best condition" isn't gonna make their enemies go away (with Doppo himself even getting his hand cut off in one of the very arcs preceding this one). And if Jr truly wanted to survive in their world and become a real fighter, he'd need to get out of that way of thinking quick.

Biscuit "Unchained" Oliva

A Cuban-American mercenary who made his fortune killing threats deemed too dangerous for anyone else to deal with. He runs a prison in Arizona in which he is officially a prisoner, but also the warden.

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• Affably Evil: He's an antagonist but he's a rather pleasant person to be around. He even treats his opponents with a smile as he shatters their skeletons with single punches. Really, he's merely an antagonist on paper. As unlike Muhammad Ali Jr, Oliva has no real grudge or issue with Baki (or anyone, for that matter) and just wants to live out his life to the fullest. And since he works as a bounty hunter, most of the people he beats up are usually lowlifes themselves, anyway. Baki just sees Oliva as a practice dummy before facing Yujiro. And it's only when Baki goes out of his way to antagonize him first that Oliva finally becomes angry enough to want to fight Baki.
• Badass Bookworm: He might not look or act like it, but he sure enjoys himself with a massive collection of books in his private prison.
• Big Eater: He needs to eat at least one hundred thousand calories a day to maintain muscle mass, almost ten times as much as Olympic athletes or powerlifters. His heavy intake of beer, wine and booze probably helps a little to add to that number, but in essence, restaurants should be prepared to serve a meal for thirty average adults to feed Oliva.
• Big Fun: While sometimes an arrogant, attention-loving giant hunk of muscle, he's actually a fun guy to hang out and have a drink with. Heck, he even offers the Police Captain Morio Sonoda a Japanese imported beer during his visit at his Luxury Prison Suite because he happens to keep a collection of foreign beers.
• Bounty Hunter: Though he is deemed a prisoner by the state he has very many special privileges in exchange for his services as a bounty hunter, specifically for catching other fugitives. Most of the prisoners in his Arizona State Prison were those he captured himself. Commissioner Morio Sonoda enlists his help to capture the 3 remaining death row convicts after Speck and Dorian were defeated.
• Chubby Chaser: He still utterly adores his morbidly obese wife who used to be an eye-turning Proud Beauty before the medication she has to take for her illness made her fat.
• Cigar Chomper: He has kept one in his mouth and exhaled while Baki sucker punched him in the face.
• Cool Uncle: Given his personality and his odd (yet endearing) friendship with Yujiro, it's not hard to see him as this to Baki.
• Dub Name Change: The English dub of the ONA translates his last name as Oliver instead of "Oliva".
• Eagleland: A mixture of both types. On one half, he's hedonistic, overly-indulgent, and rather arrogant too, like Type 2. But on the other hand, he's a genuinely friendly individual who also worked hard to get where he is right now, in terms of status and physical strength, and continues to put in hard work and effort in his job as a bounty hunter and for maintaining his physical strength.
• Fantastic Fighting Style: Severely downplayed. As aside from standard punches, kicks, headbutts and other strikes that are rendered obscenely powerful by his monstrous physical strength, he uses bodybuilding poses to preform strange and bizarre moves, ranging from relatively mundane such as flexing his muscles to defend himself from attacks, and outright outlandish, such as his Ball technique, a defensive technique where he curls up into a ball to defend himself that also doubles as an offensive one, as he can use it to catch and squeeze his enemies like a giant hand by "opening up" and tighty squeezing them in a very uncomfortable position through what appears to be a pseudo full-body bear-hug.
• Fluffy the Terrible: One of the most powerful men in the world is a walking slab of muscle named Biscuit. Subverted as long as you're not a target of his, as he's a laidback kind-of-guy with a friendly and even pleasant temperament, offering Morio Sonoda some imported beer when he visits, as well as responding to Baki asking him what he eats to get so strong and muscular is to pull him in for a hug and give him advice by telling him that he'll only truly get stronger through The Power of Love.
• Friendly Enemy: Oliva is another fighter who wants to defeat Yujiro but he is also one of the very few characters who exchanges friendly banter with the Ogre.
• Gentle Giant: He's a musclebound titan of a man, sure, but he's genuinely pleasant and non-malicious nearly 99% of the time. The 1% of the time where he's actually angry, you'd better watch out.
• Gilded Cage: Baki convinces him that his luxury is what keeps him chained, as he prefers fame and food over proving his strength in a fight.
• The Hedonist: He lives in a luxurious and comfortable suite of a jail cell decorated with classical artwork, and spends his time off by eating gourmet food and drinking fine wine, and even sleeping with his wife.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He might seem like a happy-go-lucky and carefree hedonist who seems like he's an incredibly shallow person, but his response to Baki asking him how he got so strong is to downright tell him that his philosophy is that love is the only thing in the world that can make a man stronger, and he also states that one of the reasons why he got so strong is so that he could carry around his massively obese wife.
  • One might look at him and guess that his hobby is something extreme and exciting, yet when he doesn't have anything to do, his favorite pastime is reading from the massive library he has; In his fight with Baki he eloquently describes cognitive theory by Tor Nørretranders, which Yujiro apparently suggested to him as reading. He calls Tokugawa silly for expecting a bookworm like himself not to know of the legend of Nomi no Sukune just because he's not Japanese.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: He rapidly heals several hole-shaped scars he got from shotgun pellets by eating several steaks. The prison guards jokingly compare him to a lizard that can regrow it's tail in that regard.
• Immune to Bullets: Oliva no sells a shotgun blast to his stomach. The shotgun pellets fail to penetrate his abs and he squeezes the pellets out of his body by flexing.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Downplayed as while he's pretty tall at 190 or so centimeters, he's only gigantic in width, but just like many top-end lifters like Kyriakos Grizzly, Oliva is absurdly flexible and has amazing muscle control, which are all key points to his insane bodybuilding moves as his Ball.
• Informed Ability: Despite being considered the second strongest person on Earth, his feats aren't that different from Kaoru or Speck and the introduction of Pickle and Nomi takes him down the ranking too.
• Irony: The man known as the freest man in the world is an inmate, and the warden of a prison, meaning his job is to take away the freedom of others while simultaneously being the inmate of a place known for being the opposite of freedom.
• Luxury Prison Suite: His prison allows him to enjoy fine steak dinners and wine whenever he desires along with his very own library and expensive furniture. The warden even lets him sleep in a bed with his wife as he knows if Oliva's ego and hedonism are not fulfilled the army won't be enough to stop his escape.
• Made of Iron: Even by the series' standards he's inhumanly durable, to the point of shrugging off point-blank shotgun rounds. He even has a subdermal plate covering his chest, which foils an attempt to stab him through the heart with a katana.
• Manchild: Acts a lot like a happy-go-lucky spoiled brat, even Baki gets tired of it at one point when he turns what should be a fight into a childish game.
• Mellow Fellow: He's almost always laidback and carefree and doesn't take his opponents seriously.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: He's an extremely muscular man, so much so that he initially looks obese in clothing. His muscles are strong enough to let him withstand shotgun blasts and let him pop off the pellets by simply flexing his muscles. Even Sikorsky's barrage of sharp knuckle strikes fails to cut his chest.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: As the series went on Oliva, while still having among the biggest muscles yet, loses a sparring match (meaning they traded blow for blows with power and weight and nothing like speed and agility) with Baki and gets destroyed by Nomi.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Visually based on and named after the only championship bodybuilder to ever beat Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime at Mr. Olympia, Sergio "The Myth" Oliva.
• Pet the Dog:
  • His response to Baki asking him what he ate to get as strong he as he is is to pull the boy in for a hug and tell him that love is the only thing that makes a man stronger.
  • Oddly enough while acting as a manager to Dorian while he's participating in the Raitai tournament, when Dorian's candy just got knocked out of his mouth by another Kaioh ranked opponent before losing the fight, Oliva cleans the candy before putting it back in his mouth.
• The Power of Love: He states the only reason he became as strong and muscular as he is is because he wanted to always be able to Bridal Carry his ridiculously obese girlfriend.
• Punched Across the Room: Sends both Sikorsky and an ex-NYPD cop turned terrorist flying out of buildings with a single punch.
• Red Baron: "The Unchained". He is one of the two inmates in the Arizona prison that walks free (Jun Guevaru being the second) and it's stated that it's because they simply can't chain him, as he can go through the walls like paper.
• Scars Are Forever: He has a prominent scar on the side of his face where Doyle cut him.
• Scary Black Man: Hard not to be intimidated by a fellow of his size and might. That said, it's mostly subverted so long as you don't piss him off.
• Smug Smiler: It's pretty much his default facial expression, especially during fights. It's rare that anyone manages to wipe it off his mug.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Nomi no Sukune II wipes the floor with him, not just due to being about twice as big and about as strong as Oliva on top of being a Sumo Wrestler with The Gift. Nomi goes out of the way to explain that Oliva's type of build, an "inverted triangle" in Nomi's metaphor, stands no chance trying to wrestle against a "triangular" Rikishi who's center of gravity is lower and far more stable when compared to Oliva, a Top-Heavy Guy.
• Super-Strength: His workouts include holding down an ascending helicopter with a rope attached to his old-school leather training belt, easily deadlifting half a ton and consuming food to the point of absurdity to fuel his lifestyle. He does 400kg bench press, Kureha Shinogi's personal record, for repetitions... while in rehabilitation for damage to his spine and ribs...
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Played for Laughs in a Baki Domoe strip. When Kozue and Baki go to a clothes store he owns in the strip for a date at a restaurant, he reveals that one of the selling points of his stores products is that they're able to be easily flexed off, as Baki demonstrates, causing an enraged Kozue to headbutt him in the face in the exact same manner he did to Ron Shobun out of pure fury at the idiocy of it all.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Relies primarily on the strength and durability granted by his massive muscles. He's able to overpower Olympic-level judokas with minimal effort. Against Shibukawa, that's a different story... It gets deconstructed over the course of the series. His reliance on solely his muscles means he does progressively worse in fights against Strong and Skilled opponents, outright being Worfed by Nomi.
• The Worf Effect: Gets his ribs broken by Nomi and slammed onto the floorboard, luckily he survives; Nomi stated that if it was a solid concrete floor, he would've been dead. During their rematch he wipes the floor with Sukune. Completely reversing his rib grasp attack
• Wicked Cultured: Downplayed on the wicked part, as he is a genuinely pleasant individual, but he has exquisite tastes; He is clearly an avid bookworm to the point where most of enormous suite is just reserved for shelves upon shelves of books, and enjoys classical art as well, having several Neo-Hellenic busts all over his room.

Pickle the Caveman

A man found perfectly preserved in a saline rock formation in a deeply underground mining facility at the border of Colorado and New Mexico, Pickle is an evolutionary anomaly, set free after 190 million of years of stasis by Albert Payne and his team of experts.

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• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: He's over 8 feet tall, 400 pounds of shredded muscle on long powerful limbs, inhumanly huge calves and well-developed enough lats to make him look like he has a cobra hood when he's all stanced up, has sharp canines and originally came from the Jurassic/Cretacious era.
  Retsu Kaioh: "Even in such a pressing moment, I thought to myself; Just how many gold medals would this man have?"
• Always Someone Better: He's this to Yujiro in terms of raw strength. During their brief confrontation, Pickle had Yujiro pressed against a wall. And while Pickle was shown having fun, Yujiro was clearly struggling, even ultimately having no choice but to finally get the caveman off of him with Aiki. This is telling because Yujiro hates using techniques over pure strength to win fights.
• Animal Motifs: An interesting example, as he tends to apply motifs to other characters in his head, comparing them to various dinosaurs he's encountered due to certain attributes of them reminding him of them, like comparing Hanayama to a triceratops due to his large size, great strength, and durability, as well as the fact that he was able to resist his tackles, or comparing Musashi to a Deinonychus due to his (comparatively) small size, agility, and his fearless, fight-eager nature.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: It's been well established that humans and dinosaurs didn't live at the same time together, although this is brought attention to.
• The Berserker: While Pickle is no stranger to picking up certain attributes that show off his intelligence, albeit to a small degree. Most of his fighting style revolves around maximizing his incredible strength and speed into sheer ferocity due to his primitive nature. This is especially played straight whenever he gets angry and decides to play for keeps, making any fight he's a part of into a bloody mess.
• Big Eater: This guy would eat dinosaurs to the bone in the span of a day. In the modern day, he once ate the entire contents of a meat truck in only a few hours.
• Blood Knight: He has no real way of communicating with modern people because he predates the concept of language, but his understanding of "fighting spirit" and such things aren't far from fighters-for-sport of the modern age. Hanayama asserts as much about him after only a single clash with him.
  Hanayama: "Don't you worry, old man. He's one of us."
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Pickle is too primitive to understand modern morality but still human enough to not be put down like a wild animal. He can appreciate other fighters' spirits but he still tries to attack and sexually assault innocents if he feels like it. He also can't fight his instinct to eat his kills, as he comes from a time where expending calories fighting something and not eating it could mean starvation. He cries in sorrow as he eats Retsu's leg, having come to respect the man greatly, but cannot help but eat him. Another demonstration is how he assumes that the scientist who shot him wanted to play and rough-house with him, and he attempted to respond in kind by shaking him back and forth and leaving him unharmed, indicating that he does recognize his descendants as fellow people, but isn't above trying to eat the fighters he defeats despite this.
• Boring, but Practical: One of Pickle's greatest advantages against modern fighters is that his late bipedalism means he has a neck similar in structure to that of a bull or ram, and thus its incredible stability means that impacts to his head or jaw cannot concuss him. Baki is the only one who figures out how to get around this by specifically striking the minuscule flap of skin attached to the chin to create a whiplash-like effect, forcing Pickle's brain to slam against the walls of his skull repeatedly.
• Butterface: Inverted. One of the main things that makes him so very odd-looking is that he's got a boyishly handsome face atop his massive, lanky body, emphasizing that he's on the precise dividing line between a person and a prehistoric monster.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Most of his fights become these. Due to having inhuman levels of strength and speed but near non-existent martial arts knowledge, his better trained human opponents often injure or counter him briefly even if they can’t beat him.
• Cute Mute: An animalistic variation with a very pretty face, yet he's still a primitive caveman that's unable to speak; let alone using only grunting sounds and incoherent yells to try and communicate.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • It's how Baki ended up befriending him, and even teaching him about respect and some etiquette.
  • Also, despite Miyamoto Musashi beating him badly enough to leave him bleeding and scarred, next time they meet Pickle is genuinely happy about having found a strong friend and offers him crocodile meat and entrails he hunted in the sewer as a gesture of affection.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Given he is from prehistoric times, his values aren't the same as a modern-day person. Best exemplified when he forced himself on a female journalist, not realizing such a thing is regarded as very wrong nowadays. He does seem to understand that he hasn't made a good first impression and for the most part stays out of the public eye afterwards.
• The Dreaded: Animals dread Pickle in contrast to people who often underestimate the caveman for his lack of perceived intelligence. Anything from grizzly bears to lions and tigers will whimper and cower just getting near him before eventually fleeing like their lives depended on it despite him paying them no attention at all.
• Dumb Muscle: Subverted. Despite his inability to speak, poor comprehension of the world around him aside from food and fighting, as he thought a scientist who shot him due to perceiving the caveman as a threat was simply playing rough with him, as well as the almost constant vacant expression he has in his eyes and on his face, he shows a lot of surprising intellect as well as some complex fighting skills, such as counter-attacking and grappling and even how Aiki works.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Only subverted in that he somehow didn't die from it, but his encapsulation in a saline rock formation together with a T-Rex and perfect preservation for 190 million years implies that he was in the midst of hunting a T-Rex for dinner, with a roar on his face, in the moment the area was struck by a meteor.
• Every Scar Has a Story: Taken to its logical conclusion; Pickle has a huge scar circumventing his entire torso that looks like it came from being nearly being bisected by a large sword... Except Pickle predates swords. Hanayama, Retsu and Tokugawa collectively realize that Pickle got it from getting bitten into by a T-rex only to shove its jaws open and escape.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Pickle apparently predates the idea of clothing so he usually just waddles around with his gonads out, though he does make enough of a (un)educated guess that clothes are the norm for humans in the modern day and took a street bum's clothes to try and fit in. Later, the scientists taking care of him were kind enough to provide Pickle with a fundoshi while he was sleeping, as an in-universe explanation for Itagaki not having to draw and then censor Pickle's junk every time he appears.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • Being a caveman from 190 million years before the present day, he is EXTREMELY different from modern Homo sapiens in every aspect. Pickle is outright referred to as the peak of Homo erectus.
  • Pickle proves capable of fully realigning his joints to a crooked stance that allows him to throw his punches with a range of motion downright impossible for Homo Sapiens without literally tearing their muscles and ligaments apart. It's so hard to describe that even the fighters are stumped for a conclusive explanation to this day, but Retsu theorizes it's something humans lost the moment they began to consider the idea of external weapons as an option.
  • It’s hinted that Pickle's unique state as an evolutionary anomaly was the result of resting squarely on the biological borderline between bipedalism and a quadrupedal ancestor.
• Human Popsicle: His arrival in the modern day was the result of being perfectly preserved in a saline rock formation for millions of years.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Pickle eats anything he kills, with not even humans, his genetic descendants, being safe.
• Invincible Villain: He's the only primary antagonist so far that went completely undefeated throughout his entire arc. He even beat Baki Twice! The only real loss he suffers is later during the Miyamoto Musashi arc, where he ultimately flees from the titular samurai after Musashi beat him bad enough to remind him of a wasp.
• It Can Think: Sure, he's 190 million years out of date on everyday knowledge, but compared to the dinosaurs or early Homo Erectus, he must have seemed as if a savant by the fact that he's still able to communicate on the basest of levels with modern man; The prime example being that he perfectly understands Gerry Strydum stripping naked to match Pickle and offering him a handshake, and later proving fully capable of Defeat Means Friendship even if he initially engages in cannibalism because he struggles to comprehend a fight where you don't need to eat your opponent after killing them or knocking them out.
  • On a lesser note, one of the first scenes that demonstrates that he's more than just a prehistoric brute is when he's convinced a scientist who just shot him in self-defense due to being startled by him wants to play and rough-house with him, indicating that he's intelligent enough to have a concept of play. He also fleeces a man pissing in an alleyway for his clothes because he figured that since everyone wears them, he would have to fit in.
• Lightning Bruiser: Pickle is unfathomably strong, fast, and durable on a level that can at least match Yujiro, even if Pickle is nowhere near as technically sound as Yujiro. In his time, he hunted and killed Dinosaurs with his bare hands.
• Man Bites Man: He uses his canines to tear human flesh during a fight and afterward. He's even better than Jack in this aspect.
• Meaningful Name: He was named "Pickle" by the scientists who discovered him due to him being found perfectly preserved in a saline rock formation, thus making him pickled.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Pickle is, to put it quite simply and accurately, built different. He's so ungodly tough that his only reaction to getting ran over by a cold-storage truck is to immediately get back up and ram the truck with a tackle for so rudely getting in his way, then going through the truck's entire contents in a matter of minutes before wandering off, completely unharmed. Jack's jaw-shattering uppercut that manages to send his huge body flying is barely even a nuisance to him, and Musashi taking his katana to him and cutting at his joints only inconveniences him enough to run off, seemingly immune to infection as well as he proceeds to hide in the sewers afterwards.
• No Social Skills: Being a caveman hailing from millions of years ago mean that he has an absurd lack of social awareness, as he thought a frightened scientist pulling a gun on him and shooting him in self-defense wanted to play and rough-house with him, causing him to respond in what he thinks is kind by shaking him back and forth and leaving him (relatively) unharmed by throwing his bullets back at him like it was a friendly game of catch (hard enough for the bullet to leave what looks like a gun wound) and slapping him in the face hard enough to send him rolling and badly concuss him, though still conscious. To be fair, though, in his time, "social skills" entirely consisted of how good you were at killing, eating, sleeping, and procreating whenever possible to keep the species alive.
• Noble Demon: Despite previously living in a simple cycle of killing and eating, having no concept of language or manners, and being largely ruled by his instincts, he's still not inhuman, and can communicate with people of the modern day (not without certain caveats, of course). When Katsumi offers him his ruined arm, he goes on his knees with his hands folded as if in prayer because he recognizes the great value of the "gift" presented to him as food.
• Oh, Crap!: When Jack comes back for another round, Pickle thought he was a ghost for a moment and haul ass since as far as he is concerned, Jack is dead the moment he knocks him out.
• Picky People Eater: Because of his hunting instinct he will only eat something that can attack him without fear.
• Primal Stance: Pickle is so ancient he only became a biped later in his life. This means his neck and upper back is built to withstand a far higher pressure than a biped and makes it virtually impossible to concuss him.
• Religious Bruiser: It's not really in question whether Pickle is capable of imagining the concept of a 'higher being', merely whether his idea of God resembles ours in any way; his way of giving thanks to Katsumi for offering his shredded arm, after fighting for his own higher purpose of taking Karate to the next level, is identical to the way humans have recorded themselves doing since before antiquity: on his knees, head bowed, with hands folded.◊
  Eras. Times. Races. Cultures. Intellects. There is an action that human beings use beyond such differences. When they face an event of the universe that surpasses human knowledge and logic. Or when they encounter a higher spiritual power... One that overflows with mercy, love and will. Beyond humanity and closer to the divine... This is something that cannot be imitated or simulated; For a strange reason... Humans find themselves on their knees, bringing their hands together with great respect. What was supposed to be Pickle's spoils of war, was actually given by the dear opponent with great kindness... No matter how savage, he is still a man. No matter how primitive, he is still a friend.
• Running Gag: Pickle taking a hit in the groin by most of the characters who fight him during his arc. He gets hit down there by Baki, Retsu, and Katsumi, which is mostly a product of him towering over all of them and not thinking to defend his groin, making it an easy target.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Unlike the other fighters in the series, Pickle is a predator and hunter-gatherer from ancient times and therefore will just give up and run away in self-preservation whenever a particular prey proves to be far more trouble than it is worth or is too dangerous to eat, such as Jack or Musashi.
• Smarter Than You Look: He has a constant, vacant look in his eyes that makes him look like he's literally thinking about nothing at all as well as usually having either a dumbfounded expression or a goofy smile that makes him look even dumber, but he's a lot smarter than he looks, as he's able to use complex fighting techniques such as choke-holds and grappling as well as understanding modern humans' languages to a degree.
• Super Prototype: He's an ancestor of humanity and is very much physically superior to the average human, and even then, he can give the many freakishly strong fighters in the series an extremely difficult time.
• Super-Strength: Actually surpassed Yujiro in a test of strength, forcing him to use a technique to end it (Yujiro loathes using techniques to win fights). It's so extreme that Pickle snaps the spine of an oversized Siberian Tiger with little more than a tight hug, and in one panel detailing his exploits, he's shown shoulder-throwing a charging Triceratops Judo-style by grappling two of its horns and throwing it over himself mid-charge.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Due to him coming from a society based around cooperative hunting and grouping together in tribes to survive, Pickle has no incentive to fight his fellow man except for entertainment, to play with others from his tribe, and mark territory, thus the very idea of martial arts is inconceivable to him. Due to this, he'll become overwhelmed with fear and immediately flee to safety if his opponent proves to be a genuine threat to his life, due to being a hunter and a survivor first and foremost, as shown with Jack and Musashi.
• Unbreakable Bones: More or less. While his bones probably aren't unbreakable, they are still far denser and several times stronger than most humans and no one, not even Baki, has managed to break more than a canine tooth on him. Even Musashi's sword swings don't leave anything beyond flesh wounds, as they can't even cut through his joints.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Being a prehistoric human, he fights very much like a beast. He is one of the strongest characters of the series so he doesn't need much else unless faced with someone of absolutely prodigious skill like Baki. That said, it seems more a case of him having skills that are more applicable to hunting dinosaurs than fighting smaller opponents like other humans. Pickle has a basic understanding of things like Counter-Attack, the principle behind Aiki, and wrestling, since the latter is something he did often when hunting back in his time. While hunting in the sewers, he puts a massive overgrown crocodile into a perfect rear-naked choke before forcefully pulling the beast through a sewage pipe too small for it to fit, skinning and delimbing it in the process.
  To Pickle, it was just a small dinosaur.
• Vague Age: He has a youthful face that has more in common with how Itagaki draws the face of a child than he draws the face of an adult as well as a complete and utter lack of body hair too, plus, Musashi also remarks that he's grown the last time they've seen each other, and he also displayed some child-like behaviour, as he ran to Motobe for comfort and buried his face into the latter's chest while clinging to him for security much like a child when he fled from Musashi, as well as assuming a scientist who shot him when the caveman startled him wanted to play with him and he shook him back in forth and left him otherwise unharmed in response, but aside from this, his true age is unclear.
• Weaksauce Weakness: If someone is able to close the gap in physical abilities Pickle is revealed to be really weak to counter since he is not trained well enough to see them coming. Baki nearly destroys him until he decides to fight with strength alone.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Justified somewhat, since the "name" Pickle is more of a nickname the scientists who dug him out and began testing on him gave him for convenience, though it ends up sticking due to fitting rather well since Pickle was, well, pickled by the saline rock formation: perfectly preserving him in a dense layer of salt to ensure he wouldn't hit an "expiration date" and decompose.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He isn't afraid of any beast, except for wasps. His survival instincts cause him to see any other creature that could genuinely threaten him as a wasp, as is the case in his fights against Jack and Miyamoto Musashi. This fear began when he killed a prehistoric wasp and ate it, but the venom in it caused him excruciating pain. He views Jack as something similar, a being who is dead yet still has the capacity to hurt Pickle greatly should he decide to unwisely approach him.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Musashi ended up running circles around him to showcase how deadly he is, leaving him to run away for Motobe for comfort and wordlessly begging for him to help.
  • Played for Laughs in the Baki Domoe parody strips, as he winds up receiving the same knifehand chop that Yujiro used to kill Yuu Amanai, courtesy of a VERY pissed off Kozue as part of the running gag of her recreating Yuujiro's scenes with her in the place of the ogre when Baki chose the caveman over her when she, Jyaku Kaioh, Doyle, as well as Hanayama, Doppo, and Retsu were playing a blind date game hosted by Tokugawa.
• World's Strongest Man: Was this during the Jurassic era, and is likely this for the modern age as well, given his brief spar with Yujiro to where he can contest with The Ogre in a showing of brute strength.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Something he's quickly able to recognize in the other fighters in the series. In Pickle's time, all his opponents were superheavyweight dinosaurs of unprecedented physical power, and hesitation in the face of such great foes was out of the question. Pickle realizing this aspect in the fighters that come to challenge him, going up against an impossible opponent like the Dinosaurs were for him, without even doing it for survival's sake and eating another day, lets Pickle discard his cannibalistic tendencies.
  • He quickly found Hanayama to be this in their brief scuffle, thanks to him being able to stay upright when Pickle gave him a charging chest bump that dug up the concrete beneath Hanayama's boots for a dozen meters.
  • Given how they're currently the only two people who have ever made him run away in genuine fear, he more than sees Jack and Musashi as this.

