A few months ago, when FLOW was on their world tour, I went to one of the shows. At one point, after having played several familiar hits, the band asked excitedly, “WHO HERE LIKES KINNIKUMAN!!” For the uninitiated, FLOW did the opening song to this first season of Kinnikuman: Perfect Origin Arc (henceforth KPOA). My partner and I had been watching the show and having plenty of fun with it, so we cheered loudly, but given how few cheers I heard relative to everything else that evening, I honestly think there's a chance we might have been the only Kinnikuman fans in the audience that night.

It's been quite a while since we've had a new Kinnikuman anime. This begs the question of whether or not this series is newcomer-friendly. The answer is yes, but with an asterisk. Kinnikuman dates all the way back to the '80s—the '70s, even, if we're including the manga. There are decades upon decades' worth of Kinnikuman content out there if you're interested in getting into Kinnikuman—there are better starting points that often reference and nod to events in earlier series. However, this new entry spent considerable time recapping—in fact, episode 0 is nothing but a recap. One of the greatest joys in watching Kinnikuman is letting yourself get lost in the absurdity of it all, even if you don't feel like this is enough to get you back up to speed or you're still just not sure you understand what's going on. Going with the flow and seeing where it leads can be fun. Besides, KPOA isn't complicated. While there are better places to start your Kinnikuman journey, you'll be fine if you jump in here.

You may have noticed that the synopsis I wrote is a little thin. That's because the story this anime has isn't complicated. Kinnikuman is living the good life on his home planet when a new group calling themselves the Perfect Choujin appears to look for a fight. Wanting to protect the peace they've worked toward, Kinnikuman's friends and allies work together to take them down in a series of wrestling matches. It's not exactly making an effort to be deep here.

KPOA's not trying too hard to tell a robust story. It is trying to be as ridiculous as it possibly can be. If you've ever wanted to test the limit of how many times an anime can get you to say anything along the lines of, “Oh, my god,” "What's he doing?” or “WHAT IS THAT?” then you'll want to check this show out. Over-the-top, campy, and just plain silly beyond all measure, KPOA is exactly what it looks like: a wacky anime wrestling tournament arc. That being said, it's worth offering the warning that although it's the result of wrestling and often very cartoonish violence, there's a lot of blood in this series—a lot more than you'd expect from a series that has a spring, a bipedal black hole, and what I can only describe as the walking physical embodiment of the Canadian flag among its cast of characters.

As far as production value goes, the art and animation, while nothing jaw-dropping, are still worthy of praise. There's probably no other anime with as wide a variety in its designs as the many characters of Kinnikuman, so that everyone in KPOA consistently manages to look alright is no small feat. Also, FLOW did the opening, and they're always great to hear.

I hesitate to call Kinnikuman niche, because it's very popular in Japan, and plenty of older anime fans have at least seen a smattering of episodes. At the same time, whether it's anecdotal evidence like my experience at the FLOW concert or series creator Yudetamago chiming in about Kinnikuman's lack of overseas popularity, it's hard to look around and see anything but a series that, for reasons we can only speculate, is getting a lot more overlooked than one might think a series with as long a history as this one's would be. I suspect there are a lot of reasons for this, and I don't want to derail this review into an examination of them (no matter how much I want to talk about how allergic Netflix seems to market anything but Squid Games). A piece of advice to prospective viewers: don't let this series' backlog intimidate you. As long as you want to watch an anime about large men fighting each other in convoluted ways that don't always make sense, you'll have fun with this show.