Garouden: The Way of the Lone Wolf

This anime was incredibly impressive. Not only was it entertaining as an anime, but the legitimacy of the actual combat scenes throughout was surprising. Shows like Baki and Kengen Ashura use unrealistic (though still captivating) techniques, where Garouden uses examples of actual techniques and applies a bit of anime exaggeration to them. If you are a fan of both anime and real life martial arts, I highly recommend this show to you. It's dialogue is a bit simple, but i believe that also plays into the reality of fighters not being the most articulate people in the world. I'm very excited to see a ... second season.

I would recommend this anime to everybody who enjoys Kengan Ashura or Baki, everybody who enjoys martial arts or hand-to-hand combat in anime should give this series a try.

At times, the animation seems a bit incomplete, but the fights are really well-choreographed, realistic (outside of the main roster of fighter characters being killing machines engineered for carnage), and animated. This may be because the studio wanted quality animated fights in an anime about fighting, which makes total sense. In the name of god, I knew I was gonna see dangerous dudes beating the crap out of each other, so that's where I want the quality ... to be.

Story-wise, It's Okei. It mostly follows the manga drawn by Keisuke Itagaki (Baki's mangaka), with the twist being the main character of this story is not Bunsichi Tanba. It's a story about controlling oneself in a world that wants you to snap, but to know oneself means to also test your limits, a thing which the characters in this anime try in every episode.

NOTE: I read the original manga, as well as the one drawn by Keisuke Itagaki (Baki's mangaka) so I have to admit I was very hyped about this anime. I'm also a Martial Arts practitioner, so the Martial Arts moves in anime really get me. Nevertheless, I tried to be as objective as I could.

Thank you!

If you ever wanted a martial arts anime to fall asleep to then this is it. I would describe it as the opposite of Grappler Baki. Characters are emotionless cardboard cutouts. These dudes have one facial expression and literally look like boulders being pushed around. It's like they went through the characters and set their personality sliders to zero. The biggest sin of this show is that the fights have zero buildup. The tournament arc starts out of nowhere with a full roster of forgettable generic fighters. If you are looking for anime with hype moments then sadly you won't have any of that here.