Miyamoto Musashi

A biological clone of the swordsman who brought low sixty men in a duel, Musashi was reborn to see how he'd stack up to the best fighters of modern times through an altogether irresponsible scientific experiment Tokugawa funded starting in the 1980's to bring the "Strongest under the Heavens" from 1584-1645 back into the modern day.

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• Above Good and Evil: Musashi only cares about cutting down opponents in order to gain recognition and little else. He doesn't see his actions as evil, as it is the only thing that he knows how to do. When confronted upon his apparent lack of purity by Yujiro, Musashi immediately questions whether such purity is even necessary and childishly exclaims that he will make a name for himself once more. This is noted to be Musashi's own kind of purity.
• The Ace: Easily the most skilled and dangerous of the primary arc villains (even above Kaku), and likely the most skilled and dangerous of the entire cast.
• Affably Evil: He's generally a pretty polite and relaxed guy, but nevertheless only cares about killing people in duels.
• Always Someone Better: See also Always a Bigger Fish. His raw strength and endurance are shown to be on par with Yujiro and Pickle's. And his skill and mastery with a sword far exceed the fighting skills of nearly all the other characters shown. And the kicker is, he's a legendary warrior from the ancient times who knows many other unorthodox ways of fighting besides just cutting people. Also because he's a warrior from those times, he lacks the other characters NO KILLING policy.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Due to being unfamiliar with the development of modern fighting, Musashi is initially very overconfident in the superiority of swords over fists, believing the very idea that fists could ever be equal to be a joke. He quickly learns the hard way what the fighters of Baki are capable of. Many of the times he gets hit, it is because of something he didn't know was even possible, such as his sword failing to cut through Hanayama's hard bones.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • He was able to effortlessly keep track of Gaia's attempt to track him and treated his Hidden Weapons like a ballistic knife more like a learning experience and a funny toy than an attempt on his life.
  • He somehow saw through Motobe attempts to poison him, despite the poison being scentless and translucent.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Musashi was restored by Tokugawa out of a rather irresponsible curiosity at how he would stack up against the strongest fighters the modern world has to offer. Musashi quickly demonstrates that he doesn't follow the code of fighters, but rather sees his opponents only as stepping stones for his personal fame. As such, he prioritizes victory above all else and sees every serious fight as a battlefield. Motobe, another warrior in the same vein as Musashi, specifically lectures Tokugawa if he realizes what he has unleashed onto the world.
• Blood Knight: Despite his calm, awkward demeanor, he is one of the most bloodthirsty characters in Baki. All he cares about is slashing people, and getting fame and fortune for having slashed them. Unlike the modern fighters, who are satisfied with just knocking out their opponents, Musashi has zero reservations about killing.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He seems like The Sociopath from a modern perspective as he hardly shows much of any concern on who he injures or maims that's unlucky to challenge him. In the fight between him and Pickle, he says that it gets very dull and boring when his enemies and opponent goes down within a single hit, as for Pickle; Musashi can slash him as many times as he wanted to. That said, he does have a code of honor and will only respond to an opponent's level of force with an equal level of force. Anyone who fights him one on one, he will follow the "rules" as his opponent dictates them. If his opponent explicitly won't use lethal force and is not trying to kill him, then Musashi will likewise do the same and only defeat his opponent while not killing them (Doppo and Baki only wanted to challenge him to a fight unarmed and while it was a no rules fight, they weren't trying to kill him, merely risking their lives. Musashi just knocked out Baki and Doppo.) When a police officer challenged him with a gun and stated his intent to kill if Musashi moved then Musashi killed him without hesitation. Even then Musashi paid respects to the man by kneeling down to his fallen body, realizing that he was just doing his job as an officer of the law, while later telling his fellow officers to be at peace as their comrade died in a proper contest without fear. He will, however, show no mercy to multiple opponents attacking him with the intent to kill or do serious harm to him as he sees it as "war" not a "contest".
• Character Exaggeration: The duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Kojiro Sasaki was supposed to be one of the greatest challenges he's ever faced, but it wasn't legendary like it was supposed to be since in actuality Musashi, in his own words, tells Tokugawa that Kojiro wasn't "weak, but wasn't special either". He doesn't even remember Kojiro right away, but on the other hand, simply being considered not weak by Musashi's monstrous standards probably meant Kojiro wasn't a pushover either.
• Child Prodigy: Crossed with Child Soldiers; He was seventeen by the time of Sekigahara, yet slew dozens of men by himself, alone and outnumbered and using enemies as Human Shields against arrows. It's implied to have had quite the impact on his psyche.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He acts and behaves in a way that makes it seem that he's in his own little world, and he seems to act as if every day were the first day of his life, which gives him an oddly child-like innocence that is only furthered by his wild curiosity regarding the modern world. He also always considers how rich and famous defeating the many powerful fighters in the series would make him, and even wonders if he'd be tasty when he hears that Pickle eats the flesh of his opponents.
• Combat Pragmatist: To Musashi, everything is fair game in the art of war. Mind games, taunts, cheap shots, projectiles, explosives, absolutely anything goes for Musashi for the sake of victory. His most favored strategy is provoking his opponent while making it seem as though he is doing it unintentionally, a strategy that works very effectively against Baki and Doppo. To his credit though, Musashi himself is never angered when someone plays dirty against him, noting that it is nothing that he hasn't seen used before.
• Commonality Connection:
  • He feels this with Pickle, as they are men from the past brought into modern day, and refers to Pickle as a fellow "beast".
  • With Yujiro of all people. Both are regarded as the best swordsman and fighter respectively and live up to their reputations. Both are also self-centered people who possess a sense of untraditional morality and are hedonistic in nature.
• Cool Sword: His renowned Unsigned Kaneshige is recovered by Tokugawa and refitted with a modern handle by the halfway point of the story before his battle with Pickle. It unties it's own strings under his gaze and is sharp enough to cut a goza post^note Tameshigiri are made to be roughly as durable as the human spine, not counting the fact that a sword gains purchase easier in such a post than a human body full of wet and fleshy tissue. by just nudging it with the blade.
• Death by Irony: Well, defeat-by-irony, but still. His final fight with Baki ends with Baki telling him, in no uncertain terms, that Baki is here to kill Musashi, and will not hesitate to take him down via any means necessary. Musashi balks at this, angrily stating that no one is taking him seriously... only for Baki to rebuke that no, everyone here is taking him seriously, and then baits him into being distracted long enough for Sabuko to exorcise him. Musashi made a life out of trickery and using every tactic in the book to defeat his opponents, so Baki went the extra mile and hired outside help to finally be rid of him.
• Dissonant Serenity: He seems to place absolutely no value on life, not even his own, so he'll treat even attempted murders on his person as a particularly interesting new type of prank, or ruthlessly cut down officers of the law when they threaten his life.
• The Dreaded: Motobe thinks so, also warning Retsu not to face him in combat and telling him that if he's going up against Musashi; then he might as well bring a machine-gun in a fight considering that he's going to be facing one of the most renowned swordsman and deadliest warrior.
  • It's pointed out that this is especially true since most of the people who face Musashi are Japanese, enough so that the sight of Musashi drawing a second sword is enough to send a Special Assault Team running.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: He is somehow more alien to the modern era than Pickle, a literal prehistoric caveman. Musashi's ideals of cutting down opponents to earn recognition is utterly incompatible with the laws of the modern world. When Baki tells him to his face that he doesn't belong in this world, Musashi laughs that he already learned this but states that he will continue to do so. He becomes so dangerous that he needed to have his soul be forcibly exorcised from his body the same way he was reincarnated in the first place.
• Foil: He has exceeding similarities to Yujiro Hanma. Both are considered to be the strongest of their eras and are freakish-looking men who spend most of their time beating others up. They also share some other specific parallels, such as the same "arms-spread open" battle stance (something Baki notes) and hair that stands upright when they get enraged. However, a key difference is that Yujiro fights mainly to prove that he is the strongest while Musashi fights for victory itself so that he can gain recognition. The two men get along surprisingly well.
• Gonk: Musashi's face looks like a cross between a lion and human, with large staring eyes. In fairness, the historical Musashi was never said to be handsome, particularly in his old age. Amusingly enough, Musashi's clone body before it is inhabited by his soul looks like a handsome man with thick eyebrows. Once Musashi's soul is placed in, the eyebrows fall off and is replaced with his trademark vacant stare.
• Hero Killer: Yujiro and Pickle may have horribly maimed main characters but Musashi will kill them if he decides they are serious threats. He murders Retsu and almost kill Hanayama before being interrupted. Motobe even risks his life just so the fighters stop challenging Musashi.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: While the Real-Life Musashi was no slouch, this one can not only defeat modern-day soldiers easily and is powerful enough to probably defeat an entire army, he can make Yujiro bleed with his sword.
• Historical Domain Character: Yes, that's right. THAT Miyamoto came back from the dead.
• Historical In-Joke: His fascination over a modern-day handgun and praise of it mirrors how the real Miyamoto Musashi advocated the use of arquebuses in his Book of Five Rings, which are an ancestor of the modern day rifle that were widespread in Japan.
• Horrifying the Horror: He has become among the very few things that can frighten Pickle into running away in fear due to his fighting-style making the caveman see him as a giant wasp. Later on, Oliva hidden in the audience starts sweating bullets at his mere presence.
  Gaia: "Your status as a man of war is far too tall. So tall I can no longer see the summit..."
• Humanoid Abomination: He resembles a lion in his facial structure more than a man, and indeed, his spine looks more like a great cat's than a human's, naturally giving him the flexibility and lower center of gravity that his relaxed stance requires.
• Human Popsicle: After his soul is banished, he is put into cryostatis in an almost King in the Mountain manner in the lab where he was grown in the first place, so that someone more responsible might one day bring him back if it becomes necessary.
• Humble Hero: Musashi is very arrogant as he justifiably believes himself to be above every other fighter. However, he will acknowledge when an opponent is able to get the better of him and takes such humiliations in stride, treating every defeat as a learning experience. The best example is when Motobe defeats Musashi and afterwards points out how Musashi was holding back the entire battle as he knew that Motobe wasn't going to kill him. Musashi internally acknowledges being read completely and gracefully admits defeat.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: The only reason most fights in Baki-Dou last as long as they do is because Musashi is curious on what fighters of the modern world can do. Musashi is able to read attacks before his opponents can initiate them, but often allows them to happen for his own education. However, in a true match, Musashi will not hold anything back and will do anything to kill his opponents.
• Invincible Villain: You thought Pickle was a nightmare to fight? Musashi's worse. His life and experience as a warrior from the feudal era gives him a tremendous advantage over modern fighters, especially when it comes to swords, allowing him to score win after win against everyone who challenges him. He even beats Pickle so bad, the caveman eventually flees from him, as he comes to view Musashi as a wasp. And unlike the modern fighters, he has no problem truly fighting to the death, which leads to him killing Retsu, many police officers and members of the JSDF, and almost killing Hanayama. And outside of a couple of sparring matches, he even ends the arc completely undefeated. As Baki himself never even beats him outright in their rematch. He just had a plan to stall and distract Musashi long enough for Tokugawa's sister to come in and exorcise him while both of his hands were occupied, sending his soul back to the afterlife.
• Killing Intent: Can dish these out to the point people think they were already slashed, and that's not even considering his Your Mind Makes It Real imaginary swords. Naturally, he can also sense every other persons killing intent.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the series was dark and violent before, the stakes were ultimately quite low outside of perhaps the Death Row Inmates arc, and even then the casualties involved mostly consisted of underprepared police officers and correctional facility staff. With Musashi's arrival, however, it's made readily apparent that he plays for keeps, with each fighter sans Motobe not understanding, fatally in Retsu's case, that Musashi is completely willing to murder someone without a second thought. It takes him massacring an entire special forces unit for the fighters to even slightly realize what kind of monster they're dealing with.
• Manchild: The core of Musashi's motivation is to gain the recognition and praises from people, not a search for greater inner strength or enlightenment. Unfortunately, the only way he knows how to gain recognition is cutting down people, which he is ridiculously good at. After his bout with Hanayama, he is escorted by an entire platoon of police and is gawked by countless onlookers, and his response is childish delight on how quickly he has earned himself a following.
• Master Swordsman: He has achieved such unity with the sword that he doesn't even need an actual sword to fight. He is also arguably the second strongest character in the entire series, possibly the strongest depending on the context. See World's Best Warrior. Oh, and he's even strong enough to easily injure Yujiro in his Demon Back state.
• Mundane Object Amazement: Due to coming from the past, common objects like lighters and handguns are fascinating to him, simply because of how convenient they are.
• Nerves of Steel: Musashi never gets unnerved or afraid in battle. Not even against the likes of Yujiro Hanma. When a piece of debris sticks onto his eyeball, he doesn't even blink. Even when a devastating blow is landed against him or an opponent uses a technique he has never seen, Musashi will calmly pick himself up and analyze what has happened and has already thought of a counter strategy. When checking to see the state of his teeth, he reaches for his molars by sticking his fingers through the gash on his cheek simply for the sake of convenience.
• Non-Linear Character: Musashi is... something summoned into a clone of his body with the full experiences of his previous life but restored to his physical prime, making him this by default, but it's further exaggerated because flashbacks and anecdotes of his first life come to the reader in a very non-linear fashion, and usually to foreshadow some superhuman feat or unpleasant outcome for someone interested in testing Musashi.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Musashi is certainly a Cloud Cuckoo Lander who is a tad out of touch with reality, but he will sometimes feign ignorance to purposely provoke an opponent. He considers this all a part of the art of war. This is why he doesn't consider his victory over his first fights with Baki to count for anything, since Baki did not know what kind of fight he was in, allowing Musashi to use simple provocation to easily defeat the boy.
• One-Man Army: At Sekigahara, he slaughtered a numerous amount of soldiers while surrounded. Even against a modern day defense force with firearms, he is able to force them to surrender by virtue of the fact that even coming close to wounding Musashi would require an untold number of fatalities on their side; moreso then he had already inflicted.
• Outside-Context Problem: Both due to being the Miyamoto Musashi himself, who was brought into the present day through a combination of cloning his body and Tokuagawa's psychic sister placing his soul, which she channeled, into the body, as well as him being a master of weaponry first and foremost, as almost the entire the cast specializes in bare-handed fighting with the exceptions of Motobe and Retsu, and the only other antagonist before him that truly specialized in fighting with weapons rather than just being willing to use weapons in a fight to win was Yanagi. Naturally, this is one of the reasons why he's so dangerous, as his swordsmanship has evolved to such a level that he doesn't need a sword to cut anymore.
• Pet the Dog: He hugs Tokugawa goodbye after he's escorted off of his estate by the police as an act of gratitude for everything he did for him.
• Primal Stance: His signature fighting stance. This comes from the historical Musashi's belief in assuming a relaxed, combat-ready stance at all times, as portrayed in his self-portrait. Throughout the series, Musashi demonstrates his ability to go from this hunched stance to having his sword fully drawn in an instant.
