New Baki TV Anime Teased With 2017 Premiere

The cover of this year's seventh issue of Akita Shoten's Weekly Shōnen Champion teased this week that the new television anime of Keisuke Itagaki's Baki (New Grappler Baki: In Search of Our Strongest Hero) manga will air in 2017.

The anime will feature the "Most Evil Death Row Convicts" arc from the manga. Baki is the second installment in Itagaki's overall series. The manga ran for 31 volumes in Weekly Shōnen Champion from 1999 to 2005. The manga recently inspired an original anime DVD (OAD) adaptation that also depicts the "Most Evil Death Row Convicts" arc. The OAD was bundled with a limited edition of Itagaki's 14th Baki-Doumanga volume on December 6.

The "Most Evil Death Row Convicts" arc features underground ring fighters in the no-rules combat environment of death row convicts. The OAD will highlight five individuals from prisons around the world who "long to know defeat." The five individuals break out of their respective prisons and head to Japan.

Itagaki's original Baki The Grappler martial arts manga ran for 42 volumes in Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine from 1991 to 1999. The manga has received two television anime adaptations and an original animation video.

After the Baki sequel manga finished in 2005, Hanma Baki then ran in the same magazine from 2005 to 2012. The Baki-Dou sequel series launched in Weekly Shōnen Champion in March 2014 as the third sequel to the original Baki The Grappler manga.

Yukinao Yamauchi (Baki Gaiden - Scarface) launched Baki Gaiden: Kizuzura, a Baki The Grappler spinoff, in the inaugural issue of Bessatsu Shōnen Champion magazine in 2012. Still another spinoff, Baki Gaiden: Kenjin, debuted in Champion RED magazine in 2013.​