After Baki's initial appearance and victory in his first “official” match, this story settles into an ever more hyperbolic tale of unregulated fighting. In each subsequent volume, Baki will be matched with an opponent whose skills are unreasonable, whose strength is demonic, and whose desire to hurt or even kill their opponent is quite obviously unhinged. Baki faces every one of these opponents with the same 400-watt grin we saw in Volume 1.

At this point in the story, we are fully aware that each bout is the story. The conflict in each arc is actual conflict. What bizarre technique will this fighter use? How will Baki counter it or ignore the damage from it? When Baki's nerves are severed in one match, he not only defeats his opponent with one arm, but we're told he'll be just fine; the nerves were cut in such a way that they were able to be reattached easily. So we know that realism is not the point here —the point is the fight. Each fight has higher stakes, is more bizarre, and more violent than the last.

We finally also get the smallest glimpse of information about Baki. He is, we are told, fighting to save his father. That might make us sympathize with our perfect protagonist, but then…we meet his father. Yujiro Hanma, The Ogre, is a beast, his sneer practically inhuman. He is said to need to kill a man a day. In any other series, one assumes that Yujiro is the final boss, but in Baki The Grappler, he's just another monster of the day.

In these volumes, Baki isn't up to the task yet. Baki's sponsor in this world of underground fighting, Doppo Orochi, takes on Baki's father in the first match. Once again, I want to stress that this manga is not a teaching manga. Try as you might, you can learn nothing about martial arts or any kind of fighting from this story, which relies on the fantastic, the horrific, and the purely mythic in terms of techniques. When Yujiro invokes the secret technique of the ancient Ryukyu royal family, the pre-Japanese rulers of the Okinawan archipelago, that's totally real. Orochi counters with the Maeba (incorrectly labeled here as Maeda) stance, which looks like it ought to be Wing Chun, but isn't. We're not learning anything we can take back with us to the dojo.

And we have a new obsession! Where in Volume 1, strength was measured in our teeth, the narrative has switched to weight. Everything is weighed on the scale, even power. Fighters bodies are given weights, of course how much they lift is very important, we even know that the tiger that is mysteriously defeated weighed 400 kilograms, which of course is large, even for a tiger, so we know that the person who killed it is very, very strong.

The art is both better and more violent with each volume. Expect punches that carve up the body like knife-edged cannonballs. Every chapter comes with its own gruesome Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Yet again, nothing we can take with us, as neither you nor I is reaching through a man's abdomen to massage a heart. Human male anatomy is exaggerated in many creative ways by Itagaki, up to and including a moment where a demon's face is visible in human musculature. Anatomy is itself a character in this series, where every fighter's body is the subject of both loving creation in the art and detailed commentary in the narration.

It is very easy to see the emotions being played upon here. All bad guys are monsters, many of the “good” fighters are also monsters, being a human monster is admirable, sometimes! We want Baki to win, of course, but we also want his win to be as righteous as possible, given that he will have to inflict horrendous damage on a person to do it. As long as that person is even more terrible than the last, we can sleep perfectly well at night…and so can Baki.

David Evelyn's translation continues to be excellent in these volumes. We can see the blood and sweat in the art, but the translation allows us to hear the spittle and bile as well. Every cough is audible, as letterer Rafael Zaiats gives us huge sounds in this very huge manga about huge men fighting in huge fights.

Baki, who has returned from the brink of disaster multiple times, finally faces a real crisis of confidence. Watching his father pummel Orochi, Baki is immediately seen as unable to win his next fight. Then he meets previous victims of his next opponent, ruthless Kureha Shinogi, who boasts a perfect physique, an unbeatable knowledge of the human body, and a complete lack of empathy. These victims pump him back up to fighting form. How will Baki defeat this next, even more amazing opponent on the way to, obviously, defeating his father? We'll have to tune in to Volume 5 to see!