English Dub Review: Baki Hanma VS Kengan Ashura - Bubbleblabber (2024)

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Characters from both Kengan Ashura and Baki converge for several battles both on and off the battlefield.

OUR TAKE

Do you like intense fighting anime that exclusively stream on Netflix? Well, what if the characters of those shows got together for an hour and had a few mildly interesting fights that can’t have any impact on either show’s story? Sounds…like there are some better ways you could use that hour. I’ve watched the last couple story arcs of the Baki Hanma anime and I enjoyed those quite a bit for what they were, but I am not familiar with Kengan Ashura at all, to the point I actually thought they were by the same author and that’s why they were crossing over! On top of that, the main character is not named Kengan at all! Perhaps that impacted my enjoyment, not knowing half the characters involved in this one shot. I just say Spider-Man: No Way Home the other day when they rereleased it in theaters and thinking about how much it nailed being a crossover of the three iterations of live action movie Spider-Man, but I really feel like I would’ve enjoyed it even if I hadn’t seen a few of them. What I’ve found makes for a good crossover is to give each group involved look good in their own way, so does this accomplish that?

As these are both stories about people finding loose justifications to beat each others faces in and tear off their limbs, naturally the thing that brings the two groups of characters together is two guys deciding there should be a big fight. We get three main fights between comparable characters, including the respective main characters at the end, but because I guess they didn’t want to piss off anyone who liked those shows, the fight between Baki and Ohma ends in a draw because their fighting superiors, Baki’s dad and some other guy, end up interrupting the fight. So, I dunno, if you like both shows and wanted to see characters from them punch each other, this may scratch that itch, but I feel like it would be more interesting if they had to do some sort of obstacle course or something a bit more complex than three regular fights. I wish I came away from this wanting to binge through Kengan Ashura like I did for Baki but I unfortunately felt like both shows kinda got played here. But maybe they’ll come up with a sequel movie in a few years that will live up to all of that.

Score

4/10

Green Lynx (David Kaldor): Aimless 20-something given a paid outlet for his thoughts on cartoons. Fears being boring slightly more than being outright disliked.