• Pure Is Not Good: Miyamoto Musashi may well be the purest character in the series, along with the caveman Pickle. All he cares about is cutting down opponents to earn the admiration of others. He vies for material pleasures and seeks to be "the brightest star the world has ever seen" once more. This makes him particularly dangerous even in the world of Baki, to the point where Baki himself realizes that Musashi doesn't belong in the modern world. Killing and war are the only things Musashi has ever known, and there is nothing than will deter him from it.
  • On the other hand - Musashi is considered impure by the rest of the cast precisely because his motivations for fighting aren't just for fighting's sake. While the main cast fights for self-improvement and the challenge, Musashi fights for material pleasures, fame, and admiration - the exact things that the rest of the cast abhors. He has little if any regard for any person, rule, or the law of the modern world: especially if it gets in the way of reaching his goals and desires. In this sense, he is more narcissistic, hedonistic, and vain than Yujiro (who is the first to point out Musashi motives for fighting are impure). It's this very thing that Motobe tries to warn everyone and prevent, which everyone ignores until it's too late.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Most of his foes are cut down by him in a single slash of his sword, even if they're wearing armor. The main reason he is so interested in Yuujiro, Pickle and Hanayama is that their skin and bones are too thick for a simple sword to go straight though them.
• Spider-Sense: He can predict an opponents attack before they even form the decision to do it. This pretty much gives him Super-Reflexes that make him almost untouchable. The fact that he is either unfamiliar with modern fighting (for example, bones that can't be cut by swords) or intentionally wanting to get hit is it is often the only reason he ever gets injured.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The entirety of Baki-Dou revolves around him, and consists of him trouncing through essentially every major character in the series save Yujiro. However, his presence has been alluded to quite a few times prior to his debut, such as the name of Baki's dog and during the Oliva fight.
• Strong and Skilled: His insane sword mastery may be the most dangerous thing about him, but he's also extremely strong and can take a lot of punishment. He's even the first person to ever effortlessly damage Yujiro (even after unleashing his demon back) with a blade. Like many characters in the series however, his ego is his biggest flaw in his seemingly impenetrable defense.
• Super-Strength: His grip strength is said to allow him to break fresh bamboo, something historically used for anything from spears to palisades, just by violently swinging it.
  • Musashi's grip strength allows him to evenly grapple with Hanayama and Pickle. At one point he confesses that he probably can't split a helmet in half, but that the strike will still kill the guy wearing it by sheer blunt force trauma.
  "The depth of the metal's color... It's glinting lustre... Yes, this is indeed the work of the swordsmiths of Seki. I should not be able to entirely bifurcate it in one strike. Yet, I would have no difficulty in making a life-ending bifurcation."
  • He instantly defeats Baki the first time they fight by picking up Baki by the ankle and slamming him head-first into the ground by swinging him like a sword, it should be noted that Baki remained completely still as if his joints and spine didn't exist as he did so, and the latter even noted he couldn't have escaped from such a grip if he tried.
  • When Yujiro grabbed his sword and sent Musashi flying with a haymaker, Musashi's grip is so firm that Yujiro is dragged along with him, while Musashi is still holding onto his sword.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • His whole character arc results in him grievously injuring and nearly killing most of the main cast due to him being not just a swordsman, but the best swordsman, who is also more than willing to play for keeps on a whim, and he has no problem doing it with a huge katana, something the protagonists can't realistically handle without getting gravely injured, and it doesn't help that Musashi grows convinced he'll earn fame and fortune going along with the main characters' antics which frequently involve him brutalizing people for sport or just for the hell of it while all his expenses are taken care of by Tokugawa, meaning he's basically a One-Man Army just looking for a scrap around Tokyo. This results in Retsu Kaioh dying in a match that ended up resembling a public execution, and him outright waging war against the JSDF more or less out of amusement, and the wild curiosity around ressurecting a national hero, who in reality was a deranged and highly skilled serial killing warrior, is ultimately shown to the wildly irresponsible.
  • A lot of emphasis is put on the fact that a longsword like the ones Musashi use is heavy enough to be hard to steer the swing of it's course, and when Musashi is swinging it with his Super-Strength, it moves faster than the human eye can perceive, making it near-impossible to dodge. Even a human weapon like Doppo or Retsu who wouldn't have to worry about being confronted with a knife or gun in the streets can't carelessly get close to Musashi, who can literally draw his sword so fast that you'll land in it and get cut in half mid-flying kick.
• Telepathy: Musashi is able to pick up on the brain signals an opponent generates when they decide to initialize an attack. This allows him to outmaneuver the 0.5 second delay between thought and action discussed by Tor Nørretranders, allowing him to counter or subdue attacks before they even happen, which looks like Super-Reflexes to an onlooker but is in fact much more terrifying and a borderline supernatural power. Allegedly, samurai of Musashi's time developed this skill out of necessity due to the unforgiving nature of Single Stroke Battles where even the slightest advantage meant the difference between life or death.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: His most distinctive trait is his large eyes and their soul-piercing gaze. This seemingly comes from the real-life Musashi's belief that a warrior should train his eyes to see everything in his peripheral vision clearly. Indeed, Musashi often speaks to people without looking at them directly, and is rarely taken off-guard by surprise attacks.
• Troll: His favored form of greeting is mentally slashing others with his imagination, which is so potent that his victims actually believe themselves to have been cut, although there is no actual physical damage. Musashi seems to take particular pleasure in how unpleasant the experience is for others, but it also seems to double as a pragmatic way to gauge the strength of his opponents without actually attacking them. For example, when introduced to a Master Swordsman Tokugawa brings as a sparring partner, the swordsman is slashed seven times without being able to put up resistance. But against Doppo Orochi, Musashi tries three attempts but notes he was subdued each time.
• World's Best Warrior: The Japanese obsession with worshipping "the strongest in the world" began with this guy. He was pretty much the Yujiro Hanma of his age, "invincible under the heavens", above laws and rebuke due to sheer martial prowess, and he proves this by dishing out one Curb-Stomp Battle after another to the majority of the cast. Even his duel with Yujiro shows that he's capable of damaging the Ogre with far greater ease than any of the other fighters, causing Yujiro the most damage he's taken from anyone since Baki or Kaku,. A main focus of Baki-Dou is how Musashi is a "warrior" who prioritizes victory and survival above all else, as opposed to the rest of the cast, who are "fighters", who engage in no-rules matches for the sake of pure competition and improvement. As such, he cannot exactly be compared in the same vein as the others, but his status as a "man of war" is immeasurable.
• Worthy Opponent: While Musashi is absolutely confident that he can beat anyone and disregards weakness, he does respect any strong opponent who puts up a good fight or anyone who has the guts to face him in a life or death battle.
  • He and Yujiro see each other as this. Bonus points for Musashi visibly drawing actual blood from the Hanma in three separate places on his body. Musashi even notes Yujiro is the first person he couldn't cut down in a single stroke.
  • He compliments Doppo for being able to leave a clear cut on his[Musashi's] cheek with nothing but a kick in a dual exchange between them even though he beat Doppo.
  • He considers Motobe a true warrior as Motobe uses the weapons of war and always takes his fights as life or death. Musashi sated that Motobe was on another level from the "fighter" of the Korukuren arena and his respect grows after Motobe beat Musashi in a "match" though not in "battle". He grows to respect Izou Motobe further after the old master managed to restrain him.
  • He holds nothing but respect for Retsu after their match which resulted in Musashi cutting Retsu down. He went so far as to claim the difficulty of fighting Retsu was on the same level as fighting through the battle of Sekigahara.
    Musashi: I felt admiration. He took my blade with his fist and held it by clenching his hand. I admired his discipline. I admired his skill and growth as a fighter. I admired the valor with which he fraught. And in truth I felt fear.
  • He has immense respect for Pickle, due to being the second person he couldn't immediately cut down.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: He is even better at this than Baki. His Sword Simulation technique can make opponents felt as they've been slashed by an actual katana. Also, his ultimate technique completely forgoes the usage of swords and uses his hands like swords via chops performed in an identical fashion to a swordstroke.

Nomi no Sukune II

The 272th power descendant of the legendary Sumo Wrestler, Nomi no Sukune II is a simple Buddhist monk who joins underground fighting and makes an instant impact.

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• Acrofatic: Despite weighing around 250kg, he can throw himself up a climbing wall with only three of the many, many handholds. When he accidentally slams his head against the top of the wall, he's still able to land on his feet safely. He is also incredibly flexible in spite of his massive bulk.
• Badass Preacher: He's a Buddhist monk raised in a mountainous forest temple, and summarily cements himself as one of the series' greatest powerhouses in just a few scenes.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He said he'd show the world what Sumo's 10 seconds of peak performance can do, implying an upcoming I Am Not Left-Handed moment. Baki proceeded to knock him out cold with a single wrist strike in the span of 9,01 seconds while completely No Selling Sukune's haymaker of a palm strike.
• Big Beautiful Man: He's built like a mountain, but even Baki admits that he has an aesthetic, girlish face despite that.
• Big Fun: He isn't as energetic as most examples of this trope, but he's polite and kind to virtually everybody he meets.
• Blasphemous Boast: In a conversation between Kanou and Sukune, Sukune initially hints that he would only use his formidable kubihineri move against a god. Then he goes even further, while also indirectly equating himself with a god:
  Kanou: You say that it's... a move that you can't use on humans. Then, what - or, who - would you use it on?
  Sukune: If a god...
  Kanou: ...
  Sukune: Or I, myself, were threatened by someone. ...On them, I suppose.
• Charles Atlas Super Power: His bloodline had done what Yujiro couldn't do twice in the span of 272 generations; turning coal into diamond with pure grip strength. Sukune's grip is so absurd that he can grab onto people's bones above the skin, such as grabbing Oliva's ribs through his enormous back muscles and picking up an active Oozeki by his shoulderblade.
• Combat Pragmatist: His grip strength allows him to use his opponent's jaw, clavicle, ribs and hipbones as Mawashi in an emergency where he can't get on his opponent's belt to throw them by their bones. The effects of this are absolutely as horrific as they sound.
• Died Standing Up: Severely downplayed. He is one of the few to remain standing after being knocked out by Yujiro's punches.
• Fingore: Jack bites one of his little fingers clean off for throwing a cheap shot at him after some provocation because they were both itching to fight the moment they saw each other. Tokugawa considers this almost a sacrilege since the pinky is incredibly important for a Sumo wrestler's grip; after the fight Jack implies he might have lost if Nomi had still had that finger because it made his Abaranage incomplete.
• Gentle Giant: Downplayed. From what's been shown of him so far, he's polite to virtually everybody he meets on top of having a kind and humble personality, but it's shown that he can be a surprisingly brutal fighter. As he ends up breaking Oliva's ribs in their fight with his grip strength.
• The Giant: He's easily over two meters tall and weights somewhere north of 250kg of pure muscle. He makes even the massive Yokozuna or Hanayama look normal-sized.
• Heroic Lineage: He is a direct descendant of Nomi no Sukune, the winner of the first Sumo/Kakuriki bout in 23BC against Taima no Kehaya, as recorded in the Nihon Shoki. Said ancestor is implied to have invented Shiko by accident when he raised his leg into the air to crush Kehaya's spine with a stomp.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: He's a very tall fellow who looks even bigger due to his fat and muscular build, and his girlfriend is so short next to him that he can comfortably carry her around like a ventriloquist dummy.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: He's as wide as he's tall and is built like a brick shithouse, yet moves as if all that toned muscle and excess fat on him didn't exist. One notable tic of his is his tendency to hop up and down before a match to get pumped up just to illustrate his speed and grace.
• Lightning Bruiser: He is a Rikishi, and as such his initial charge is horrendously fast, to the point where he can blow civilians away with just the shockwave of his initial collision against an imaginary opponent.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Not only does he have no idea who Yujiro is, the concept of someone being so strong they can walk up and slap political leaders around is absurd to him. Even though that happened often in Baki's universe and he even defeated one of those individual, Oliva, in a fight.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Jack biting through his trapezius muscles means he can't use any of Sumo's many signature throws on Jack because the chain of leverage in throwing begins at the traps, though Sukune cleverly gets around this by jumping with Jack attached to himself to spike Jack into the ground. He also loses the fight due to blood loss as he ran a Deliberate Injury Gambit letting Jack bite him in the carotid to pull off the throw while already being covered in bites, resulting in him collapsing while Jack had time to recover from the heavy attack.
  • As a Rikishi, he is used to massive impacts from the Tachiai. He will No-Sell almost any individual attack, but is vulnerable to getting comboed so long as the guy throwing the punches at him can hit hard enough. He was left at a complete loss at Jack's bite-infused Kickboxing attacks, but then proceeded to more or less only wake up when Jack socked him in the face with a huge roundhouse kick with no follow-up.
• Made of Iron: He can eat sucker punches from Oliva with ease, and actually breaks the bodybuilder's hand when he meets it with a charging headbutt. He also pretty much shrugs off the Yokozuna blowing out his eardrum in one good slap, and is one of very few men who's stayed upright so far after Yujiro knocked him out.
• Mr. Fanservice: He's a rather good-looking character, and, due to being a Sumo Wrestler, he wears nothing but a mawashi whenever he fights.
• Naïve Newcomer: He is new to underground fighting and doesn't know who the Hanmas are. It's only after Baki lands him on his ass with one kick that he takes him seriously.
• National Stereotypes: Surprisingly enough, for a Japanese work of media, he is very stereotypically Japanese, being an extremely polite, respectful, and humble individual whose also a Sumo wrestler.
• Stout Strength: He is a dyed-in-the-wool sumo wrestler from a family who has done nothing but be dyed-in-the-wool sumo wrestlers in secluded training for 2000 years. His body is well-rounded for giving the best stance and explosive power possible, to the point where he's basically impossible to throw, as well as lift a barbell with 263 kilos loaded onto it using his pinky finger.
• Strong and Skilled: His grappling skills are absolutely top-notch, having the technical prowess to make Oliva not lift him as much as a millimeter when he gets a perfect grasp on Sukune's belt despite the fact that Oliva can treat Judo Olympians like children.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: He still has the stamina problems of a normal Sumo Wrestler, meaning that he ends fights fast or gets ended equally fast, and third option is either a Deliberate Injury Gambit to win when his gas tank is running on fumes or just straight-up dropping from exhaustion and calling it quits, as demonstrated in his rematch with Oliva.
• Training from Hell: His consists of placing himself in Horse Stance with all his weight on his legs and core, and moving back and forth grappling an imaginary sumo wrestler who is 250kg in every direction at the same time, using every muscle in tandem. He also does Shiko like "normal" sumo wrestlers, only he can keep his leg in the air for an hour at a time.
• Truth in Television: Being flexible is something that any good Sumo Wrestler needs to be, Sukune's degree is just a tad bit absurd, as Rikishi do extensive leg and core strength workouts, and a Sumo wrestler's prowess is in part show in his ability to perform well at the Shiko ritual at the beginning of each tournament day, as well as to land safely when they fling each other out of the ring.
  "The history of Sumo is a history of big men."
• Your Mind Makes It Real: He does the same kind of advanced shadowboxing as Baki, except he envisions incredibly huge Rikishi, Yokozunas past and present, or physically impossible wrestlers like the one detailed in Training from Hell, and then grapples them.

Taima no Kehaya II

The 101st power descendant of the legendary Sumo Wrestler from antequity, so renowned for the speed of his kicks that he took "One who kicks fast" as his last name, eventually falling in battle during the first Kakukiri bout at the hands of Nomi no Sukune. This descendant of his recently tested his mettle by breaking the Killing Stone.

