Fist of the North Star: HOKUTO NO KEN – Episodes 1 – 2

Content Warning: gore

What’s it about? A martial arts master named Kenshiro wanders around a post-apocalyptic world, protecting innocent people from senseless violence caused by turf wars. He meets several people along the way and feels inspired by their will to create a hopeful future in spite of the chaotic environment they are forced to live in.  

I don’t know anything about Fist of the North Star, except that it’s an extremely popular franchise and that the male characters are hilariously muscular.  There are so many memes about the franchise that it’s honestly difficult for me to take any of the characters seriously, even though the plot is actually interesting.

I’ll say this about the CGI in this premiere, nothing will ever look nearly as bad as Rusted Armors. Not every series has the luxury of being animated by Studio Orange, but with the limited resources the animation team at 7STUDIO and TMS Entertainment were given, I think they did a decent job. The animators made use of the post-apocalyptic atmosphere to create shadows and darken the general surroundings in order to hide the limited character movements. It also helped set the dire tone humanity is forced to live through since they are all subjected to ruthless gang violence.  

There’s essentially no law and order, except for the mysterious Kenshiro who wanders around using his martial arts to defend civilians. It’s not the most original concept, but it never minimizes the people’s suffering and the lengths they will go to in order to create a safe and violence-free future. Despite the limited facial expressions, Kenshiro is still able to express his empathy for others through his actions and even tries to offer second chances to the gang members. For a world that is extremely gory, it says a lot about Ken that he only wants to use violence as a last resort. 

There’s no sugarcoating this one folks, the gore is extremely violent. There’s heads exploding, people getting sliced in half and blood splattering everywhere. If any of our readers are sensitive to bloody violence then I strongly advise you to skip this show because it’s relentless. That said, the immense violence does help hide the limited action sequences and how silly Kenshiro’s martial arts moves look whenever he attacks his opponents. 

Aside from Kenshiro, the other characters don’t really stand out and mostly seem like the usual archetypes often seen in this genre. Even though his travel companion is annoying, he does provide helpful commentary about the turf wars and the regional overlords. Overall, it seems the plot is mostly about Kenshiro’s traveling around and saving people’s lives, which is the kind of hopeful narrative we need during these challenging times, even if it’s against such a gritty and gory backdrop.  

I wasn’t a fan of the women characters in this series being reduced to either damsel in distress or subjected to sexual slavery, but I suppose considering how old this franchise is, I shouldn’t have much expectation of development outside of these archetypes. 

It has been brought to my attention that the English dub is horrendously bad to the point of being downright hilarious. I’ve seen some clips and it’s certainly a “choice”.  If folks are at all interested in continuing the series then I highly recommend watching it in Japanese. 

Ultimately, this show isn’t for me, but if nothing else, the story does have a lot of heart. I do want to hear from longtime fans of this franchise about how they feel about this adaptation. Do you even like this new adaptation? Let me know in the comments below!