Polygon has reviewed Baki-Dou: The Invincible Samurai Part 2, Netflix's latest animated adaptation of Keisuke Itagaki's long-running Baki martial arts franchise. The review argues that while the instalment delivers arguably the strongest character in the entire series — a revived version of the 17th-century swordsman Musashi Miyamoto — it also serves up some of its most anticlimactic fights, making it a revealing example of how far the franchise has drifted from conventional battle-manga formulas.

The piece situates Baki against a genre that has been dominated by supernatural series such as Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen, noting the franchise's mix of realism and extreme absurdism. It praises Itagaki's portrayal of Musashi as a lonely "man out of time" who cannot adjust to a world that scorns killing, embodied by his eerie Imitation Cut technique. However, the reviewer criticises the fights, singling out the final clash between Baki and Musashi, in which Musashi never draws his sword and is defeated only when a medium sucks out his soul. The article links this to Itagaki's stated dislike of the trope of endlessly stronger opponents, which also explains the franchise's deliberately unusual, deflating fight endings.