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• Acrofatic: Despite being enormous, particular attention is drawn to the fact that his lower body is inhumanly flexible, capable of performing kicks at dizzying angles. He is able to pick his nose and snort out a wad of snot using his toes, without moving his waist.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He claims that his tactical retreat makes him and his family undefeated, shows off his kicks and is doing silly stunts to prove he can still fight Orochi when he can't.
• Big Eater: After running away from Yujiro, Kehaya revitalizes himself by going through an entire Chinese imperial feast on his own, something Retsu, Kaku, Doppo, Tokugawa and his bodyguard Kanou shared in Son of Ogre. He even asks the waiter for a huge Renge spoon so he can gobble down entire batches of Century eggs in one bite, and it's accompanied by an equal amount of booze.
  "Food is power."
• Combat Pragmatist: He gives a long-winded diatribe to Yujiro about the fact that just because someone's name can be telling about them, doesn't necessarily mean that he has fast kicks... right before trying to cheapshot Yujro with one such kick while still sitting on his knees.
• Determinator: He keeps fighting Doppo even though his heel is broken from their first trade. When Doppo calls him on it he smashes the ground to prove it is fine even though it clearly isn't. This gets deconstructed as even grievously injured, he attempts to attack Doppo in the backrooms immediately after their match, in absolutely no shape to win, and Doppo makes a very blatant display of the fact that he could have easily plucked both of Kehaya's eyes out in retribution, but decided not to out of respect for the fact that Kehaya didn't try to surprise attack him and announced his intent to fight.
• Ear Ache: Orochi tears off both of his cleanly off.
• Extremity Extremist: From what we've seen of him so far, he seems to specialize exclusively in kicks. Tokugawa even notes that while he carries himself in a very similar way to a Rikishi, his stance and kick-focused style is far divorced from anything people has since been taught "proper Sumo Wrestling" is like.
• Lunacy: He is shown staring at the full moon while warming up to break the Sesshoseki. While the exact science of it hasn't been deduced yet, several top athletes have talked about timing their maximum strength with the cycles of the moon.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: With his kicks.
• The Rival: Subverted. He and Sukune seem to be more or less on the same foot about Ancient Sumo, and after both being defeated by Baki's friends, they sit down and discuss strategy over an abssolutely insane amount of food and booze.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Yujiro launches him through Tokugawa's ceiling with a spinning back kick, Kehaya decides he doesn't want to catch any more smoke from the Ogre and just dips out, telling Tokugawa's butler to give the two of them his regards. He even says this is the point of Sumo's Shikirinaoshi, even if he's applying said logic to all forms of fighting; If you are unfit to perform at your best against a mighty opponent, you should either cut your losses and try again later or try to catch them lacking.
• Stout Strength: He's nowhere as thickly built as Sukune, but is still a massive man complete with a power belly and legs so obscenely muscular that he looks obese with pants on.
• Top-Heavy Guy: Inverted. Kehaya is a well built and stout man all around, but he has enormous legs to the point where he looks like his pants are about to explode any moment, and feet visibly conditioned by harsh training.

Shinshinkai Dojo Members

Shinshinkai Dojo

See the full page here.

Childhood Saga Characters

Reichi Ando

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• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His height and physique is entirely based off André the Giant.
• The Hermit: Lives in a cottage by himself within the woods.

Yuri Chakovsky

A welterweight boxer Baki fought in his youth.

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• Boxing Battler: He was a welterweight champion and attempted to move up a weight class before Hanayama crushed his hand.
• The Cameo: He is briefly seen when Tsuneo Katahira mentions when Hanayama defeated him when talking about Hanayama's and Spec's fight.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Even when he starts whaling on Yuri, Baki ends up getting knocked down with a couple of hits for his trouble.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: His goal as a boxer is to prove his clan is the strongest.
• Warm-Up Boss: He's one of the most skilled fighters he's ever faced during Baki's childhood.
• The Worf Effect: Despite his skill, he is quickly defeated by Hanayama to prove how strong the yakuza is.
• Wrestler of Beasts: He is noted to have fought wolves before starting his boxing career.

Baki's Coach

• No Name Given: His real name isn't revealed.

Detective Kido

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• Smoking Is Cool: He is shown to be a major smoker.
• The Tooth Hurts: Baki accidentally punched out one of his teeth on reflex.

Gaia/Nomura

A military stealth expert and assassin.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: He has an actual pair of eyebrows in the 2001 anime and looks a whole lot more normal in general.
• Alliterative Name: Gaia Giovanni.
• Always Someone Better: He is this to Sikorsky in terms of stealth and pragmatism combat.
• Bald Head of Toughness: He is the most powerful and feared soldier in his squad, to the point of being a Living Legend. He is also completely bald. In his backstory, he lost all his hair from stress when he faced a firing squad and was only saved at the last second—the shock of that experience also causing the emergence of his badass Gaia personality.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns at the end of the Death Row Escapee arc to defeat Sikorsky.
• Characterization Marches On: In his first appearance, "Gaia" was a split personality which emerged from the meek medic Nomura at critical times. In his subsequent appearances, the split personality aspect isn't even mentioned and he seemingly walks around as Gaia all the time.
• Combat Medic: He is both the leader and the medic of his team, depending which one of his personalities is in control.
• Combat Pragmatist: He calls himself "Master of Environment" for a reason, being able to use pretty much anything around him as a weapon, including sand and discarded teeth.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • He defeats Sikorsky with very little effort whatsoever.
  • He is later overwhelmed completely when he picks a fight with Musashi.
• A Day in the Limelight: He gets a spinoff that focuses on his daily life, after Sikorsky moves in with him.
• Gonk: Even though pretty much every character looks strange and weird, even the ones that are supposed to be pretty or handsome, he stands out as looking REALLY weird due to being completely hairless, to the point where he doesn't even have eyebrows, which, combined with his youthful face and small stature, makes him look like a baby with teeth, and it doesn't help that he makes multiple extremely hideous expressions during his fight with Baki during the Childhood Saga arc. Averted in Baki-dou, where he looks a lot more childlike and thus, a lot less unsettlingly hideous.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: Crossed over with Nightmare Face, as when he screams at Baki, we get an incredibly off-putting panel of him with his wide open mouth drawn in full detail with his eyes downright distorted in shape due to how hard he's glaring, and he proceeds to make an even more disgusting one after he activates the endorphins in his brain, with him squinting in a grotesque manner and his open mouth, yet again drawn in full detail and all the veins in his neck bulging out.
• Improbable Weapon User: As an environmental user, he uses whatever the environment has for him. Including sand and teeth.
• Just Toying with Them: It quickly becomes obvious that Sikorsky is no match for him and just wails on him until he gives up.
• Orifice Evacuation: In an omake featuring him he demonstrates his 'dark tunnel' technique on a large military officer posing as him. While hiding under his couch, he enters the man's ass making his way up the body, and brutally coming out of the officer's mouth, killing him in the process. He states that this is only possible because of how small he is. The sight of this causes one of the female reporters to piss herself.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Despite being one of the smaller fighters he is very strong and capable of beating the much larger Sikorsky into submission.
• Split Personality: He changes between being the shy and humble medic of his mercenary team and being a deadly master of the environment. The latter personality appears to have taken over completely.
• Stealth Expert: As a master of the environment he can pull off some incredible camouflage techniques. When all the fighters that infiltrated a military base to fight Pickle were spotted and told to go home Gaia reveals himself later that night and just leaves. He also beat up Sikorsky by using the sand on his skin to become invisible.
• Super-Scream: Can yell extremely loudly, quieting the crowd booing him and even causing temporary deafness in Sikorsky.

Yasha-Zaru Ape

• Defeat Means Friendship: After being defeated by Baki, he respects him, and treats him with hospitality when Baki comes to visit him with his girlfriend in tow.
• It Can Think: It's revealed to be as intelligent as a human after Baki defeats him, as it gives a tooth to him out of respect for his strength, and it is also shown to have complex emotions like sadness and the capacity to mourn.
• Killed Off for Real: Murdered by Yuujiro to provoke Baki into defeating him.
• Non-Malicious Monster: He is just trying to survive as his race is going extinct.

Maximum Tournament Competitors

Maximum Tournament Competitors

See the full page here.

Most Evil Death Row Convicts

In General

A quintet of the most dangerous convicts in the world, all sentenced to death in the countries they were caught in. Suddenly and collectively driven by a desire to "taste defeat", they converge on the Underground Arena to face Baki, who they all believe to be the strongest fighter in the world after hearing of his achievements at the Maximum Tournament.

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• Allegorical Characters: The whole of them represent street fighters and Combat Pragmatists as a whole, given that the difference between them and the main cast is that, with the exception of Yanagi and Dorian, none of them are martial artists and simply attack with pure violence and their natural abilities, as well as using anything that they can get their hands on, such as rocks, guns, flashbangs, and even custom tools they carry on their person as weapons, and a lot of attention is drawn to this.
• Ax-Crazy: Given how they are all on death row, there is clearly something that isn't quite right in their heads. Tokugawa mentions they have all killed at least ten inmates before being put in solitary.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Most of them don't handle the defeat they sought well.
• Blood Knight: They all came to Tokyo in search of a good fight and to finally be defeated.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: All freakishly strong by human standards, easily capable of murdering people in droves with their bare hands.
• Combat Pragmatist: All of them are more than willing to fight dirty. Tokugawa even refers them as the black martial artist side of people with no formal discipline but ruthless street fighting where everything goes.
• Death Row: They were all scheduled to be executed right before they escaped their prisons.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The first half of New Grappler Baki is devoted to fighting them, only for each and every one of them to get beaten into the dirt. The second half of the arc then focuses on the Kaioh tournament and Ali. Jr.
• Enemy Civil War: They're NOT working together, and when all 5 of them meet for the first time they almost broke into fighting each other until Baki and his friends showed up.
  • Subverted later on when Sikorsky interrupts a fight between Baki and Yanagi, and the 2 convicts decide to temporarily gang up on Baki when they realize how much stronger he's gotten. They get their asses kicked by him anyway.
  • Sometime after that, Yanagi ambushes Doyle at the docks and attempts to kill him, seeing Doyle softening up and becoming friends with Katsumi as dishonorable.
• Improbable Weapon User: Being criminals instead of martial artists their weapons are mainly everything they can find and smack their opponents with.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Later on in their arc it becomes clear that they may be dangerously strong criminals, but most of their abilities aren't all that special compared to the many other martial artists of the series and can be easily beaten in a fair fight. Emphasis on 'fair fight'.
• Sore Loser: Despite their motive to "taste defeat", vey few of them are able to accept it and even then it took a long time for that to happen. They only consider death as defeat in their eyes, but it goes beyond that point. Even when they mentally acknowledge that they’ve been beaten, they simply refuse to admit it, keep going after the other fighters after losing to them, and resort to sneak attacks to get the job done. They’re so stubborn that even someone as merciless as Yujiro thinks that they’re too stupid for their own good.
  • After Doppo crushed Dorian and his underhanded tactics with nothing but Chinese Kenpo, Dorian responded by later ambushing and bombing him in the face in his home. A final defeat by Retsu causes him to mental regress, realizing that he had never won a fair fight in his life and had wasted his potential as a Kaioh.
  • Yanagi cries and screams in frustration when Baki runs off with his girlfriend after easily stomping him and Sikorsky. Even with his arm cut off by Motobe, himself down on his knees and Yujiro Hanma himself outright telling him that he lost straight to his face, he utterly refuses accept that the fight was over. Motobe mentally calls him a fool for this, as this defiance earns him a brutal backhand from Yujiro.
  • Doppo and Katsumi eventually wise up to this habit when fighting Doyle. Doppo mocks him for making excuses as to why he didn't "lose" to his previous opponents before beating him into unconsciousness and handing him over to Katsumi, who knocks over and over until he finally admitted defeat. Doyle, fittingly, seems to be at peace with this defeat and thus gets off far lighter than his fellow convicts until Olivia manages to catch up with him. He is a wanted murderer after all...
• Synchronization: Played With, these 5 do not have any past connections with one another, they all just decided to bust out of their respective prisons across the world at the same time and go to Japan with one wish; to know defeat. The narration points out that while this event was pure coincidence, you could definitely read some kind of cosmic symbolism into it.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine:
  • Speck gets bulldozed by Hanayama, someone who outstrips him in both strength and endurance that never lets up. Not only does his arm get shredded by Hanayama's monstrous grip, he then proceeds to get a piece of his thigh torn off before getting choked into unconsciousness, which pretty much all but says that he's not as tough as he claims to be.
  • Dorian relies on underhanded tactics and cheap shots, and once all that goes out the window, he doesn't stand a chance against Doppo who had just had his hand reattached. Then he gets frightened into admitting defeat by a half-conscious Katou, then he gets a wake-up call from Retsu who admonishes him for wanting to taste defeat despite having never experienced a real victory before. The shock of it all makes him mentally regress back into a child.
  • Sikorsky, a dirty fighter who believes that rules and honor soil the spirit of a fight, not only suffers a ruthless beatdown by Baki at least half a dozen times, but also gets absolutely manhandled by Jack (who shrugs off all of his attacks and pummels him senseless) and defeated at his own game by Gaia (who also fights pragmatically and relies on underhanded tactics, albeit much more effectively) who psychs Sikorsky out so much that he starts begging for his life.
  • Doyle suffers one by Retsu who decided to play his game when the rule book is thrown out the window, gets the living shit kicked out of by Doppo, and gets pounded into humility by Katsumi.
  • Yanagi gets handed a sound loss by Motobe, a vastly superior weapons master, before getting all the teeth in one half of his face knocked out by Yujiro for his troubles.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: With the exception of Speck, they look like (huge) average everyday citizens.
• Where Are They Now: A much more ominous example than usual for this trope. The final episode of the Great Raitai Tournament Arc goes into this. Yanagi escapes from prison, slaughtering the guards who were supposed to take him to a normal hospital, under the assumption that the damage he’d suffered at Yujiro’s hands had reduced him into little more than a vegetable. After this, Sonoda is prompted to look into what has happened to the other Death Row Convicts, only to find that they’ve all begun to undergo severe training in preparation for...something. To wit...
  • Dorian was taken in by the monks at his old temple, where he spends his days painting pictures of candy (they sell pretty well). However, he does so while in Ma Bu, a martial arts stance/body-weight exercise that strengthens the lower body that he stands in for hours on end, until he has consumed every last piece of candy in a gigantic bowl. This process has already gotten him back into shape and built over 20 kilos of muscle on his lower body.
  • Doyle, who was blinded in his fights against Retsu and Yanagi, has gone on to destroy his own eardrums, rendering himself deaf and has been refining his sense of touch through his skin to the point that he can feel vibrations in the air around him to the extent that he can catch small, fast-moving bats in his prison cell.
  • Sikorsky has been practicing his Wall Crawl in his cell by clinging to the wall all night long, even as he’s sleeping, which has honed his grip strength to the point that he can ball up a metal nickel like it was a piece of paper.
  • Speck, who was last seen shriveled and bedridden after getting the taste of defeat he’d longed for, has been revealed to have been training, even in his comatose state, by flexing his muscles in a pattern revealed by thermographic pictures of his otherwise unmoving body to be that of the butterfly stroke for swimming. On top of that, his level of exertion is not that of someone swimming through water, but someone swimming his way through a viscous, syrupy fluid like grease or honey. As a result, he has quickly began to bulk up again.

Dorian Kaioh

Voiced by: Banjo Ginga (JP, Netflix ONA), Aaron LaPlante (EN, Netflix ONA), Santos Alberto (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

