Thoughts on the Manga 'Hanma Baki'

I noticed that Hanma Baki was on Netflix, so I watched it. The previous chapter declared, 'I want to bring the curtain down on my story with a showdown against you,' and the series depicts the twists and turns leading up to that moment. However, even after watching the anime, I still don't understand what the author wanted to do with Guevara. If I were to list the three most unfortunate characters in the Baki world, they would be Amane, Alai, and Guevara, in that order. They all share the same development: they are teased as strong characters, only to suffer a crushing defeat because they cannot overcome the 'author's bias' given to main characters. Perhaps in this work, the author's attachment to Sergio Oliva outweighed his attachment to Che Guevara.

While Baki is now treated as a meme-filled manga due to internet culture, the battle with Yujiro at the end of the childhood arc can be said to be one of the pinnacles of shonen manga. Emi Akezawa, who remained the 'woman of the man she loved' even after pregnancy and childbirth, had her maternal instincts awakened when she saw her dying child before her, and she resolutely challenged the 'strongest creature on Earth' with her bare hands. Having witnessed the being he had raped, impregnated, birthed, and supposedly placed under his subjugation transform into a mother—in a world where he sees everything other than himself as nothing more than a 'female to be violated'—he had no choice but to kill that unknown something as a 'good woman' (and perhaps he has regretted it ever since; this can be glimpsed in his response to his son's question, 'Why did you kill Mom?'). The scene that follows, where the son carries his mother's body and runs through the shopping district while being chased by police, is truly the climax of emotion, and its thematic depth could be said to have reached the heights of world literature.

Because the battle between father and son in Hanma Baki is underpinned by the death of the wife/mother, if the story were to be woven strictly, it could only end in 'patricide' or 'filicide.' Amidst this, the father-son showdown began slowly with a meal between the two. Baki, who has been mocked for 'winning against any strong enemy with protagonist bias,' challenges Yujiro, the character the author is most attached to. Perhaps the battle between father and son progresses without the author himself having decided which conclusion to choose. Along the way, there were developments where characters in the story reacted to internet feedback, and a character named Yuichiro was suddenly introduced, as the story wandered in search of a landing point. And finally, the moment of reckoning arrives. Since it is a manga published in a shonen magazine, it would normally be appropriate to end it with 'patricide.' However, after a long serialization, the author himself became a father, and above all, he had drawn Yujiro Hanma too charismatically (unlike some pathetic commander). I remember following the developments by reading the magazine at the store at the time, and the moment I saw the large panel of Baki taking the technique Yujiro once used on Emi—destroying her eardrums with both hands—the story connected with the end of the childhood arc, and I couldn't help but sob, even though there were people around me at the convenience store. I thought this long, grand story of father, son, and mother, which began with Grappler Baki, would close with 'filicide,' and I had instantly envisioned that ending in my mind. I am still convinced that this symbolic panel was drawn possessively by a 'grand narrative' that even the creator himself could not resist.

Now, let me digress a little. The development where 'even the author doesn't know what will happen until he faces the manuscript' creates the charm of this work, but I heard that in the early stages of serialization, it experienced a crisis of cancellation due to low popularity. I heard somewhere that the author had no choice but to abandon the story up to that point (Hanada) and play his trump card, 'a spinning roundhouse kick by an agile Giant Baba,' which led to new ideas popping up one after another, allowing the popularity to recover immediately and the serialization to continue. This is an anecdote that gives pause to those who aspire to create, as it suggests that good ideas that are not used can sometimes prevent new thoughts from occurring. By the way, the reason the nWo fiction keeps stalling is that the storyline leading to the end of MMGF! is occupying the place that should be the seat of those ideas.

Returning to Hanma Baki, as you all know, the result of the father-son showdown was that the author himself acted as the referee, overriding the demands of the grand narrative with the power of his will, and ultimately made the judgment to 'let both live.' I cannot judge whether that was right or wrong, but in any case, the theme that was the backbone of the Baki world closed there, and what has been told since can be called the remainder of its life. This story has reached a stage where it could be called a 'good death' no matter where it ends. I regret that Berserk didn't transition into a work of art after entering this stage. The observation I read somewhere that 'Casca is nothing more than a scabbard, and if Guts embraces Griffith, this story will end perfectly' is truly a profound remark, and the Armageddon of good and evil in that Devilman also ended with Akira pinning Ryo (which is why, against the backdrop of Abe Sada-like passion, Akira's lower body was lost on the beach of this shore).