Hokuto No ken (Series)

Title: Hokuto No ken (Series) Fist of the North Star (series) Overall: Watch Keywords: 1984, Martial Arts, TV, Violent Notables: Animation - Toei KAMIYA Akira AKA Fist of the North Star or Hokuto Shinken. The story takes place in a post-nuclear war setting. Everything is destroyed and the world is ruled by the powerful. The main character is Kenshiro (Ken for short.) Ken is the master of an ancient Chinese martial art known as Hokuto Shinken. Hokuto Shinken is so dangerous that it is past down to only one person. This martial art allows you to send your energy into your targets body and tear them apart from within. The series starts off with Ken having his girlfriend Julia taken from him by his friend Shin who is the master of Nanto Seiken which like Hokuto Shinken but they have their differences. Shin nearly kills Ken and gives him these 7 scars in the shape of the big dipper. The entire first chapter is Ken going after Shin and getting Julia back. Ken kills Shin and finds out Julia comitted suicide. The second chapter starts off with Ken sad and lonely. Ken meets Mamiya the leader of a village that looks a lot like Julia. You also meet Rei, the wicked master of Nanto Suichoken who is looking for his kidnapped sister (yes, in this case Rei is a guy) Together Ken and Rei take out a gang of bandits called the Fang Clan. After that you learn about Kenshiro's brothers Jagi, Toki, and Raoh (family from youngest to oldest: Ken, Jagi, Toki, Raoh) Ken goes after jagi who is ruinning Ken's name as a savior. Ken kills him and learns where Toki is. Toki has gone insane, he once had a dream to use Hokuto Shinken to heal everyone but now he is using it for its original purpose to kill. Ken goes after Toki. Ken discovers it isnt really Toki its this guy named Ameba (yeah, I like the name too) Toki is actually in a prison somewhere suffering from radiation sickness. Ken and Rei free Toki. The rest of the series is Ken going after the evil Nanto Masters and killing them as well as going after Raoh who is the most wicked and most powerful conqueror in the world. I dont want to spoil the ending though so I wont say much more. I will explain a few things though. Shin went after Ken because Jagi persuaded him into doing it and Shin liked Julia. Jagi hates Ken because Ken broke his face. Ken, Jagi, Toki and Raoh are all adopted (Raoh and Toki are real brothers though.) Raoh kills his adoptive father, the person that trainned them all to be successors, because Ken is chosen as successor and since there can be only one Raoh, along with Toki and Jagi would have to do something crazy like cut their own arms off or get their memories earaced because there is only one who gets to have the secrets of Hokuto Shinken. This is a long series (152 episodes,) its the 3rd longest anime I have ever seen. 2nd is Dragonball (which I have never actually watched) and 1st is Dragonball Z (which I stopped watching after they killed Cell and I should have stopped before that.)

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Overall	Art	Animation	Character Design	Music	Series Story	Episode Story	Reviewer
Watch 4	3	3	5	6	6		DillonSOB	#
Hokuto No ken (Series) I gave my scores based on the time it was made and its budget, but FNS is a classic anime that is under-rated. Sure the art is horrible and the violence is over-the-top. But from an era of Hollywood films like Road Warrior and Escape from New York, this film/series approaches the post-apocalyptic fight for survival genre with a different touch. The fight scenes are unique and creative to say the least, but of course get too long and repetitive in the TV series (the condensed movie has a modified plot and gets to the point). The dialogue can be tedious (and the kid characters a bit annoying), but provocative themes are mixed like spirituality, family, destiny, and of course love. There are plenty of better animes out there, but this one is noteworthy and respectable for the time it was made. Last updated Monday, May 24 2004.
Avoid 4	2	2	4	7	4		Tom	#
Hokuto No ken (Series) You wa shock! That's the opening line from the intro song to Fist of the Northstar, the bloodiest, chessiest, most repetative anime ever! There is a secret art passed down to a single succsor every generation, it is Hokuto Shinken, the art of striking pressure points which can rip up a human from the inside out, or do any number of weird stuff. Kenshiro Kasumi (you don't learn his last name in the anime, it's in the manga, though) is the grandmaster of Hokuto Shinken, and he wanders around after world war 3 has turned the world into Mad Max on crack! Everyone in this anime is roided out and overly muscular, and they all look like coked up drag queens. Every time Ken gets pissed his muscles bulge so much his shirt rips off and yet it's back in the next scene (he must pay a fortune at Target), and every time he smacks someone, they explode (not every time, Shin kills himself but doesn't really kill himself, Rao actually does kill himself, the mantis guys back breaks him in half, and Souther doesn't explode, but most of the do). The fights in this anime are enough to make me want to outlaw the use of stock footage (which accounts for 90% of the fights in this anime, and yes Ken does spin like a top quite often while kicking multiple opponents). There is so much blood that Red Cross went out of business with this one, Ken kills at least ten people per episode! Actually, it's not bad until the fight with Shin, theres some cool stuff like when Ken says "of the 708 pressure points, this one is called toi, and when I remove my fingers you will die in 7 seconds" and a timer shows up and counts down. That was cool, and the first time Ken lays down the Hokuto Crack Fist was awesome. You may like this, you may not. I not only watched all the episodes and even watched the second part (when Bart and Lin are grown up), and I've read some of the manga, and I don't like it. But I do like the intro song, though. Last updated Monday, December 01 2003.
Buy 4							Craig	#
Hokuto No ken (Series) I love this anime. It is one of my all time favorites. Fist of the North Star is filled with a ton of violence and has a plot that is easy to follow and makes sense. Fist of the North Star boasts some of the coolest characters ever. In my opinion the coolest characters are Rei, Ryuga, and Juza. I only have 2 small complaints about this anime. One is that there wasnt enough background on some of the characters. The second is that I had to watch it with poor subtitles which I usually dont consider a problem but Fist of the North Star is 152 episodes long and it gets tiring after a while. If you dont like Fist of the North Star then you havent seen it. I give it a 10 out of 10 Last updated Saturday, September 27 2003.