‘Baki Hanma’: Why Does Pickle Cry? Prehistoric Behavior Explained

If there’s one thing that we know about the Pickle Wars saga of the ‘Baki Hanma’ anime, it’s that Pickle has displayed peculiar behavior throughout the entire storyline because he is as savage as any human can be. In that regard, one of the most peculiar things he has shown so far is his tendency to cry right after defeating his opponents in a fight. So, why does Pickle cry after defeating an opponent?

Pickle cries after defeating an opponent because he treats a strong enemy as an equal and a friend. He respects a strong enemy so much that he develops a bond of friendship with it. But because the law of nature dictates him to eat whatever he defeats, he cries as if to say goodbye to that creature.

As savage as Pickle may be, he is still human because he still has feelings of sorrow and remorse, especially when it comes to people he has grown attached to. In that regard, he still understands what losing a friend is like. But because he is still prehistoric, he must abide by the laws of nature by eating his enemies. That said, let’s look into this topic in greater detail.

Pickle hunted to survive

The introduction of Pickle in season 2 of ‘Baki Hanma’ changed the entire complexion of the martial arts world because the strongest martial artists now have to contend with a beast they have never encountered before. While all martial artists were able to refine their strength and skills through training and discipline, they now have to contend with the fact that nature has produced a creature that their training and skills aren’t able to comprehend.

Pickle was a prehistoric caveman living 190 million years ago but was perfectly preserved in ice while hunting a T-Rex. He was found in Colorado and was thawed out. When he was reintroduced to modern society, people started to realize that modern man was far inferior to this beast, especially because the current generation of humanity no longer had to go through the same kind of hardships that Pickle and the other cavemen of the past when through.

The reason why Pickle was so much stronger than regular human beings was because he had to hunt to survive. While hunting was never new to humanity because our ancestors used to hunt to survive, let’s not forget that Pickle came from the Jurassic era. That means that he had to hunt dinosaurs to survive the harshness of that era. And he was the apex predator strong enough to take down T-Rexes and other larger dinosaurs that had the power and size to crush any normal human being.

In that regard, Pickle understood that the only way to survive was to hunt down and kill the strongest creatures on the planet. This allowed him to evolve into one of the strongest characters that the ‘Baki’ storyline has ever seen as he developed muscles and techniques that made him strong enough to take down entire dinosaurs all on his own and without any weapons.

But Pickle’s nature also made him quite savage in that he wouldn’t eat anything he didn’t hunt. He had become so used to hunting to survive that he did not eat anything given to him without needing to hunt. That’s why the only creatures that Pickle ate were those he hunted.

And the scientists even had to feed him an endangered Siberian Tiger so that he could find something strong enough for him to hunt and eat, as the other animals (lions and bears) didn’t seem too interesting for Pickle to hunt.

The Pickle Wars started when martial artists all over Japan wanted a piece of Pickle and were dying to fight him to prove their strength. To that end, they agreed to the conditions that Pickle would be allowed to eat them if they lost to Pickle. That’s because Pickle relished the opportunity to fight and hunt down creatures that were strong enough to challenge him, similar to how the dinosaurs of his era were the only creatures worthy enough for him to use his energy on. 

But Pickle respected strong creatures

Of course, while Pickle was a savage man that needed to hunt to survive, the striking thing about him was that there were still semblances of humanity in him in the sense that he cried whenever he was about to eat a creature he defeated. And this goes back to the fact that he was still a proud warrior deep inside.

Throughout the storyline, we see how Pickle is remorseless when fighting the strongest warriors that the world of martial arts has to offer. He was impressed by the fact that Kaiou Retsu and Katsumi Orochi were strong enough to make him exert more effort into his battles with them. But while Pickle defeated those warriors, he ended up crying after defeating them because he respected them.

He may have been savage, but Pickle was still a proud warrior who understood what it took for people much smaller and weaker than him to reach a level that allowed them to fight him on par. Pickle knew that Retsu and Katsumi trained hard throughout their lives to become strong enough to give him a good fight. And because of that, he ended up respecting them.

At the same time, Pickle also realized that these people were his friends because only those who were strong enough to give him a true fight were worthy enough to become his friends. Through his battles with some of the strongest fighters of the modern world, Pickle bonded with those fighters and learned to love and respect them as friends.

But, at the same time, Pickle needed to respect the laws of the savage nature that he lived in. Back in his day, whoever lost a fight got to be eaten because that was what nature demanded from them. In that regard, Pickle understood that he still needed to eat those he defeated because that was his nature.

This is where Pickle’s human side comes into play as he gets deeply saddened by the fact that he needs to eat the friends that he was able to learn to respect through their bouts with one another. He has learned to love his opponents as friends, but he knows that he has to say goodbye to them because he has to eat them due to what his nature demands. And that’s why it was a normal reaction for him to cry before he was about to eat the opponents that he learned to regard as his friends.