Fist of the North Star

Fun big-screen adaptation of the classic manga and anime series. Much more graphic violence than the TV series could get away with. Most of the popular characters are there with the notable exceptions of Toki and Mamiya. However, Streamline Pictures' dub destroyed any remnants of story in this movie. It makes no sense at all; it never even bothers to explain what the Hokuto Shin Ken style is all about. Even if you don't speak Japanese, rent that version instead. It will still make more sense than Macek's dub.

Hmmmm Fist of the North Star is a tough one. I love the film, because it is essentially an amalgam of popular action films. Ken is essentially a suped up Mad Max/Bruce Lee character, in a Mad Max environment, with the ability to explode heads like a Scanner. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as seeing a Japanese take on films that are essentially foreign makes for an interesting experience. Contrary to popular belief, there is a plot, albeit a fairly straightforward one, but I think that it was definitely sidelined in favour of the graphic violence. This violence is usually the biggest problem for non-fans, as they can't see the humour behind it. The main purpose of Fist of the North Star, in my opinion, is to question the nature of violence on television, as when seen in animation, the most horrific scenes of gore can appear quite funny. Otherwise it's good fun, and Kenshiro is one of the all time Anime greats, a rebel in a world gone wrong. I love Fist of the North star, but it definitely needs to be seen with a pinch of salt.

I've just got through watching the first 36 episodes of the TV series of Fist Of The North Star on DVD and until a couple of days ago i thought the TV series came after the movie. The movie comes after the TV series. I have to admit that even though the series has more info and detail about the fighting styles etc i think that the movie is slightly better. It has better animation, better voice acting (in English) and is less repetitive. I watched the movie just over ten years ago and was quite literally blown away by it. It has action, adventure, comedy, gore, thrills, spills and for those people disgusted by the sex scenes in Urotsukidoji you'll be happy to know that FOTNS is sex free.

FOTNS is obviously to some extent based on Mad Max but a heck of a lot better. Only thing that bugs me (just like the series) is that the gore scenes are usually blurred or we see peoples shadows exploding. Kind of annoying. Also there seems that there are a few gaps in it which makes me wonder if there has been a scene or two edited out or cut down (atleast in the UK version).

I'll quickly give a brief summary of the story. It's about a guy called Ken who must get his girlfriend back from his former best friend Shin who beat up Ken, kidnapped his girlfriend and left him for dead. Ken walks through the barren wasteland (it's set after a nuclear war) and kills bad guys with his style of fighting. If he punches anybody they explode shortly after. In the meantime his eldest brother Raoh has amassed an army and is trying to conquer the world. There are also a couple of sub plots. One has this guy called Rei (or Ray?) looking for his sister and is also looking for the guy responsible for kidnapping her.

All this leads to an explosive finale. Fist Of The North Star along with Urotsukidoji is my favourite Japanese anime movie of all time. A definite must see but avoid the American live action film. That sucked the big one for sure. This great anime gets a perfect 10/10 from me.

Adapting first part of fist of the north star is a difficult task because most of the time it follows this pattern - kenshiro arrives at settlement, raiders arrive at settlement, raiders pillage the settlement, kenshiro blows them up without so much as breaking a sweat, rinse and repeat until kenshiro confronts shin, it's almost like trying to adapt a video game. So how about we add part two to the mix ? But this creates another problem because part two is opposite and has a lot more going on - finding rei's sister, defeating jagi, finding toki (which got cut), "defeating" raoh and helping with rei's bucket list (which also got cut). This results in scenes being heavily rushed because they were plots of entire episodes like for example fight with shin or scenes being spliced with other ones which is much better and more interesting alternative. Very important locations, plot points and characters got cut like aforementioned toki which is much more important character than jagi (which weirdly enough got his confrontation before shin in this version) or the whole town of medicine city. Honestly this movie, while still somewhat good, is too abridged, it should have been only the first season and jagi storyline and maybe even then it might be too much.

I love violence on screen. This movie satisfied that to the extreme. This is the most violent movie possibly EVER released. A lot of people hate this film because it is a blood fest with "no point", but you have to understand, the point of the movie is to MAKE FUN of the whole thing. Now, I'm also a big fan of comedy, and this movie satisfied the comedy WITH the violence! It's genius, because so few people see this. Add to that, an intricate story line that follows through and makes sense. The movie is all about going from big, powerful guys and gruesome death scenes to more and more and more gruesome death scenes and more powerful guys. The writing is excellent (and funny!). Like I said about comedy, the death scenes are made to make you laugh, the writing and speech are designed almost so that you can predict what's going to happen before it does! Then the speech becomes like a punch line. e.g. "A fight to the death, then!" "You're already dead." and "Hey. These belong to you?" You have to watch this movie to know what I mean, of course. Heh heh. the music is good, and the English dubbing is awesome. The voices are perfect. The drawing style is great, too. The huge muscles small heads approach (trust me, it is VERY realistic) is hilarious, yet cool looking. Rent it at Blockbuster video under the animation section or action / kung fu. One gripe: the ending (the last like 2 minutes) sucks. Corny love / regrowth stereotype there.

I have to add, the funniest moment in any movie EVER in the world is in this movie. It is the scene where Shin kills his own trusted commander. PLEASE watch this movie so you can agree with me. The punch line effect of the writing and the animation is so subtle, so superb. I was laughing for hours (slight exaggeration. Slight.) The only thing wrong with this movie is that it is under infinity hours long.