| Outline |
Karate Baka Ichidai (Animation)Six series of non-fiction depicting half a life of a karateka (karate practitioner), Masutatsu Oyama. Up to the third series have been made into an animation version and its hero is a fictional karateka, “Ken Asuka” instead of Masutatsu Oyama for certain reasons including an actual murder incident.In 1945, Ken Asuka, who was demobilized from the suicide attack units at World War II and was living as bodyguard of a gang of hooligans, becomes dedicated to karate and after ascetic practices in the mountains, wins the first All Japan Karate Championship after the war. After the victory, he continues his practice and deepens relationship with his first apprentice, Shogo Ariake. However, as Shogo storms out of the Dojo (martial arts gym) due to misunderstanding and causes various incidents, Ken expels him with tears. Afterwards, Shogo gets seriously injured in a car accident and dies in a hospital shortly after coming to a settlement with Ken. In his despair due to the death of his apprentice, Ken has a quarrel with a gang member nicknamed “Killer Knife,” ending in murdering him. Ken chooses to live without karate for compensation to the bereaved family but after receiving encouragement of the bereaved son, who accepts Ken’s sincerity, becomes committed to karate training again.After a while, Ken goes to the US with a martial arts friend and plays a lot of matches with various professional boxers and wrestlers. Ken comes back to Japan as a splendid karateka master, gets married, and begins to instruct karate to neighborhood children according to their wishes. As he finds his life worth living for passing karate on to the next generation, he formally opens his Dojo again and makes it famous by having matches with martial practitioners in and out of the country.Finally, Ken’s Dojo has a lot of apprentices from various countries. The story ends when Ken feels deep emotion in the fact that karate has become popular internationally. |
