I’ve already talked about Baki on the AJnet Anime Club, specifically in an article about Yujiro Hanma and how ridiculously overpowered he is. I haven’t gotten around to doing a proper article about Kengan Ashura yet, but I will at some point. It’s not a bad series by any means.
The easiest way to describe Kengan Ashura is Baki-lite.
Both shows revolve around insanely muscular men competing in underground fighting tournaments, using martial arts that range from somewhat realistic to complete pseudoscientific bullshit. Kengan is generally more grounded, though that isn’t saying much when its fighters can cut people open with their fingers and control their heart rates to give themselves temporary superhuman strength. Compared to the nonsense happening in Baki, however, the Kengan fighters might as well be competing in an amateur karate tournament at the local YMCA.
Baki Hanma vs. Kengan Ashura brings the underground fighters from both franchises together for a special three-match tournament. The event is arranged by Mitsunari Tokugawa, who operates Baki’s underground arena, and Katahara Metsudo, chairman of the Kengan Association. Each side selects three fighters to represent its respective universe, leading to matchups between Kaoru Hanayama and Saw Paing, Jack Hanma and Raian Kure, and finally Baki Hanma and Tokita Ohma. Other characters from both series attend the event, interact backstage, and occasionally threaten to start fights of their own. The entire movie runs for a little over an hour, so there isn’t much time for anything besides brief introductions and the three main bouts.
Before we get into the actual movie, there’s one major problem with the entire concept.
The matchup doesn’t work.
If you put the two universes together and judge everyone based on their actual feats, the Baki characters absolutely shit all over the Kengan Ashura roster. Kengan fighters are extremely strong by the standards of their own setting, but Baki characters regularly perform feats so fucking insane that they barely resemble human beings anymore.
Yujiro Hanma stopped an earthquake by punching the ground. Baki fought an imaginary giant praying mantis so convincingly that his body suffered real injuries. Biscuit Oliva survives shotgun blasts, Pickle fights dinosaurs in prehistoric flashbacks, and characters routinely explain impossible martial arts techniques using made-up biology that everyone else accepts without question.
Baki feats are outright silly. Which, in my opinion, is part of the charm.
To enjoy this movie, you have to accept that the Baki characters have been heavily watered down so the Kengan fighters can stand a chance. There’s no other way to make the crossover work without having every match end after thirty seconds with the Kengan representative embedded in a concrete wall.
I was fine with that going in. A crossover like this is supposed to be fan service, and there wouldn’t be much entertainment value in watching the Baki cast slaughter everyone. You have to temporarily ignore the difference in power levels and judge the fights based on what the movie is trying to do.
The first match is Kaoru Hanayama against Yoroizuka Saw Paing, which was a pretty good pairing. Both characters are known for their absurd toughness and willingness to stand in front of an opponent while absorbing everything thrown at them. Hanayama fights using pure strength and doesn’t really bother defending himself, while Saw Paing has spent his life strengthening his bones by having his father repeatedly hit him with a hammer and training in Lethwei.
The fight is essentially two brick walls trying to break each other.
It doesn’t have much technical martial arts choreography, but that fits both characters. Hanayama throws huge punches, Saw Paing responds with his devastating headbutts, and neither man possesses enough common sense to move out of the way. The match delivers exactly what you’d expect from putting those two together.
Jack Hanma against Raian Kure also made perfect sense.
Both are violent psychopaths who enjoy hurting people far more than they care about actually winning. Jack relies on extreme training, steroids, and a willingness to destroy his own body to become stronger, while Raian comes from a clan selectively bred for combat and can unlock his body’s physical limits through the Removal technique.
Naturally, the fight turns into both men beating the ever-loving shit out of each other.
The final match is Baki against Ohma, which was the obvious main event. They’re the protagonists of their respective series, both use versatile martial arts styles, and both have complicated relationships with incredibly powerful father figures. Of the three fights, this one had the most pressure on it because neither franchise was going to want its main character depicted as clearly inferior.
That became the fight’s biggest problem.
The movie plays it too safe.
I understand why the fight ended without a clear winner. Baki couldn’t decisively beat Ohma without making Kengan Ashura look weak, and Ohma beating Baki would have been ridiculous to anyone familiar with Baki’s feats. Ending the match the way they did protected both characters and allowed each fanbase to walk away claiming its guy would have won.
But it also made the entire main event feel somewhat pointless.