An American army veteran who's father served in the Second World War and himself in the Post-war Occupation era of Japan's 1950's and 60's, Dorian embodies the combined lethality of the cunningness of a street brawler with the discipline of a master martial artist. And a former Kaioh who was the first modern-day Westerner to gain the title.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: He was the first Westerner who attained the title of Kaioh who even Retsu's master; Ryu Kaioh, held in high regard, and was strong enough to dig a large tunnel in rock with his bare hands. Come the present, he's still a threat but his life of crime and over-reliance on under-handed tactics have deteriorated the so-called Kaioh so much that Doppo easily beats him when he figures out his tricks. After he incapacitates Orochi in a cowardly surprise attack, he realizes in his final confrontation with Retsu that he hasn't fairly won any of his fights and that he's wasted his life as an opportunistic fighter, causing him to mentally regress into having a child's mind to cope after being knocked out with one punch from Retsu. Retsu even takes pity on him, promising to buy the now childish Dorian a mountain of candy while holding back tears.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: He mentions that "Mommy's not here anymore." as he deliriously rambles after regressing to his childhood due to Retsu defeating him, and this isn't explored in depth, leaving the fate of his mother unknown.
• Arch-Enemy: Primarily serves as one to Doppo and Katsumi, and to a lesser extent, Retsu, but his actions as a whole earn him the ire of Shinshinkai in its entirety. As he's personally the one who cut off Doppo's hand, and horrifically beat Katou with in an inch of his life.
• Arc Villain: For Retsu and Doppo anyways, when Dorian encapsulates one large part of the whole Prisoner arc in that his desire to know defeat is the desire to be proven wrong; something that he can't admit because of the ego he's developed as a result of all of his success. Deep down Dorian realizes all of his victories are meaningless because he's won by trickery and ruthlessness, but he clings to them because that's all he has. In a weird sort of way, Suedo was his best fight because he wasn't that much stronger or weaker than Dorian, hence why Dorian seemed to enjoy it so much, but the fights with Doppo and Retsu were the wake-up call he'd been asking for all along. He also has much more solo screentime than other convicts in the early part of the arc.
• Badass Decay: In-universe, while it's up to debate if he grew weaker relying on underhanded techniques or his Chinese Kenpo was great enough to fare better against Doppo and Retsu if he kept training (both are legendary in their disciplines) his short appearance during the Raitai tournament shows he simply can't fight anymore. Justified as he mentally regressed to the point he is barely aware of his surroundings.
• The Bus Came Back: In the oneshot Revenge Tokyo!!, still trying to mentally recover after his loss to both Doppo and Retsu, he undergoes an intense training of Chinese Kenpo while painting a picture full of candy.
• Combat Pragmatist: And how! He fights with hidden micron wire, fists covered in glass shards adhered with grease, and even a micro-bomb implanted in his right palm.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Thinks Doppo and the other karateka are this as they mastered only karate while he mastered kenpo and many other tricks. This ends up inverted as Dorian's refusal to specialize himself made him too good to enjoy a genuine victory and too weak to fight someone with as much experience as him but as dedicated their life to one discipline. It's the reason Retsu's master doesn't give Retsu his Kaioh title too early, like Dorian his potential made him worthy of it earlier but he hasn't honed his skills and shown how truly dedicated he was yet.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Suffers one against Doppo during their rematch, who's grown privy to his tricks and even got his severed hand miraculously reattached. Suffers a more instant one later on to Retsu, justified by him still sustaining serious injuries from the earlier fight with Doppo.
• Ear Ache: His ear nearly fell off after Doppo nearly kicked it off.
• Establishing Character Moment: His disrespectful behavior in the Karate Dojo and unprovoked sneak attack on Katsumi is everything you need to know about Dorian.
• Evil Gloating: Constantly does this in pretty much all the fights, even in the rematch with Doppo; Doppo then makes him eat his own words.
• Facepalm of Doom: His ultimate technique is a tiny bomb hidden in his palm so he can blow someone's face off with it.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Was a soldier for the US stationed in Japan before he traveled to China to eventually reach the rank of Kaioh in Chinese Kenpo. He would go on to become a death row inmate prior to the events of the arc.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: The blue color of his eyes is emphasized as well as the shape of his eyes changing to be rounder and doe-like after he mentally regresses to his childhood of being an innocent little boy, becoming completely harmless and inoffensive in the process.
• Heel–Face Turn: A tragic deconstruction of one. After being defeated by Retsu and realizing that because of his dirty fighting, he'd never actually earned a victory by his own terms, making his goal of seeking defeat pointless due to having never truly won. The shame of this causes him to regress to the mind of a child, becoming completely innocent and harmless in the process.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He interrupts a meeting at Tokugawa's place with the intent of burning them all with a bucket of gasoline, Katsumi blindsides him and spills all the gasoline on him before setting him ablaze.
• Icy Blue Eyes: He has a look of sociopathic apathy in his eyes nearly all the time, and of course, has blue eyes. Subverted after he has a mental breakdown and regress to his childhood, as his eyes become brighter and doe-like to mark his newfound innocence.
• Improvised Weapon: He has a lot of these, but the scariest one is that he knows how to grease-fight, an old trick invented by the American mobs, adhering glass and other stabby bits to his hands to create makeshift boxing gloves of his fists that can cut his foe apart and make even blocking his attacks a serious cutting hazard, while the grease ensures Dorian's hand is unhurt.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: The blue color of his eyes are emphasized after he mentally regresses to being an innocent child, invoking this trope due to him now becoming completely harmless.
• Invincible Villain: Nowhere NEAR as the same extent as Yujiro, but it still took a lot to finally bring this guy down, and he still maimed and beat a fair number of people (especially Katou) before finally going down. Justified. He had way more tricks and secrets up his sleeve compared to the other criminals, including being a former Kaioh on top of it all.
• Jack of All Stats: Prides himself that unlike Doppo, who only learned Karate, he learned many things. Of all the convicts, Dorian is the most balanced in terms of strength, skill, and cunning, bordering Master of All, had he decided to increase his mastery of Chinese Kempo, instead of just assimilating what he likes.
• Jerkass: Imagine Yujiro being stripped of all superhuman abilities. Now you're left only with a condescending and disrespectful fighter with a massive ego which makes Yujiro look like congenial sugar daddy in comparison that relies solely on under-the-table tricks against his opponents
• Made of Iron: He has his left-hand bones shattered, knees broken, and rib-cage SHATTERED by Doppo during their fight. He still gets out of the hospital later to blow a bomb up in his face. It's Downplayed when he is confronted by Retsu right after and was no longer in any shape to decently fight him. During the Raitai tournament where he is in no mental state to compete, he gets back up after his defeat like nothing happened.
• Manchild: Downplayed, but he seems to have a bit too much fun by himself at the Amusement Park. Played straight later on when he mentally regresses into having a childlike mind, after being defeated by Retsu once and for all and realizing he's never fairly won a fight.
• Mighty Whitey: He's Caucasian, and not only a Kaioh from Retsu's school but among the greatest Kaioh, being tough enough to carve a cave when most carved rocks into spheres.
• Mind Manipulation: Has the ability to somehow hypnotize opponents by simply clapping his hands together, causing them to experience an illusion of the fight going in their favor.
• Ocular Gushers: Being defeated by Doppo and having a semi-conscious Kato nearly sicked on him reduces him to this.
• Old Master: The oldest looking member of the Convicts (Though Speck may actually be older) with a fully grown beard of white hair. He's still a huge, muscular man, and extremely dangerous. He even schooled the karateka that ambushed him in a clean fight to make a point that they are just not at his level.
• Razor Floss: His lighter hides a wire that is invisible to the naked eye and strong enough to not only cut through flesh but also helps Dorian break his fall from a roller coaster ride by lassoing to a street lamp.
• The Reveal: Dorian was formerly a student of the same Chinese temple Retsu trained in, and achieved the title of Kaioh despite being a westerner, long before Retsu even started training.
• The Rival:
  • To Doppo, for stabbing his adopted son's throat, cutting off his hand and hospitalizing Katou.
  • To Retsu as well, due to being a former Kaioh like he is as well.
• Sore Loser: After seeming like he was soundly defeated by Doppo (even saying he's been defeated while crying) he somehow gets out of the hospital he was taken to, vandalizes Doppo's house, and surprise attacks him with a bomb to the face.
• Strong and Skilled: Of the convicts at least, he's terrifyingly fast, strong and seems to be very skilled with utilizing stances and strikes reminiscent of Chinese martial arts. This is due to him being a Kaioh, like Retsu. Eventually deconstructed however, in that, while Dorian did learn several different styles, he only really just assimilated whatever he liked without ever truly training to perfect them. As a consequence, this complacency made Dorian too good to lose to most normal combatants, but ultimately too weak to beat a real master like Doppo, or Retsu who actually took the time and dedication to truly master their art.
• Sweet Tooth: He becomes this after he's mentally reduced to an innocent little boy, as one of the things he's always wanted at that age was lots of candy, as his dad didn't want to spoil him, causing him to seldom give his son any candy, only letting him have two, which only made him want it even more. Retsu Kaioh offering to buy him all the candy he wants is what helps him take him back to the temple, where he's taken care of by the monks and given as much candy he wants. Notably, every next appearance of his has him eating some type of candy, even in Tokyo Revenge, where he's seen undergoing training in a horse stance while simultaneously eating a bowl of them and painting pictures of the stuff.
• Truth in Television: The mental breakdown and regression into the mind of an innocent child he undergoes after his defeat by Retsu is an actual phenomenon known as age regression, which matches Sigmund Freud's description of it as a subconscious defense mechanism.
• Villainous Breakdown: He undergoes an actual mental breakdown and winds up regressing to his childhood to cope with being defeated once and for all by Retsu, due to desperately clinging onto all of the victories he had unfairly earned due to his underhanded fighting style.
• Villainous BSoD: He makes a realization after his defeat at the hands of Retsu that he has never achieved victory by his own definition of the word due to his constant use of underhanded tactics meant that he never truly earned victory, essentially making every fight he's ever been in since he became a Combat Pragmatist hollow, and that his entire goal of tasting defeat was all for nothing because of this, give that he had never even properly won in the first place causing him to have a mental breakdown and regress to his childhood to protect his ego.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Despite being crowned Kaioh, he lost his faith in martial arts and became over reliant on being a Combat Pragmatist for so long to the point that it deteriorated his skill set and couldn't stand any chance against real martial artists like Doppo or Retsu.
• Wicked Cultured: He's a dangerous criminal who's ex-military and a Kaioh-level martial artist who's not afraid to show off his singing chops while killing someone.

Speck

Voiced by: Chafurin (JP, Netflix ONA), Kyle Hebert (EN, Netflix ONA), Alex Montiel "El Escorpión Dorado" (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

A serial killer with a cruel sense of humor, underneath Speck's humorous attitude and gleeful smile belies an unrepentant psychopath who revels in bloodshed and violence without remorse.

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• Attack! Attack! Attack!: His fighting style consists of basically just brutalizing his opponents into red slop on the floor with his fists and feet.
• Ax-Crazy: Granted, none of the convicts are what most people would call fully sound of mind, but Speck is by far the most psychotic and dangerous out of all of them, being far more gleeful about his many murders than the others.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Subverted. He does actually get to know defeat but almost immediately shrivels into an old man and passes away having fulfilled this wish. This is compared to a similar case involving an (fictional this time, for once this isn't Baki using documented miracle cases) 82-year old treasure hunter passing away mere weeks after success from old age, as whatever held his body together for that long gave out when his wish came true. Overall, he seems to be the only one of the convicts who truly wanted to be beaten, as his defeat at Hanayama's hands is the "success" he needed to pass on.
• Bald of Evil: He's a ruthless and sadistic serial killer with a smooth dome.
• Bizarre Human Biology: Speck's body, to say the least, does some odd stuff, even among the cast of borderline freaks that populate this series. For example, how he somehow manages to urinate what looks to be a literal gallon of piss that seems to be hot enough to visibly steam like a pot of boiling water. While indoors and in a temperate room.
  • He became even more absurd in Revenge Tokyo, where it is revealed that he is training... while stuck in a coma. Specifically, he is working his muscles in a pattern akin to swimming in the butterfly stroke, and the level of output suggests that he's swimming through something far heavier than water. All while bedridden and comatose.
• Blasphemous Boast: Claims that his fists can destroy gods.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • How he escapes from his prison, which is a submarine 200 meters underwater. He simply swims non-stop at high speeds all the way to the surface using his ability to hold his breath for five minutes.
  • One of the many weapons he uses in his fight with Hanayama is a just a rock on the ground he picked up to bludgeon the latter with.
  • His signature technique, Apnea Rush, is simply Speck delivering a rapid barrage of punches and kicks that are so fast and strong that it will practically melt anybody on the receiving end. Until Hanayama comes along.
• The Brute: The biggest of the Convicts at over 7 feet tall, and strong enough to nearly destroy the Statue of Liberty by pulverizing the statue's insides with his fists. Hanayama soundly beats him in sheer strength and durability however, forcing him to resort to dirty tricks.
• Combat Pragmatist: Almost on par with Dorian in terms of how scummy he is in a fight. To him, every battle is life or death and thus anything goes, even bullets and flashbangs.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: Chafurin gives him an unnervingly high-pitched and loopy voice that's made even more disturbing by him constantly speaking in an extremely perverted sounding tone, complete with a lisp that makes it even more perverted than it already is.
• Edible Theme Naming: Speck has the same name of a particular type of Italian smoked ham... and also that of mass murderer Richard Speck.
• Evil Counterpart: To Hanayama, in terms of their abilities, such as their absurd levels of durability in a fight, as well as them both having extensive gang tattoos. Personality-wise they're nothing alike, and even their signature moves are the exact opposites of eachother, as Speck's Apnea Rush is countless punches and kicks delivered at breakneck pace and speed, while Hanayama's Destructive Force is simply one massive punch with a lengthy wind-up. Naturally they end up facing off one another, although none of this is really brought to attention nor are any parallels explicitly drawn between the two by the narrative aside from Speck noting that he thinks Hanayama is the most like him out of Baki, Doppo, Shibukawa, Motobe, and Hanayama himself.
• Faux Affably Evil: Behaves in a jovial and polite manner right before trying to murder someone with his bare hands.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The most psychotic and dangerous of the five death row convicts... and he's named Speck. (But see Edible Theme Naming above.)
• Graceful Loser: In spite of being a psychotic serial killer, he takes his defeat the easiest out of all the convicts, to the point where he's satisfied with losing just once against Hanayama and simply shrinks back to a decrepit old man.
• Gratuitous English: He utters Beautiful! when Hanayama takes off his clothes to fight him.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: The ability to hold your breath for 5 minutes seems like a rather oddball talent for a career psychopath to have... but in addition to helping him escape from a submarine prison 200 meter underwater, it's also the key to his Apnea Rush, a flurry of attacks so relentless and impossible to counterattack specifically because Spec himself doesn't stop to take a breather.
• Hidden Depths: He's far and away the most psychotic of the Death Row Inmates, but is one of the only two to actually accept his defeat well enough to be at peace with it. As a result he dies smiling. Or so it seems
• Implacable Man: Gets a lot of focus early on in the Convicts arc because most of the police forces sent against him are utterly ineffective at stopping him. Even an elite force of highly trained officers just get horribly crushed by him, as he simply tanks their kicks and iron ball bullets, which have the force of a pro baseball player hitting a ball from 2 meters away. He seemed almost unstoppable, until he fought Hanayama.
• Improbable Weapon User: His first series of attack on Hanayama was grabbing the closest thing on the ground (among other things, one of Hanayama's shoes and a park bench) and smack him with it.
• Ironic Name: A towering titan of a man... whose name is 'Speck', meaning something very tiny.
• The Needless: Downplayed. Speck can hold his breath for five minutes even under extreme workout. It's key to his escape and his signature move. We don't see him need much aside a place (a holding cell in the Metropolitan Tokyo police station) to rest, occasionally leaving for food which he's happy to share via Force Feeding, and it's implied the only thing driving his muscular body is his desire to know defeat, as once he tastes it his body return to a malnourished old man.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Based off of "The Red Ripper", the necrophiliac Ukrainian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo who was executed by gunshot in 1994.
• Obviously Evil: He's a sinister-looking hulk of a man with a devious grin on his face and a wild, crazed look in his eyes at almost all times, and when he isn't sneering from ear to ear, he's just straight up making terrifying facial expressions one after the other.
• Older Than They Look: Seems middle-aged, but he is actually an incredibly spry 97-year-old.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Always has a childish glee when committing violent acts or when pretends to be polite.
• Rapid Aging: Following his defeat from Hanayama, his frame suddenly shrivels up to better reflect his actual age of 97.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: His Apnea Rush is this, with some kicks thrown in here and there. It's strong enough to damage the Statue of Liberty's internal structure so bad that it almost collapse. When Speck claims that his Apnea Rush will never give his opponent a chance to counter attack until they turn into a liquified pile of mess after being pummeled for so long, however when Speck hesitated for a short moment when the attack didn't faze Hanayama for a bit, Speck gets pounded into submission for his troubles.
• Simple, yet Awesome: His Apnea Rush, which is him simply unleashing a flurry of punches and kicks that's so fast and powerful that it nearly destroyed the Statue of Liberty and presumably would've killed anybody else but Hanayama.
• Slasher Smile: His default expression, ranging from a devious grin to a nightmare-inducing rictus.
• The Rival: Considers himself this to Hanayama.
• Token Evil Teammate: Even though all of the convicts are evil, with the exception of Doyle, Spec is the most dangerous out of all of them due to being the only one to attack random citizens unprovoked more than once, while the rest of the convicts are simply looking for a strong opponent to fight and are more than willing to act civil if it helps them get what they want or they find no real reason to attack a random stranger.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: He's the first of the convicts to be taken down after a serious fight, but also the first one to REALLY drive home how different street fights are from tournament and underground fights, and ultimately sets the tone for how later fights in the arc will go. As while Hanayama (a known and feared Yakuza) won, he did not make it out of the fight without serious injuries that would've killed a lesser man ten times over.
• You Remind Me of X: Baki and Hanayama both note that Speck's savagery and strength reminds them of Yujiro.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Even while bedridden in a coma, he's able to regain his muscle mass solely by visualizing himself swimming in a sea of thick syrup and working his muscles in that pattern.

Sikorsky

Voiced by: Kenjiro Tsuda (JP, Netflix ONA), Grant George (EN, Netflix ONA), José Gilberto Vilchis (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

A Russian criminal and an arrogant pragmatist whose power lies in his immense hand strength and athleticism, Sikorsky can rend flesh with his knuckles as well as scaling on flat surfaces with almost inhuman grace.

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• Arch-Enemy: After kidnapping Kozue (at Yujiro's request), Baki makes it his goal to completely break and humiliate this guy every chance they meet.
• Asshole Victim: Kidnaped by Jack Hanma and forced to fight in an underground arena, then faces a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Gaia where he's powerless to fight back, eventually prompting him to curl up in a ball and cry in fear. You'd feel bad for anyone caught in this scenario, except for Sikorsky.
• Break the Haughty: He is quite the cocky bastard, even on the losing end of fights. Eventually he breaks down in fear and begs for mercy after being thrown into Tokugawa's coliseum and forced to fight losing battles with Jack Hanma and Gaia.
• Butt-Monkey: As much as he poses a threat just like the other convicts, none of the fighters seem to care or take him anywhere near seriously when he keeps getting his ass handed to him.
• Bullying a Dragon: Seems to be a frequent fan of this even towards Baki. See Smug Snake right down below.
• Chekhov's Skill: His escape relied on wall climbing out of a missile silo, when Baki defenestrates him off a building he simply climbs back for round two. After he is recaptured the first time, he escapes the same way.
• Combat Pragmatism: Sikorsky does not rely on weapons as much as the other convicts but he enjoys attacking opponents out of nowhere, mocking wrestlers that need to be told ready set go before fighting. Baki throws this back in his face when he confronts him in the shower.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: During his fight with Jack Hanma his attacks arguably have more of an effect on him than they do on Oliva, and was able to tackle and push back his much larger opponent to the sidelines so it seems like he had a fighting chance. Unfortunately, after that point, he's effortlessly picked up and thrown to the other side of the arena.
• Dirty Coward: Deconstructed, while his specialty is blindsiding his opponents usually going after novice fighters or anyone whose incapable of fighting back, not to mention that he caught Alexander Garland off guard while he was recovering. For all his talk about wanting to face one of the most worlds strongest and boasting how much Baki is a waste of his time, he's nothing but a murderous small-fry who gets gets humiliated nonstop and never even seems to win in a single fight against any of the known fighters compared to the rest of the five deathrow inmates who went against their respective opponents.
• I Have Your Wife: Kidnaps Baki's girlfriend; Kozue, to get his attention. Turns out Yujiro put him up to it.
• Hidden Depths: He's surprisingly good at cooking.
• Irony: He shows utter contempt for professional fighters who've been trained to fight only in formal matches. By the end of the Convicts arc, he's ambushed and knocked out by Jack and dragged into a coliseum fight against Jack and Gaia, and even with express permission to fight as dirty as he wants, he gets utterly beat down in one of the formal fights he showed so little regard for.
  • Even better, when Gaia camouflages himself with sand from the area and starts getting in sneak attacks, Sikorsky, the reigning king of dirty sneak attacks, demands that Gaia stop hiding and fight him like a man.
• Jerkass: He takes the most joy humiliating his opponent either by scarring their faces or pissing on them.
• Kick the Dog: The only convict to escape without killing a bunch of guards, only to mercilessly track and beat Alexander to near death before leaving for Japan.
• Logical Weakness: His scraping knuckles rely on friction with the flesh, if you simply go with the direction of the fist it'll just brush off your face.
• Madness Mantra: A silent one, in how he thinks "It's coming" over and over in his head in an attempt to anticipate Gaia's attacks. It utterly fails, resulting in this.
• Miles Gloriosus: Surviving so many beatdowns from most top-tier fighters, but for him the point is to win, not to survive, and Sikorsky simply just couldn't do it. And instead of admitting defeat he would rather run away and claim he wasn't defeated because he's still alive while also having the balls to talk smack after being beaten senseless. All it takes is someone like Gaia to shatter his inflated ego and turn him into a begging mess.
• An Odd Place to Sleep: After his training to increase his grip strength, he admits he is more comfortable sleeping while gripping a wall than laying on the floor.
• Post-Final Boss: Sorta, the others convicts had more personal grudges and climax than Sikorsky. However Sikorsky is the last to be beaten during the Prisoner Arc and all it takes is someone who is more high-tier to beat him into submission horrifically.
• Punched Across the Room: Is sent flying out of a building this way by Oliva.
• Rapidfire Fisticuffs: Performs a barrage of his knuckle cutting strikes against Oliva to no effect.
• Razor-Sharp Hand: Or more specifically; razor-sharp knuckles. He can cause deep cuts on his opponents with swift knuckle strikes.
• The Rival: Serves as Baki's main foe for this arc (especially after kidnapping Kozue), even fighting him a grand total of four times.
• Serious Business: Food from his home country is this to him, as he takes cooking borscht as seriously as life or death. Food in general comes across as this regarding him, as he remarks that the rules of a grocery store being that one can only buy one plate of beef per person are a tragedy of Japan.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Sikorsky thinks himself a badass ready to go toe-to-toe with the world's strongest fighters, but he's shown just how small of a fish he really is by Baki, Oliva, Jack and Gaia.
• Smug Snake: Even after he kept on getting his ass handed to Baki several times in a row, he'll still act like a sniveling punk that dares to be in the same room with Yujiro and Oliva. By the time Baki caught up to him in the shower room — he wastes absolutely no time beating the ever loving crud out of Sikorski, even going as so far to slam a water bucket on his head and continue on giving him absolutely zero chance to recover. Jack and Gaia immediately puts him in his place in the Coliseum at the end of the Prisoner Arc.
• Suicidal Overconfidence:
  • Thinks he can challenge the likes of Yujiro and Oliva even though he can't even beat Baki.
  • He eventually realizes he's messing with guys far above his weight class when Jack Hanma finds and challenges him, and seeing his attacks have no effect on the beast he tries to run away only to get beaten unconscious.
• Unluckily Lucky: Despite all the abuse he got, he is in the best state of the inmates after the end of the arc.
• Villainous Breakdown: Gaia traumatizes him during the fight, leading him to curl into a Troubled Fetal Position by the end.
• Wall Crawl: Is able to climb on completely smooth surfaces due to his inhuman grip strength.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Though he looks down on wrestlers, he performs a flying dropkick a few times.

