Who is Jack Hanma, and why do Baki fans love him so much?
Jack Hanma is one of the most popular characters in the Baki franchise, and it’s entirely thanks to his brutal fighting style.
While there are some bombastic characters with over-the-top personalities in Baki, that’s not the case with Jack Hanma. The half-brother of Baki and son of Yujiro is largely stoic and softspoken. What sets him apart from the rest of the cast is the consistent brutality of his fights.
Despite being one of the best strikers in the series, Jack primarily distinguishes himself from the cast through his emphasis on biting opponents. Many of his fights have seen him chomp off pieces of his opponents before finishing them with strikes. That style adds bigger stakes to a Jack Hanma fight than almost anyone else in the Baki series and he’s set for one of the most epic fights in series history in the next season of Baki Hanma.
Here are all the key details about Jack and how he wound up becoming one of the franchise’s biggest characters, both literally and figuratively.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Baki series
How tall is Jack Hanma?
Jack Hanma starts off in the Baki series at 6’4” tall but grows significantly from there.
In the months following the Maximum Tournament, Jack teams up with Kureha Shinogi to undergo a series of bone-lengthening surgeries. Unlike real-life procedures of this nature, this results in him growing several inches. His height reaches 6’11” with Kanji Igari quipping that he’s now taller than Mount Toba, suggesting he is the tallest character in the Baki series at that point.
Between Baki Hanma: Son of Ogre and Baki-Dou, he undergoes another round of limb-lengthening surgeries. This raises his height to 7’11” tall making him around the same height as Pickle, one of the most physically powerful characters in the series.
How strong is Jack Hanma?
Jack is one of the strongest characters in the Baki series and has a number of notable victories to his name including wins against Gouki Shibukawa and Mohammad Alai, Jr. In both of those cases he won in particularly vicious fashion, seriously injuring his opponents in doing so.
Though Jack has lost fights on a few occasions, Baki Hanma creator Keisuke Itagaki has been very protective of the character. All of his losses have come with an asterisk attached to them even though those losses have also come to extremely formidable characters. In 2022, Jack re-established himself as a top fighter by defeating Nomi No Sukune II. The fight showed off a retooled fighting style from Jack that incorporated biting into his striking.
Does Jack Hanma have a demon back?
Jack Hanma has not been shown with a demon back in the Baki manga or anime to this point.
Though Baki, Yujiro, and Yuichiro are all shown with a demon back, Jack hasn’t yet demonstrated that ability. It’s unclear if this is because Jack didn’t inherit that ability from Yujiro, or if he just hasn’t awoken his own demon back yet. It’s possible he will at some point in the future, but it’s also possible that he remains a fighter that relies on medicinal help to improve rather than his genes.