A crossover built around answering who would win loses something when it refuses to answer who would win. I wasn’t expecting Baki to rip Ohma’s head off and hold it above the arena, but the movie could have committed to a winner without permanently damaging either character. These aren’t real athletes with records and careers to protect.
The fights themselves were good, so long as you ignore how strong the Baki characters are supposed to be. They lasted about the right amount of time and didn’t drag themselves out with endless flashbacks or ten-minute explanations of every move. Each matchup captured the personalities and fighting styles of the characters involved.
Seeing the Kengan Ashura cast animated in the same style as Baki wasn’t bad either, but it felt strange. I guess I’m too accustomed to Kengan’s weird 3D animation. I criticized that type of animation in my Beastars review, but Kengan Ashura has used it for so long that seeing Ohma, Raian, and the others animated like Baki characters almost made them look like different people. They didn’t look bad, just unfamiliar.
One thing the movie did really well was showing just how similar many of the characters from both franchises are. The writers clearly understood the material and paired people based on more than popularity.
Of course Biscuit Oliva and Julius Reinhold would immediately start arm wrestling. They’re both enormous muscle freaks who believe raw physical power can overcome practically anything. Having Gaia and Muteba Gizenga know each other and guard the arena also made perfect sense, since both are mercenaries with military backgrounds and specialized battlefield skills.
Even the smaller interactions worked. Saw Paing approaches Doppo because Doppo once fought his father, Pa Paing, while Shibukawa and Hatsumi Sen are naturally drawn to each other as masters of softer fighting styles built around redirecting an opponent’s strength. I can’t think of any pairing that felt forced or chosen at random.
I just wish more of those pairings had turned into actual fights.
The only full matches we got were Hanayama versus Saw Paing, Jack versus Raian, and Baki versus Ohma. Everything else was either a brief confrontation, a tease for a fight that never happened, or background fan service. The movie spends a lot of time showing us interesting matchups, then ends before doing anything with most of them.
The most ridiculous tease was Kuroki Gensai potentially fighting Yujiro Hanma.
Kuroki is one of the strongest fighters in Kengan Ashura, and within that series he’s treated like an almost unbeatable martial arts master. Putting him in the same league as Yujiro is still absurd. Yujiro is one of the strongest and most overwanked characters in anime, with feats that make the entire Kengan roster look like a Tiger Schulmann’s class.
I mean, he literally stopped an earthquake with a punch.
There is no version of that fight where Kuroki has a realistic chance unless Yujiro is weakened even more than the other Baki characters. Doppo Orochi versus Kuroki would have been a far more reasonable and interesting matchup. They’re both older karate masters who have reached the highest levels of their respective styles, and you could actually make an argument for either one winning.
The timeline is another issue.
On the Baki side, the movie obviously takes place after the Pickle arc but before the Musashi arc. Characters carry injuries from the Pickle storyline, while (SPOILER ALERT) Retsu Kaioh is still alive. What isn’t clear is whether it happens before or after Baki’s climactic fight with Yujiro.
The Kengan side is even more confusing.
The crossover seems to occur after the Kengan Annihilation Tournament, but Ohma’s presence immediately raises questions for anyone who knows how that storyline ends. Metsudo is also still running the Kengan Association instead of Nogi, and Agito remains at his side as the Fang.
There may be material from the Kengan manga that can explain some of this, but that creates another problem. Why include manga developments in an anime crossover before the Kengan Ashura anime has covered them? Viewers shouldn’t have to read ahead in another version of the story to understand when an hour-long crossover takes place.
The likely explanation is that the movie isn’t supposed to fit cleanly into either timeline. It’s a non-canon exhibition where the creators grabbed the most recognizable versions of the characters and threw them into an arena together. That’s fine, but the movie could have made that clearer instead of including enough continuity details to make people wonder where it belongs.
Baki Hanma vs. Kengan Ashura isn’t a bad crossover. Most of it was executed about as well as an hour-long movie could manage, the fights were entertaining, and the character pairings showed that the writers understood both franchises.
I don’t think that an hour wasn’t enough, though.
This would have worked much better as a six-episode miniseries. Three episodes could have focused on the main fights, while the others could have given us more of the matchups teased throughout the movie. Oliva could have fought Julius, Doppo could have taken on Kuroki, and Gaia and Muteba could have dealt with some threat outside the arena.
Instead, we got a small taste of what a crossover between these two universes could offer, followed by an inconclusive main event and several fights that never happened.
It was fun, but there was far too much wasted potential.
AJ’s rating: 5/10
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Yozuki Drive on July 12, 2026.
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