Popverse's top stories

• Prime Video's Spider-Noir trailer is here, featuring a web-head with a drinking problem and... Electro?
• Daredevil: Born Again stars Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, and Wilson Bethel go from Hell's Kitchen to the Windy City for C2E2 2026!
• Marvel cuts its new Hulk ongoing comic after just 10 issues, but creators say that was the plan and there's already a sequel underway

Despite being one of the most iconic fighting manga of all time, Baki the Grappler has had an unusual journey to publication in the West. Netflix has been instrumental in bringing the anime to the world, but large chunks of the Baki manga have never had an official release in English, including the original Baki the Grappler series. That is finally changing, and one of the people behind the Baki manga series can tell us why it has taken so long.

At New York Comic Con 2025, it was announced that Baki the Grappler was getting its first official English release as a physical manga. The news was huge for fans, who have been waiting 35 years to get a hold of Baki the Grappler in English.

We spoke to Yuki Yokoi, an assistant general manager at publisher Akita Shoten who has been working on the Baki title for many years, and asked him what he thought had kept Baki the Grappler from getting an English release until now.

“Because it is a long-running series and an important work for Akita Shoten, it took time to choose the right publishing partner, and we ultimately decided to work with Kodama,” he told us. A big factor in that decision was apparently making sure the publisher could carry the project through to the long term. “As for the release of the sequel, nothing has been decided yet. However, as a company, we want to make sure that this valuable series does not end halfway and that we can continue delivering it to all of you.”

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic