El-Hazard’s depiction of its own petulant villain provides some eerily relevant commentary that resonates outside of the show’s original context, and makes revisiting the series particularly powerful.
Despite its enthusiastic embrace of playful exaggeration and dramatic pageantry, Baki the Grappler shouldn’t be written off as mind-numbing entertainment for the masses. A critical analysis of Baki as contemporary anime, and a part of pop culture more broadly speaking, can help us all better understand how performative masculinity functions—and why it is so potentially dangerous.
