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Keisuke Itagaki's Baki Manga Gets TV Anime Adaptation
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The first 2017 issue of Akita Shoten's Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine is revealing on Thursday that Keisuke Itagaki's Baki (New Grappler Baki: In Search of Our Strongest Hero) manga is getting a television anime adaptation. The announcement notes that future issues of Weekly Shōnen Champion will reveal more details about the series.
The anime will feature the "Most Evil Death Row Convicts" arc from the manga. Baki is the second installment in Itagaki's overall series. The manga ran for 31 volumes in Weekly Shōnen Champion from 1999 to 2005. The manga is inspiring an original anime DVD adaptation that will also depict the "Most Evil Death Row Convicts" arc. The OAD (pictured below) will be bundled with a limited edition of Itagaki's 14th Baki-Dou manga volume on December 6.
The "Most Evil Death Row Convicts" arc features underground ring fighters in the no-rules combat environment of death row convicts. The OAD will highlight five individuals from prisons around the world who "long to know defeat." The five individuals break out of their respective prisons and head to Japan.
Itagaki's original Baki The Grappler martial arts manga ran for 42 volumes in Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine from 1991 to 1999. The manga has received two television anime adaptations and an original animation video. The original manga marks its 25th anniversary this year.
After the Baki sequel manga finished in 2005, Hanma Baki then ran in the same magazine from 2005 to 2012. The Baki-Dou sequel series launched in Weekly Shōnen Champion in March 2014 as the third sequel to the original Baki The Grappler manga.
Yukinao Yamauchi (Baki Gaiden - Scarface) launched Baki Gaiden: Kizuzura, a Baki The Grappler spinoff, in the inaugural issue of Bessatsu Shōnen Champion magazine in 2012. Still another spinoff, Baki Gaiden: Kenjin, debuted in Champion RED magazine in 2013.
