>>281793950
I don't dislike Hanayama either, I don't really dislike any Baki character honestly because they're all larger than life figures with their own strong charm that makes them very unique, but I do think this kind of inconsistencies and favoritism does end up doing some degree of disservice to them, Baki himself being the most flagrant case given how good the first series despite a lot of asspulls.

Honestly I think a major problem Itagaki has right now is that he's struggling to make some characters interact with each other after years and years of preestablished feats and "rules" to their characterization, most characters in Baki do not really develop while others do so, it's hard to write something coherent around this idea and there's a lot of landmines you make for yourself, which is partly why Jack and Hanayama really did not interact at all until now, or with Oliva.
There's certain boundaries that cannot really be met because whatever you end up doing inevitably opens a can of worms and you really need to, again, take things at face value and not think too hard about what actually happens in a fight.