Hector Doyle

Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (JP, Netflix ONA), Johnny Yong Bosch (EN, Netflix ONA), Idzi Dutkiewicz (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

A British assassin who has modified his body into a walking array of hidden weapons and gadgets.

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• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Doyle says it's fine for any to fight dirty which including when someone brings a gun to a fight, Retsu complies and then starts to beat the shit out of Doyle using all sorts of variety of weapons.
• Boisterous Weakling: Compared to the other convicts, take away all of his weapons and tricks, and there's really not a whole lot special to him as a fighter other than bog-standard superhuman strength. And it really shows in the latter half of the arc.
• Character Development: Arguably gets the most of this out of all the Convicts, starting out just as needlessly cruel and ruthless as the rest, he eventually shows that he's got some more noble qualities.
• Combat Pragmatism: Strydum is disgusted by Doyle resorting to explosives in a fight, Doyle doesn't see why he shouldn't use his best weapons in a fight.
• Crippling Overspecialization: While he's normally a walking arsenal to be feared under most normal circumstances, his hidden weapons are basically all he really has. Unlike the other criminals, he doesn't have any real martial arts or other skills to fall back on should they not work besides bare-knuckled brawling with his superhuman strength. And once the characters start seeing past all his tricks, he's completely rendered helpless in nearly every fight he's in for the rest of the arc.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The second half of Season 3 has him suffering one after another.
• Cyborg: To an extent, he has metal blades in his limbs that he can retract at will, and a generator in his heart that boosts his strength as well as a mechanism that powerfully extends his arm that can catch opponents off guard and send them flying. He also has a bomb in his chest that detonates at will, though it's only used once.
• Disguised in Drag: Disguises himself as a policewoman to get the drop on Oliva, even going as far as putting on lace print panties.
• Evil Brit: He's from the United Kingdom, but he's the least evil of the Five Deathrow Convicts, and given that he describes some Scotch Whiskey as being from his home country, it's more than likely that he's a Scotsman.
• Evil Redhead: Red haired and a death row convict. He is still the least evil of the bunch.
• Eye Scream: Retsu throws a kunai into his left eye socket before he could even react. Yanagi punches his remaining right eye with his poisonous right hand, rendering him completely blind.
• Graceful Loser: While not yet admitting defeat, he makes sure to look after Retsu after Jack drugs him into unconsciousness, even as he nearly bleeds out. After being beaten down multiple times by Katsumi, he amicably admits defeat to him.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: It seemed like he was about to turn a new leaf after finally getting over himself and admitting defeat to Katsumi, only to get attacked by Yanagi, blinded, and barely escapes alive into the sea. Shortly after that, he's found by Oliva, who breaks his back and apprehends him.
• Humiliation Conga: Suffers this later on in the 3rd season, as he initially defeats or kills most of his opponents with ease. Tougher fighters like Oliva and Koshou start giving him much more trouble, having to run away from the former and only beating the latter by detonating the bomb in his chest. Then Retsu, enraged that Doyle defeated Koshou in such a way, utterly curbstomps him by giving him a taste of his own medicine and using similarly underhanded tactics against him. Later on, Doppo demolishes him instantly with his own bare hands, and is taken into Katsumi's custody (who recently treated Doyle's injuries from fighting Retsu and got him and his dojo burned for it). Doyle tries to attack him when he comes to, but Katsumi easily beats him down three times, almost as if it's just a game for him, in an effort to make him accept defeat. He ends up being a much more humble person after all of this.
• In a Single Bound: Jumps from the ground level outside of Baki's school and cannonballs through a window into Baki's classroom on the 2nd floor to face him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After burning down the Sinshinkai Dojo after they donated their blood to save him, Doppo wipes the floor with him.
• Pet the Dog: The first sign that Doyle is not as heartless as the other inmates is that he stands on guard in front of an unconscious Retsu despite massively bleeding due to their fight.
• The Rival: His fights with Retsu and Katsumi have more impact on his arc than any of his other fights, as them humiliating him are ultimately what causes him to change for the better.
• Stage Magician: His fighting style is inspired by the stories of magicians willing to mutilate themselves for their tricks, complete with spring-loaded blades in his elbows, backs of his hands, wrists and knees that are activated via small-joint manipulation and hand gestures, and a one-way explosive charge in his chest cavity. He is also very good at the disappearing act and pulling tricks out of his sleeves such as a Booze Flamethrower. His picture is similar to a magician pose.
• Ungrateful Bastard: How does he repay the Shinshinkai members for treating his injuries after his fight with Retsu and donating blood when he lost too much? He burns them and their dojo.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: He advocates his opponents to do it on him, he really doesn't see why you shouldn't use blades, explosives or guns in a fight if losing is the alternative.

Ryukou Yanagi

Voiced by: Issei Futamata (JP, Netflix ONA), Chris Edgerly (EN, Netflix ONA), Roberto Mendiola (LatAm, Netflix ONA)

A martial artist of The Way of the Void whose mastery allows him to create vacuums with his bare hands, as well as inflicting deadly poison with a mere touch.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Gets his right hand cut off by Motobe. Also dishes this out to his teacher Master Kunimatsu by taking his left arm.
• Ax-Crazy: While never shown to be sound of mind to begin with (albeit more like a high-functioning psychopath than a full-on loony) given the horror he subjected the guards to during his introduction, he's degenerated into this by the time he appears again in the Tokyo Revenge shorts, where he gets provoked by one of the guards assigned to escort him to a mental hospital after he successfully convinced the prison staff that he was in a vegetative state after being maimed by Yujiro. He turns around to look at the guard before making a wild-eyed, deranged smile before violently killing every last guard in the room with him except for one, all in highly gruesome methods, such as ripping their skin off and breaking open their heads as well as just plain mutilating them by ripping off facial features and tearing them to pieces.
• Brick Joke: At one point, he uses a surprise attack on Shibukawa by making him catch a pot of hot water. Shibuakwa then does the same thing to Yanagi in return only for it to actually be cold, not that he immediately realizes it. Payback is utterly a bitch indeed.
• Defiant to the End: Even after getting his leg impaled and his poisonous right hand cut off in a crushing defeat by Motobe, he refuses to admit defeat when Yujiro casually stops by to tell him he lost.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: After being defeated by Motobe, he is approached by Yujiro who tells him he lost to his face. Yanagi acknowledges that he's the strongest creature in the world, but proceeds to say he has no right to decide the outcome of the battle anyway. Yujiro kills him for this.
• Eye Scream: Took one of Shibukawa Gouki's eyes in the past.
• Fantastic Fighting Style: His way of the void, an assassination art that allows him to vacuum out the air out of anything and slap hard enough to flay opponents, and palm strikes hard enough to pulp an unprepared man's flesh; Kozue's father was the victim of that one in particular. He is the only convict who actively uses martial arts instead of street fighting.
• Final Boss: The last of the criminals (besides Sikorsky) to be fought in the arc, and Season 3 as a whole.
• Hero Killer: Wins against Baki and Gouki at first, then like all convicts he becomes less of a threat, but unlike other convicts his poison is still as dangerous and almost kills Baki after losing thanks to it and even blinds Doyle after the latter just did a Heel–Face Turn. He's the only villain in the Convicts arc with such a lasting impact with Baki still wasting away from his poison long after his death.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In their second fight, Baki uses his slapping technique on him. Unlike Baki, Yanagi actually does feel the immense pain the technique causes.
• Knockout Gas: Yanagi does this to his opponent with oxygen, or rather lack thereof. His palm can reduce the ambient oxygen in the air from 20.95% to 6% instantly, effectively creating a Deadly Gas that his opponent breathes by smacking it onto their face.
• Nightmare Face: In his second prison escape in Revenge Tokyo!!, his response to one of the guards assigned to escort him to a mental ward taunting him is to slowly turn towards him with the same blank face he had when pretending to be a vegetable before making the mother of all horrifying expressions, as he gains a wide-eyed, deranged look in his eyes, like that of a predatorial animal that just spotted some prey after being starved for hours, and a disturbingly unnatural grin on his face made worse by the transparent acrylic skin prosthetic exposing his muscles and teeth underneath before he proceeds to all kill them except for one in the most gruesome fashions possible before disappearing.
• Not Quite Dead: In Itagaki's retconned oneshot Revenge Tokyo!! while he's back in imprisoned he manage to survive with only half of his face missing and his right hand replaced with prosthetic hook after it's been cut off by Motobe. When a group of prison guards who are suppose to escort Yanagi to a mental facility — one of the prison guards proceeds to provoke Yanagi by taunting him which proves to be a fatal mistake who then proceeds to gruesomely massacre the entire escort before escaping confinement.
• Out of Focus: Gets the least amount of screen time compared to the other criminals. After his first fight against Baki and Shibukawa, he just disappears for the remaining majority of the arc, only coming back in the tail end of it. Justified. He was busy preparing his Poison Hand during all that time.
• Poisonous Person: Downplayed, but he does a painful procedure of dipping his right hand into a mixture of sand and extremely lethal toxins from various animals like centipedes and starfish among others, then dipping his hand in an antidote mixture in a nearby bowl, before rotating back, etc. This infuses the toxins it into his hand without killing him outright, making it capable of poisoning his opponents lethally in a single strike.
• The Rival:
  • Him and Shibukawa have a previous rivalry. He is the one winning most of their fights.
  • He also serves as Baki's primary enemy, alongside Sikorsky, for this season. After beating him once, he's the last major opponent Baki fights in this arc to highlight just how strong the young Hanma has grown.
• Sanity Slippage: He seems to have lost his mind in the unspecified time gap in between his defeat and the Tokyo Revenge shorts, as he has become a LOT more outwardly violent and makes an extremely gory mess of the security team assigned to transport him to a mental facility after he successfully convinced the prison staff that he was a vegetable, not to mention that he makes a disturbing wide-eyed smile before he attacks them all.
• Weak, but Skilled: Among the convicts, he is the least imposing at about 159cm even as he's quite muscular. But he masters a martial art style that allows him to snuff the appropriate amount of oxygen that his opponent breathes with his palm and also a Master Poisoner. By human standards, however, he is Strong and Skilled as a dentist points out in an interview that his weight lifting training is so extreme it completely wore down his molars.

Raitai Tournament Competitors

In General

• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: They all have much pride in their kempo training, only to get wrecked in most of the tournament.
• Badass Decay: Discussed by Kaku and Retsu after seeing how one sided Chinese Kaioh get destroyed by foreigners. Kaku punishes masters for giving titles to subpar fighters but it's more that the other fighters are crazy strong.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: With a few exceptions, most Kaioh's are so eclipsed by the american and japanese fighters that it's a legit miracle for them to land even a single punch on their opponent.

Ryu Kaioh

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• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: After being told fighting Yujiro would be like using Chinese martial arts against modern weaponry he laughs it off as certain victory for the Chinese participant.
• Combat Pragmatist: His first attack in his fight against Yujiro is a Mantis style attack aimed directly at Yujiro's eyes, instantly earning Ryu a retaliatory hand through his cheek and a follow-up Tear Off Your Face when that didn't stop him from trying to keep fighting Yujiro.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end during the tournament. Pretty much a Foregone Conclusion since his first opponent was Yujiro.
• Facial Horror: Getting his face's skin ripped off from in front of one ear to the other was already bad enough, but Yujiro blasting Ryu in the face with a fully wound-up high kick immediately afterwards for good measure? Yeowtch.
• Made of Iron: Survives having his face ripped off.
• Mentor Archetype: He was Retsu's master. He took a long time to pass him as Kaioh since he saw Retsu's potential not being finished.
• Old Master: While he wasn't exactly strapped himself in for a good time with Yujiro as his opponent, the mere fact that both Retsu and Yujiro have respect for him means that he's clearly not to be messed with. Had he given Retsu's title of Kaioh too early Retsu would probably have been at the same level as the other mediocre Kaioh and Kaku would have had cut his hand for it.
• Older Than They Look: He certainly looks very aged, but is far too packed with muscular to really look the part of a 100-year old man.
• Tear Off Your Face: At the hands of Yujiro before the Ogre flicked the detached "mask" of skin into the hands of some Chinese Bureau elders in the crowd.

Jyaku Kaioh

Voiced by: Yutaka Aoyama (JP, anime), Edward Bosco (EN, anime)

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• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: It's not clear if his offer to recruit masters into teaching Japanese kids self-defense is true or just misdirection to sucker punch his opponent (or both) but even if it is a Chinese tournament or trying to test his self-defense on a caveman feels like it's not a sane way around it.
• Combat Pragmatism: He dislocates Retsu's arm trying to go for a handshake (granted Retsu more or less let him and he fixed it during the fight too) and distract him to give a savage headbutt.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Absolutely dominated Chin after receiving two blows.
• Foreign Wrestling Heel: During the Raitai, he is a Kaioh but also Japanese so he joins the Japan-US team instead of the Chinese Kaiohs. He also gains a lot of heat by doing some underhanded tricks on Retsu.
• Mauve Shirt: For a participant that went up against Retsu in the Raitai Tournament Arc, he starts appearing along side with the rest of the fighters in Son Of Ogre to see Pickle in the containment area and also made frequent appearance at that Coliseum whenever there's going to be a major fight involved, noticeably when it's Musashi versus Retsu or Pickle versus Musashi.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's the Baki-verse's stand-in for Doshin So, the founder of Shorinji Kempo. Both are bespectacled, bald men with beards, and like Jyaku's style, Shorinji Kempo focuses on self defense and personal betterment over violence, utilizing knowledge of the human body both for joint locks and healing, such as resuscitation and bone setting. Shorinji Kempo is a combination of Japanese martial arts and Chinese martial philosophies, based on Doshin's time in China, which would explain how Jyaku earned a Chinese title. It is also worth noting that the author of the manga himself is a practitioner of Shorinji Kempo.
• Token Minority: He's one of the only Kaioh seen to not be Chinese, as he's from Japan.

Shunsei Kaku

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• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Like most of the Kaioh he is confident that he is the best and no non Chinese can defeat him.
• The Bus Came Back: He returned in Chiharu's spin-off manga.
• Commonality Connection: He felt this with Baki as they were sons of superhuman men.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He is defeated by Baki in 2 seconds.
• Epic Fail: Not only did he lose to Baki in 2 seconds, his dad basically disowns him and tells him to give up on martial arts.
• Informed Ability: We don't see what he is capable of, as Baki was way over his level in the only instance that he'd get to show his skills.
• Red Baron: The invincible beast.
• Smug Snake: His plan during the tournament was to kill Baki to eclipse the Chinese team's first defeat. He underestimated Baki by a pretty large margin.

Shobun Ron

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• Combat Pragmatist: He is a master of Kenpo refined by many years of fighting in the Taiwanese underground and is not above using some dirty tricks. He spits in Oliva's eye before cutting his steel-like stomach muscles with a spearhand, and targets vulnerable parts of the body like the temple, ear and small bones in people's feet with lightning-fast attacks thrown from a posture that is deliberately used to look like he's off-guard or barely paying attention to his opponent when the opposite is true.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Of the Chinese competitors, he is the only one that actually puts up a good fight besides Retsu and Kaku, posing a legitimate threat to a powerhouse like Oliva. Even Yujiro goes to give Oliva some encouragement before the fight because he recognized that Ron was no joke.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: He's 45 and has gone undefeated in public competitions and shady underground matches since he was 15. Oliva hands him his first loss, though not without taking a big beating and getting humiliated a couple of times.
• Determinator: He keeps trying to fight Oliva even with four broken fingers on each hand, throwing ineffective punches at him out of sheer dogged will.
  Ron: "A level-headed mind... IS INVINCIBLE!"
• Fatal Flaw: Wrath. Granted, it’s well hidden behind his stoic expression, but Ron is clearly enraged by Oliva’s cocky attitude and his mockery of Ron’s Hand Pocket stance. Twice during their match, Oliva baits him into attacking recklessly, and both times Oliva lands devastating counter attacks, which lost Ron the fight when Oliva finally managed to grab his head, holding him in place so that he couldn't dodge anymore.
• Fragile Speedster: Subverted. Ron blocks and dodges Oliva's punches with ease, but when Oliva baits him into dropping his guard and pounds him with a double fisted strike to the shoulders, he falls to the ground, seemingly unconscious... only for Ron to jump to his feet lightning quick, and rapidly hammer Oliva with a flurry of furious blows. Oliva finally has to grab him and deliver a series of headbutts, throwing his entire body into each one to eventually knock Ron out, who kept throwing punches with his broken hands until Oliva nearly caved in his face.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: His style is this but with his hands in his pockets, meaning he is always poised to strike and can immediately go from a slouched posture to any number of deadly Kenpo strikes, just like a man walking with a hand on his gun or sword. This also leads to a degree of Confusion Fu as it's impossible to tell what kind of strike he's throwing until it's already approaching a Pressure Point or your face at stupefying speeds.
  Oliva: "Now I get it. I thought you were acting cocky, but that's not the case at all. It's not that won't take your hands out of your pockets, it's that you can't."
• Odd Name Out: Alongside Shunsei Kaku, he's the only one of the Kaioh's to not use the title in his name and uses his full name instead. Whether you wanna take this as a bit of rebellion against Mainland China by an invaluable Taiwanese fighter or a coincidence is up to the reader.
• Old Master: 45 isn't really that old, but for a career martial artist who fights no-holds-barred and potentially lethal barehanded duels in the Taiwanese pinch-hitting market as his routine, it's practically ancient. He's come out of a 25 year career of underground fighting undefeated against a massive variety of martial artists.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: It would be no exaggeration to call him the Orochi Doppo of underground Kenpo and even Yujiro uses Ron as an example to give Baki a lesson on Iajutsu and it's benefits. He gives Oliva, one of the strongest men in world, a serious run for his money. Despite this, he's never shown up again since the Raitai Tournament (until Chiharu's spin-off anyway), though his Hand Pocket technique is brought up as a Chekhov's Gun in Baki and Yujiro's fight.
• Razor-Sharp Hand: He is able to stab and cut Oliva with a spearhand, something not even a sword or small-arms fire can do. He also has strong enough knuckles to use precise finger strikes on a brick shithouse like Oliva. It doesn't work later when Oliva tightens his abs in a bodybuilding pose while Ron strikes them with a spearhand, breaking all his digits save his thumbs.
• The Stoic: He is a really composed and quiet man. He even makes sure to put his (horrifically broken at this point) hands back in his pockets when he is about to pass out after Oliva headbutts him several times in a row.
• Super-Strength: Strong enough to lift the enormous Oliva into the air with a Rising Dragon Kick to the guy's jaw, and cut his sword-and-smalls-arms-fire-proofed muscles with a spearhand.
• The Triads and the Tongs: Was personally hired and offered an outrageous sum of cash by the head honcho of "The Crow's Circle", a Taiwanese triad, as soon as he became a legal adult to be their bruiser and underground champion fighter after demonstrating that he had The Gift by demolishing four Taiwanese Raitai qualifiers in a row during his teenage years.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Oliva decides he's this after seeing his sheer determination to win and marvels about the extremely long and strenuous training he must have undergone to polish his skills and his Spear Hand, before knocking him out with a series of headbutts.
  Oliva: "What a stylish guy..."
  • He is seen as this to Chiharu of all people, for meeting his headbutt with one of his own.

Lee Kaioh

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• Curb Stomp Cushion: He completely dominates Baki before accidentally curing him of his poisoning.
• Poisonous Person: Uses a fighting style called Snake Hand which is a similar to Yanagi's Poison Hand technique. Unbeknownst to Lee, he counteracts the poison that's been inflicting Baki giving him a fighting chance.
• Sibling Rivalry: With Kaioh Han.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Unknowingly cures Baki's poison with another poison during the fight in the Raitai Tournament which puts Baki back into fighting shape.

Soun Kaioh

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• Curb-Stomp Battle: Retsu overpowers him without much effort.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: While crushing ten iron rings is impressive, it is not on the level of Kaoru Hanayama, who tore a chunk out of a deck of playing cards. Retsu notes that Hanayama would see Soun as a joke. Retsu quickly proves that Soun is far from his level too.

Yoh Kaioh

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• Bullying a Dragon: After being disappointed by Dorian being unable to fight in his state he challenges Oliva as he seems like a strong fighter to take a shot at his diamond hard body. Oliva crumples him by putting his hand on his head and calling him an idiot.
• Logical Weakness: His skin and muscles are near-invulnerable, but his bones aren't. Oliva admits his punches probably can't dent him, but then calls him a moron for offering to take the first hit, by proceeding to fold his spine like a harpsichord by pushing down on his head.
• Made of Iron: He's trained himself to be near unbreakable; He can resist waterfall debris, a truck tire running against his abs and cannonballs. Oliva admits that not even his punches would hurt him much.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His entire schtick and likeness is based on real-life carnival performer and vaudeville actor "Cannonball" Richards, who became famous for taking 75 consecutive punches to his abdomen from heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey without faltering, and eventually training his abdomen to be strong enough that he could resist cannonballs at point-blank range at least twice a day.
• Training from Hell: He claims that he has been shot with a cannon ball, runover by a car wheel and meditated under a waterfall to strengthen his skin.

Chin Kaioh

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• Curb Stomp Cushion: He actually lands two blows on Jyakku before being defeated, giving a more dignified defeat than Sanwan and Han, who couldn't even claim that.
• Punched Across the Room: He manages to launch Jyakku with his punches.
• Worthy Opponent: Jyakku regards him as one, requesting that he help him teach his students.

Jiou Kaioh

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• Curb-Stomp Battle: One attack from Alai Jr. was all it took to take him down.
• The Giant: The tallest of the Kaioh.
• Groin Attack: Alai Jr. defeats him with a single punch to the groin.

Mao Kaioh

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• Informed Ability: He never gets to show the chance to show what he can do, as he is taken out by Kaku so the coalition battle could happen.

Han Kaioh

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• Belated Injury Realization: After Alai Jr. knocks him down, he shakily gets to his feet, mad as hell, and loudly declares that he can still fight. Jr takes one look at him, then turns around and walks out. And sure enough, Jr’s deduction is right, as Han can only make it a few steps before he face plants again, this time for good.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Alai Jr. defeats him easily by cutting his face with a single punch and two follow-up blows.
• Logical Weakness: He believes boxing has this as a result of not employing kicks, and explains the extension of this to Alai Jr. by pointing out that since Han's legs are longer than Junior's arms, he can kick Junior from outside of Junior's reach. While this may be true, Junior is fast enough to dodge all his kicking attempts, and eventually Han goes for a punch when he thinks Junior is in a vulnerable position. It turns out poorly for Han.
• Sibling Rivalry: With Kaioh Lee.

Sanwan Kaioh

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• Curb-Stomp Battle: Kaku defeats him in all of eight seconds.
• Groin Attack: Kaku defeats him by flicking him in the balls.
• Token Minority: He one of the only Kaiohs to not be from China, as he is a Nak Muay from Thailand that was taught by a Kenpo master who was visiting and took the young Samwan under his wing.
• Underestimating Badassery: Twice! The first time, he internally gloats that defeating Kaku Kaioh should be easy, earning him a humiliating defeat. Later, he attacks a heckler outside the ring: said heckler was Yujiro Hanma.
• Wrestler of Beasts: He met his master while he was fighting a snake.

Warrior's Struggle Saga

Genichi Fukamachi

The Boxing coach at the Boxing gym Retsu goes at. He become Retsu's personal Boxing coach after the man shows his stuff by exploding a heavy bag in a single blow.

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• Audience Surrogate: He is there to react to Retsu's quick rise in the Boxing world. He acts in complete and utter surprise and confusion like any other person in his position would.
• The Glomp: In his incredulous reaction to Retsu knocking out Joe Crazier, he gets up on the ring and throws himself at Retsu.
• Serious Business: He's been in the Boxing game for a long time and would get angry at Retsu for not training Boxing seriously at his gym until he gives up and lets Retsu do his own thing. Before Retsu's fight with Joe Crazier he goes as far as to punch the man for underestimating Boxing despite knowing what Retsu is capable of.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Retsu lets him come with him on his Boxing journey, he sleep in luxurious hotels funded by Kaiser, to his own disbelief he gets to meet Muhammed Ali in person, and presumably he gets some of the million dollar pot Retsu gets from Boxing too.

Mani Akio

A super welterweight champion of Boxing who decided to give a little visit to Retsu's boxing gym.

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• Curb-Stomp Battle: The first of many boxers to fall to Retsu's hands in his bid to show Kung Fu's strength to the boxing world.
• Graceful Loser: He smiles after he wakes up from his knockout and tells Retsu if he wants to show how good his Kung Fu is to the world he has to keep winning his Boxing matches.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He is a clear allusion to the PacMan himself. With his faial features being similar to the Filipino boxer and his name sounding a whole lot like "Manny Pacquaio". Although this makes his existence very weird as Manny Pacquiao actually exists in the Baki verse.
• The Worf Effect: He is defeated in one punch by Retsu to show how stronger he is than any boxer. Retsu did seem to respect him as a dangerous fighter though.

Kaiser

The famous boxing promoter of America, who is stunned by Retsu punching a hole clean through a worn old boxing glove and sells him on getting into professional boxing by telling Retsu he's stirring a den of monsters, setting up several fights for him in Las Vegas.

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• Badass Boast: He gives one on behalf of Joe Crazier while selling Retsu on the fight with him after his previous opponents proved dissapointed.
  "This is not an amateur, nor a Golden Glover. This is the real definition of a pro. This is not about winning, and it is not about losing, it's about breaking the man in front of you. That is what it means to get to the top. The fight money will be enough to make even you jump, and of course the talent you will face is very real."
• Bullying a Dragon: When Retsu shows no interest in fame or fight money, this is how Kaiser sells Retsu on going into boxing after witnessing him One-Inch Punch a hole in an old boxing glove; By telling him that he just provoked the cream-of-the-crop of a 150-year old fighting profession.
  "I am sure that I can put some monsters in front of you that will make you want to run away... The color in your eyes changed. You're a true warrior after all. Leave it to me. 150 years or 4000 years. The world will jump in it's seats at this extreme matchup."
• Charm Person: He gets Retsu to agree to becoming a boxer by appealing to his Blood Knight tendencies by telling him he'll give him many a Worthy Opponent and a chance to prove the strength of Chinese martial arts if he signs up for the sport.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: To keep a very long story short, Don King is arguably both the most important man in the history of modern Boxing, AND the most hated man in it's history too. Scams, fraud, embezzlement, "mismanaging funds", outright murder, slander, you name it, he did it. In Baki, Kaiser is still a slimeball but not quite that bad.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's Don King in everything but name, with everything from the shady business, Bunny-Ears Lawyer mannerisms, larger-than-life fashion style and amazing way of words.

Andrei Valev

One of the boxers fought by Retsu.

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• Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite breaking two bricks with a light jab and having great agility for his size due to his smooth footwork, Retsu defeats him with one punch.
• Faster Than They Look: He is a titan of a man at 237cm and 151 kilos, yet he moves with the grace of a dancer in the ring.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: It's Nikolai Valuev, a controversial boxer (due to being relatively Unskilled, but Strong for a top boxer and having a style that was neither that pleasing to watch or analyze of just outboxing and using his size to his advantage) with Acromelagy who held the WBA Heavyweight belt twice and competed at the top of the division in 2005-2009.

"Smoking" Joe Crazier

One of the boxers fought by Retsu. Based on a legendary heavyweight from the Golden Age of Boxing, his nickname comes from the fact that most of his opponents can't even lay a hand on him, as if they were fighting smoke.

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• Anachronism Stew: Despite being only two years younger than Muhammad Ali Sr in real-life (who is in his sixties at the time of the story), Joe is described as being 36, in his physical prime, at the time Retsu gets matched with him.
• Boxing Battler: The Boxing Battler of an entire arc dedicated to the sport. Crazier is the author's love letter to a man who was Overshadowed by Awesome in real-life by Muhammad Ali, who singlehandedly makes Retsu of all people realize why boxing gloves are a lethal weapon in the right hands.
• Confusion Fu: He is incredibly hard to read due to his speed and well-polished feints, and will send his opponent's head off to the shadow realm with a devastating left hook as soon as they lose track of his left hand. Also a case of Truth in Television; Joe Frazier broke his left arm as a child being chased by the family's hog while working on their farm, and his impoverished black family couldn't afford proper treatment for it, so the bone grew back together at a slightly weird angle and he was never able to fully extend it for the rest of his life. This meant that Frazier's left hook could come from angles that were straight-up impossible for other boxers to replicate without risking injuring their arms.
• Determinator: Retsu hits him repeatedly with some insanely powerful and dynamic punches and Crazier, for the most part, eats them like breakfast.
  Retsu: What do you call this kind of mental strength?! Even if his flesh were to receive deep, lasting damage, it would not matter.
• Final Boss: The last boxer we get to see Retsu fight as his next match against Wilbur Bolt happens entirely off-screen.
• Foil: Son of Ogre indirectly presents him as one to Shiba Chiharu; someone so single-mindedly obsessed with winning with their own abilities that they'll go to any lengths to win, refusing hope, luck or chance outright and powering through on sheer grit and brass balls. Joe infamously refused to quit in the "Thrilla in Manila" fight with Muhammad Ali and his cornermen had to throw in the towel (Ali later confessed he was in the middle of doing the same himself and had asked his cornermen to cut his gloves when he came back to his own corner), and was known to fight way past what any man should be able to. In forty-four rounds across three fights with Ali, Frazier never went down even once.
• Genius Bruiser: Implied. Given the fact that he displays an amazing strategic fighting style which relies on the use of his speed for confusing movements, the use of feints skillfully enough to fool Retsu and immediately adapting to Retsu's tactics of throwing punches from above and bouncing off of the ropes for momentum, it's safe to say that he is very intelligent.
• Graceful Loser: He comes to Retsu after the fight with a tired smile, tells him at he talked his deceased father while he was knocked out and thanks Retsu for letting them meet and give them some closure, before walking away and waving to his fans.
• Improbable Weapon User: He’s actually managed to weaponize his gloves, of all things. It catches Retsu completely off-guard, mainly because gloves were originally introduced into boxing to reduce the perceived threat of damage (as bareknuckle was a lot bloodier due to all the cuts, but head trauma and concussions were practically a non-issue as a skull is far tougher than even the most callused, trained fist imaginable). However, Joe takes full advantage of the extra weight they add to his fists in order to give his blows even greater impact.
• Killing Intent: Downplayed since he's an athlete with standards and probably wouldn't actually go that far, but Retsu immediately notes the difference of squaring up in a ring with a man with the same look in his eye as a genuine martial arts genius or tough street fighter, even describing his presence as overwhelming despite the fact that he's only 180cm.
• Meaningful Name: His nickname comes from it being obscenely hard to actually hit him despite the fact that he clings to his opponents up close with his slugging, as if he were made out of smoke. His real-life inspiration described himself as "Comin' out smokin'" when he was in his element, which usually ended with his opponent out cold from a left hook, and the phrase stuck as a result, becoming Boxing lingo with time.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Two letters off from "Smokin'" Joe Frazier, one of the greatest heavyweight boxing champions of all time and one of Muhammad Ali's rivals, holding a 1-2 record against Ali^note Generally it's considered 1-1-1 these days, as in hindsight, the Thrilla in Manila was a draw at best with both corners throwing in the towel for their broken and beaten boxer almost at the same time, but on record, Ali is technically up one.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Downplayed. At 180cm and 92 kilos, Joe is by no means a small man, but it's barely within the legal limits of the Heavyweight division and yet he is easily the strongest boxer in the series with only possibly Ali Jr and Bolt in the running.
• Signature Move: His iconic, soul-crushingly powerful left hook. His bobbing and weaving once Retsu starts thinking of a countermeasure to Crazier's initial offense is also very similar to his real-life inspirations' head movement when he got in close.
  Alai Sr: "Soon you will be enveloped by the smoke... And then without fail he will consume you. It'll be a blow that can challenge the world. The left hook of a champion!!"
• Strong and Skilled: He manages to genuinely give Retsu an incredibly difficult time defeating him due to a combination of his strength, skill, tactical fighting style and balls of steel. One hook was all it took to give Retsu a Mushroom Samba-like concussion.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: He's the first and only boxer who gives Retsu a serious run for his money, unlike the previous opponents who were defeated in a single punch. After a hard-fought battle, Retsu eventually hits him with a knuckle-strike to a vital Pressure Point on the face he'd normally never consider to use on someone who doesn't know of it, which finally shuts Crazier's lights off.
• Worthy Opponent: Summed up in one word right before the fight begins, after Retsu previously had a hard time describing his impression of the man.
  Genichi: "Did it feel like it'd be a good fight?"
  Retsu: "Supremely."

Wilbur Bolt

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• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Of Usain Bolt, the Jamaican gold medalist runner, who in this story moved on to boxing and unified the heavyweight belts.
• Noodle People: He has an archetypical runner's body, being muscular as all hell but still relatively skinny-looking (with most other characters having more of a bodybuilder's type of body), and is 205cm tall. His limbs are also drawn in an exaggeratedly long fashion, making him look even more noodly.
• Super-Speed: No other way to describe it; He's the fastest man in the world after all.
• The Unfought: Despite the buildup he received, Retsu’s match with him is never depicted in the manga, and it would've been unclear if they even fought at all were it not for Retsu hosting a press conference of him retiring from Boxing after getting Wilbur's belt in Baki Dou.
  • Even the anime's version of the press conference only showed us a brief scene of Retsu knocking Bolt out.

Grand Sumo Tournament Competitors

In General

• No Celebrities Were Harmed: They are all based on current or past Rikishi who competed in Grand Sumo in real life.
• Similar Squad: Some of them are rather similar to the protagonists they go up against, such as Honoo being a Pintsized Powerhouse with Super-Speed like Baki, or Take-Tsurugi being an Old Master and a veteran fighter like Doppo.
• Sumo Wrestling: Duh.
• The Worf Effect: On both ends of the trope. First they destroy Mixed Martial Art fighters with ease then during their fight against Baki's team they ultimately lose all but one fight, in which Kasumi blatantly gave up instead of finishing an opponent who was ready to die fighting when he had him, quite literally, by the balls. They do get to show their skills and some nasty applications of their Sumo Signature Moves, but it's pretty clear Baki and some of the others were just having fun.

Yokozuna Reihou

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• Badass Boast: Despite admitting that the rules they're fighting under favor his opponent in every way and being many weight classes lower than his opponent, he tells Sukune to come at him with everything he's got before the bout even starts.
• Determinator: Humiliated, injured and with broken bones, he challenges Sukune to a rematch under a bridge near the stadium right after Sukune's scuffle with Yujiro. It doesn't go well for him, but even Sukune gives him huge props for even managing to fight him again, much less actually getting a few hits in.
• Lightning Bruiser: He matched Baki's own Track and Field records in middle school by completing a 100-meter dash in ten seconds while being a 100kg brick of muscle barefooted^note It is common athletics knowledge and scientifically proven that shoes, and especially running shoes make a massive difference in the person's time, but ten seconds would be an incredible speed (only just under half a second from Usain Bolt's record from 2009) even for a well-trained sprinter in cutting-edge shoes. and launching a baseball for an immeasurable distance in a pitch. These days he's almost two meters tall and 165kg and is even faster and far stronger.
• Made of Iron: Tanks several spinning backfists from a hundred kilo MMA fighter without even flinching just to prove a point that the guy isn't even in his league. Sukune pulls some of his ribs out of their sockets and dunks the Yokozuna on his head with a shoulder throw and it barely knocked him out for a minute or two. Reihou was still spry enough to challenge Sukune to another back-alley brawl immediately afterwards, albeit with predictable results.
  The Narrator: "[Chaos Iwanami] threw a full-strength backhand so hard, he felt like he was overdoing it a little. Yet with that satisfying moment of impact... His mind conjured the image of a huge boulder."
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He is Hakuho Sho in everything but name; A near-spitting image of former Mongolian Yokozuna and the greatest Rikishi of all time, both statistically and dominance-wise, ruling with an iron grip over the Makuuchi division for 20 years.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: He matched Baki's absurd track-and-field exploits while he was in middle school, and is the strongest man in Grand Sumo for damn good reason. But as Kinryuuzan planned, this also makes him the perfect debut for Nomi no Sukune II to break into the public eye.
• Signature Move: His real-life basis' somewhat controversial, but unstoppably powerful Harite to the jaw and cheek immediately followed up by a Kachiage elbow uppercut during the initial charge, which is strong enough to burst Sukune's eardrum with ease.
• Sore Loser: Rather understandably, he was very pissed off at Sukune, who despite appearances is entirely unranked in Sumo, for making light of his Training from Hell by saying he doesn't do nearly enough Shiko and then defeating Reihou in just over a minute when Reihou is the Magnum Opus of Grand Sumo. He proceeds to try and beat Sukune's ass under a nearby bridge soon after the bout, with predictable results.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Being used to massive impacts and slaps in Sumo tournaments, he easily defeats his MMA opponent Chaos Iwanami, a much smaller and lighter man than he is, after eating his spinning hammerfist like it was nothing. Once he charges in and gets a hold of Chaos' trunks, he doesn't have to put in any effort either due to the previously mentioned weight difference as he swiftly tosses him through the air with a Yaguranagi, knocking the poor guy out with a single throw slamming his head into the sand ring.

Oozeki Kyogei

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• Acrofatic: Is explicitly very agile despite his massive bulk.
• Animal Motifs: Whales. Which fits him very much, as he's a gigantic man with a strong fat build who is very much a non-aggressive and gentle person.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: A minor example. He manages to overcome Shibukawa's Aiki using just his strength alone, something that is practically unheard of. It should be noted that not even Oliva was able to overcome Shibukawa's Aiki, and found himself being dragged around by the finger.
• Faster Than They Look: He's surpringly fast in spite of being so hulkingly large in both height and weight that you'd take one look at him and think he's a Mighty Glacier.
• Friend to All Children: He's seen giving some kids his autograph in a post-fight interview where he talks about his experiences with Shibukawa's Aiki.
• Gentle Giant: He is GIGANTIC, but he has a kind and gentle personality, being worried for Shibukawa when he breaks his glass eye with a Tsuppari that sent him flying into the rafters, concerned that he might kill him, and he's also seen giving some kids his autograph later on in a post-fight interview.
• The Giant: Is massive even for a Rikishi but still entirely proportional, standing at a giant 231cm (7' 7'') and weighing in at over 290kg (639lbs). This is especially notable as he is both Japanese and fights against Shibukawa, who is a sixth of his size.
• Graceful Loser: He takes his loss to Shibukawa with dignity and respect towards the old master.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: He's absolutely titanic, making even the already abnormally tall Nomi no Sukune II look like a normal sized person in comparison, but he's much faster than one would expect.
• Logical Weakness: His size and sheer strength can beat Shibukawa's aiki but he still needs to ready himself for it, if he is off balance because he attacked carelessly or jumps in pain, he weighs nothing.
• Loved by All: When his match ends he is still being cheered on by the crowd for his magnificent performance despite his loss. Even Shibukawa comes to admire him and says he got humiliated even in victory.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Based on the humongous^note At 6'9 in pre-war Imperial Japan, he would've stuck out just as much as Kyogei does. former Sekiwake Dewagatake, an archivist's son and Gentle Giant who was pressured into fighting Sumo to support the family despite his distaste for violence.
• Perpetual Smiler: His standard expression is a relaxed, happy smile.
• Super-Strength: Notably overcomes Shibukawa's Aiki with just brute force, something which gets him much admiration from the crowd and even respect from the main cast.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: He instantly defeats his opponent, Inoda Kanon, a huge heavyweight MMA fighter who, while very tall by ordinary standards at a decent 189 centimeters (6'2) tall, is microscopic in comparison to the 231 centimeters (7'7) tall giant that is Kyogei, who swiftly proves to be that he, as a fantastically huge giant of a man whose every bit as strong as he looks, as well as being more agile than he looks, is just outright impossible for Inoda Kanon, a mundanely huge guy to beat.
• Violation of Common Sense: He manages to overcome Shibukawa's Aiki with strength alone, something that would otherwise be the worst thing possible to do given how Shibukawa's Aiki is portrayed.
• Worthy Opponent: He earns Shibukawa's respect and fear for being the first to overwhelm Aiki with brute strength.

Sekiwake Take-Tsurugi

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• Body Horror: The result of him breaking Kuwata Takumi, his MMA opponent's elbow with a Kannuki hold. It looks as if he straight up turned all the bones in it to dust and bent his arm like pretzel dough or a piece of taffy.
• Combat Pragmatism: He uses kicks, stomps and is willing to break elbow ligaments with the Kannuki hold.
• Ear Ache: He gets his ear sliced by Doppo's kick. The sharp pain actually wakes him up a bit after the barrage of straight punches beforehand.
• Idiot Ball: Doppo straight up tells him he was wise to not stomp him or kick him while he was down because that would have been easy to counter. Two chapters later when Doppo is down again Take-Tsurugi goes for a stomp which gets countered immediately and ends the fight.
• Made of Iron: While he has the clear weight advantage, Baki is shocked that he can take Doppo's strongest punches.
• Old Master: The oldest Rikishi representing the Sumo Association in the exhibition matches against the best of the Tokyo Dome, and the best technical wrestler of theirs. He especially excels at taking the upper hand from the kannuki, or elbow hold.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Kuwata Takumi tries to grab his leg to force him to the ground so he can pull a grapple, which ends up failing completely considering that Take-Tsurugi is both bigger and heavier than Takumi is, as well as being not only a sumo wrestler, who all train themselves to be immovable, but an incredibly experienced one at that, leading to Takumi humiliating himself as Take-Tsurugi effortlessly repels Takumi's efforts to uproot him and then swiftly proceeds to horribly break his arm by throwing him from a Kannuki hold.

Sekiwake Shishimaru

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• Animal Motifs: As made by obvious by his strength, Shikona and viscious fighting style, his is a lion.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Snaps the spine of Rekizou Miyairi, a Japanese lookalike of Conor McGregor with a bear hug in his first appearance.
• Did Not Think This Through: His last outburst of strength ends with him pinning and headbutting Kasumi on the ground. However being a sumo wrestler he has no idea how to fight on the ground so even with all his weight on him Kasumi can dodge Shishimaru's ground pound and crush his balls to force Shishimaru to dismount.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His record of having the most kinboshi^note a Rikishi winning a bout against a Yokozuna. Such is always considered an upset, and results in a permanent raise to the one to do it's pay. in history is all but certainly a reference to "Giant Killer" Akinoshima, who earned 16 kinboshi and at least one against every Yokozuna he ever faced.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Rekizou Miyairi stopping to gloat in his head after he knocks Shishimaru out in their brief battle gives the latter both the time to recover and the perfect set-up to defeat him with a bear-hug, as he clung onto him as he lost consciousness from Miyairi's strikes to his chin and his temples. He could have actually lost against him if Miyairi did the sensible thing and continued attacking the unconscious Shishimaru, especially since his specialty is precisely hitting his enemies vital points, enabling him to fight comfortably opponents big and small, which gave him the biggest advantage over any of the sumo opponents. Also unless the concussion is severe people can indeed regain consciousness that fast.
• Super-Strength: At 182 kilos of grappling muscle and noted to focus on weightlifting (with appropriately absurd, but still real numbers such as easily deadlifting 400kg), he is able to effortlessly toss Katsumi through the air. His initial charge is compared to being hit by a storm, standing in waterfall debris, and being mauled by a huge predator.

Maegashira Shachihoko

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• Animal Motifs: Orcas due to his size and agility and his Sumo focusing on aggressive palm strikes, giving him the ferocity of an orca compared to his whale-like Rikishi compatriots. His Shikona is another word for "Orca".
• Atrocious Alias: He's nicknamed "The Thruster" due to his frequent use of palm thrusts. Tokugawa even remarks that this nickname is "rather Showa", with an awkward expression on his face, clearly thinking about it implying pelvic thrusts instead of palm thrusts.
• Creepily Long Arms: Exploited. His arms reach down inches away from his knees, giving him quite the advantage when it comes to preforming palm thrusts.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He faced Hanayama, who is bigger and taller than him, head on. The results are pretty obvious for anyone who knows Hanayama's sheer strength.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: He's the only one of the Sumos who actually gets a fair fight against their MMA opponent, as Aaron Murase manages to fight relatively equally with him before going down.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Offers Hanayama to meet once again over drinks despite the yakuza smashing in his nose and teeth.
• Meaningful Name: His Shikona comes from the Shachihoko, a tiger-headed carp said to bring rain that is usually used as roof decoration in Japan.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Based on and near-identical to Sekiwake Abi Masatora, who is infamous for his palm strikes using his long reach.
• Younger Than They Look: He's around the same age as Hanayama, but looks the part of a stern, full-bodied wrestler besides his somewhat young face.

Komusubi Honoo

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• Acrofatic: He has a fat, yet muscular build like his fellow Sumo wrestlers, yet can move at an ungodly speed that's fast enough for him to catch even Baki off guard.
• Big Beautiful Man: He has a youthfully beautiful face.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Manages to surprise Baki a couple of times and hit him with a nasty suplex against the ringside, but is completely overwhelmed by the champion in the end.
• Inexplicably Awesome: No reason is ever given to how he's just so darn fast, just that he is.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His name is literally Enho's with a single kanji swapped.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Downplayed. Despite being very short compared to other fighters he has surprising power due to still being 97 kilos of fast-twitch muscle, being able to easily injure a MMA fighter and sent him to the hospital with an elaborate Yaguranagi. Even Baki has a cold-sweat at getting bear-hugged from behind by Honoo.
  Baki: "Yeah okay, he outsped me but is this dude... really a small dude?"''
• Super-Speed: He is able to instantly blitz a MMA fighter and even caught Baki Hanma off guard.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: He instantly defeats his MMA fighter opponent without the latter even getting the chance to attack due to just so superhumanly fast.
• Wrestler in All of Us: He's already a type of wrestler himself by the virtue of being a Sumo Wrestler, but he pulls off a suplex on Baki during their fight.

Other Major Recurring Characters

Gerry Strydum

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• Fluffy Tamer: Having a fighting man's soul Gerry is able to connect with Pickle when the caveman is agitated. Instead of sending an army he simply strips himself in his underwear and extend his hand to the caveman saying he will bring him to find like minded persons.
• Four-Star Badass: An American general being on good terms with Yujiro gives him some badassery. He also has the guts to call out Doyle on his underhanded ways.
• Odd Friendship: With Yujiro, Gerry disapproves of how Yujiro raised Baki but he understands Yujiro's mentality and can connect with him. One of the condition of their friendship is that every year Strydum must attack Yujiro with lethal intent even though it's a lost cause, which Yujiro finds hilarious because Strydum puts a lot of effort and theatrics to it which is likely why they are on good terms.

Emi Akezawa

Baki's mother.

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• Abusive Parents: Not only did she put Baki through Hell in her attempt to make him strong, but Emi was emotionally abusive as well, really viewing him as nothing more than a tool to get to Yujiro rather than her actual child. She blamed him for not being strong enough to keep Yujiro in her life, even beathing him and biting his arm when he tried to go for a hug.
• Children Raise You: In her final moments, she really cares for Baki, while before she had no affection for him. And she's killed trying to save his life
• Evil Matriarch: Until the end she puts Baki to Hell and beyond to raise him strong. Not because she cares for him, but to present her husband with a fighter worth his strength.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Willingly challenged Yujiro to fight her, knowing full well that he WILL kill her, in order to save Baki's life.
• I Have No Son!: Emi's love for Baki is a function of his physical prowess. When Yujiro deems him worthless and blames Emi for having failed raising him strong, she blatantly disowns him, biting his arm when he asks for a single hug.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Basically her entire backstory: rich heiress of a rich family, she got noticed by a young Yujiro by admiring his trail of blood and revealing a bloodthirsty nature matching his own. Going from there to get her first husband killed by Yujiro and accept to sire a strong child and groom him to become the second Strongest Creature in the World and give Yujiro the fight he desires takes just a moment.
• Kick the Dog: Constantly with her own son. Up until the end.
• Mama Bear: She ends up becoming one but only in the end. After realizing Yujiro will kill Baki because he wasn't ready to face him properly, she calls the Strongest Creature in the World off, throwing her gauntlet for Baki's sake. It doesn't end up well.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Becomes horrified with the sinking realization that Yujiro is actually going to KILL THEIR SON BAKI, and that in her selfish desperation to gain Yujiro's Love, she sent her own child TO HIS DEATH.
• Redemption Equals Death: She dies trying to protect Baki, after acting so cold, distant, and uncaring towards him for the entirety of their time together as family.
• Sadist: Much like Yujiro, she delights in violence and is described as having bloodlust in her eyes.

Diane Niel

Jack Hanma's mother.

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• Action Girl: She's a former soldier and one of the few in the series.
• Put on a Bus: After the Maximum Tournament, she hasn't been seen since.

Morio Sonoda

An officer of the Tokyo police.

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• A Day In The Lime Light: The anime adaptation of Revenge Tokyo has him as the main focus character.

Junichi Hanada

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• Start My Own: He has mentioned to Motobe he has wanted to start his own martial arts school.
• The Worf Effect: He is quickly defeated by Mount Toba, to show how tough the veteran fighter is.

Musashi

Baki's dog

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Muhammad Ali Sr.

The boxing champion who is the father of Muhammad Ali Jr.

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• Boxing Battler: He is a former champion of boxing.
• Dented Iron: Despite his skill, he's over 60 and is diagnosed with several diseases.
• Disappointed in You: After having to step in to save his son from getting his neck snapped by Baki, he just walks off as his son is bawling his eyes out after a humiliating defeat from Baki at the end of the Ali Jr. Arc.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Called his son a coward for refusing to fight him (despite the fact that Ali Jr. was so injured he couldn’t walk without crutches), then beat the hell out of him when he finally agreed. Despite this, when Baki was about to snap Jr’s neck during their death match, Ali Sr. sucker-punched Baki to save his son’s life, knowing full well Baki could kill him for interfering.
• Loved by All: He is beloved the world over, just like in Real Life. Treated by many as a hero and a god of boxing. Even Yujiro, despite acknowledging he could defeat the boxer still highly respected him for standing up for what he believed was right.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: As made obvious by the name, the character is based entirely off of the legendary heavyweight boxer dubbed 'The Greatest.'
• Papa Wolf: Manages to intervened the fight between Baki and his son by sucker punching Baki off of Ali Jr before Baki could break his son's neck. He even admits to Baki that he was prepared to be killed for the intervention, but Baki takes it in good grace, honored to have felt Muhammad Ali Sr.'s punch, and acknowledges the sheer balls to interrupt a deathmatch like that.
• Red Baron: "The Greatest", and "The Man Who Fought America".
• Troll: Just like in Real Life. He pulls some huge shit-eating grins behind his son's back after successfully taunting him into fighting him when he was in no shape to win against his dad, and when Tokugawa says Jr. will compete in his arena after all the humiliating beatdowns he received.
• Writing Around Trademarks: In the original Japanese he is named "Mahomedo Arai" (as opposed to Muhammad Ali's Japanese name, "Mohamedo Ari"), and the Netflix subtitles have him as "Mohammad Alai". The manga fan translation keeps his name as Muhammad Ali.

Jun Guevaru

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• Big Damn Heroes: He saves Iron Michael from being crippled by The Mouth.
• Improbable Weapon User: He uses his beard and hair as improvised weapons by pulling out a few strands of it and twisting them together and then either flicking it at his opponent's eye to temporarily blind and distract them or popping one of their eardrums with a powerful slap, followed by sticking the strands into the opponent's ear, unwrapping them around their cochlea and then pulling hard to slice it into pieces to destroy their sense of balance.
• Irony: Jun Guevaru, who is based off of Che Guevara in his youth, as a hero of Cuba, gets the snot beaten out of him by Biscuit Oliva, an Afro-Cuban man.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Even though his access to luxury is somewhat limited, he maintains the same privilege as Oliva.
• Nice Guy: Is pretty affable and is mostly in prison for political reasons. He happily greets Baki, calls out another prisoner for causing a disruption at lunch, which is the only thing the others can look forward to, and tunnels out of the prison when he finally escapes to avoid embarrassing the guards too badly.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He is half of the literal trope name- a former pirate trained in ninjutsu.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His entire likeness is based on Che Guevara, specifically him in his youth as a freedom fighter and not when he became a brutal tyrant.
• Number Two: He is second only to Oliva in strength.
• Pirate: Use to be one, before becoming an anarchist who ran his own sovereign nation called 'La Serna'.
• Red Baron: "The Second", some inmates believe it stands for the second-strongest inmate in the prison behind Oliva when in reality it means that he is the second inmate to get special treatment. While he doesn't get his own cell and library like Oliva, he gets better meals, and the guards pretend they don't see him when he steals their cigarettes or breaks lines. Other inmates get shot without warning.
• Super Mode: When he's being threatened in a straight-up fight, he uses his own blood as facepaint and proceeds to attack his opponent(s) in a berserk fashion, usually
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Played with. After his match with Oliva, Oliva mentions that he could've opened the front gate and left the prison anytime he wanted. Not only would that undermined the credibility of the prison guards, but it would also humiliate the security forces of the prison. Instead, Jun does the guards a favor, discretely digging his way out, so as to not embarrass them too badly.
• Troll: He does enjoy messing with others. For example, he asks an inmate a question, knowing he will be disciplined for speaking during line up.

Albert Payne

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• Admiring the Abomination: No matter how savage and destructive Pickle is, Payne still cherishes him as a national treasure and a miracle of science.
• Everyone Has Standards: He is willing to drive the Siberian tigers to extinction to feed Pickle if he has to, and disregards Pickle's rape of a Japanese reporter as an accident, all For Science!, but feeding him martial artists is a bit crazy even for Payne.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Pickle defeats Retsu and is about to eat him, Tokugawa tries to call Payne out on the horrors of letting Pickle do this, only for Payne himself (who was against the whole idea to begin with) to rightfully point out that both Retsu and Tokugawa knew the full risks of anybody challenging Pickle from the start. Even pointedly reminding Tokugawa that he's the one who used his pull and authority to give the whole thing the okay in the first place, despite the Doctor's Many repeated warnings on the matter.
• Mad Scientist: Subverted, while he loses his calm and goes on a rant about driving a species to extinction to feed Pickle, he actually does find an alternative by cloning the tyranosaurus Rex meat so no fighters or tigers have to die to keep Pickle alive. He is just that excited about discovering a preserved, living caveman, and his research keeps being interrupted by the fighting junkies of the series trying to punch it in the face.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His appearance and first name are clearly based on Albert Einstein.

The Mouth

A trio of triplet assassins. They are hired to cripple Iron Michael so he doesn't win a championship after getting out of prison.

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• Bring My Brown Pants: One pissed his pants after seeing Guevaru defeat another one of them.
• Combat Pragmatism: While they have proper martial arts training, what makes them dangerous is simply ganging up three on one with perfect teamwork.
• The Dividual: They are triplets whose only distinction is their voice, shown as different typefaces.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: They are so well synchronized that they can speak collaboratively, with each triplet saying a different word in the sentence. They even lampshade it by announcing in advance which word will each of them say.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The other the two fled the fight after one of them was utterly destroyed by Guevaru.
• One-Hit Kill: The one that Guevaru had struck was hit so hard that he practically looked like his internals exploded, judging by the gushing amounts of blood from his face well before he hit the ground in a limp heap.
• Theme Naming: They are codenamed after different parts of the mouth: Lips, Teeth and Tongue. The reason given is that the human mouth is the archetypal trio of parts operating in perfect harmony.

The Narrator

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• Breaking the Fourth Wall: His purpose is to give exposition to the audience, and so he talks directly to the audience.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Befitting his position as the exposition-spouting, unknown narrator, we never see him on screen, none of the characters hear him, and they don’t know he exists.
• Mr. Exposition: As mentioned above, that's his entire job in the show.