New Fist of the North Star ADV Films Score: A- Kenshiro’s back, and minds are gonna blow. The man, the myth, the ten foot ass whoop dispenser on legs -The Fist of the North Star.

Kenshiro, mighty as the great Blue Sky above, is back. And I’m glad.

History lesson time.

I was never much of a fan of the OG Fist of the North Star. It had a fatal tendency to be formulaic; bulging thugs torment normals, Kenshiro shows up too late to save anybody, kills’em all in revenge, cue an eulogy on the power of the human spirit and repeat for a couple of seasons. Season the gruel with the odd boss battle marked by even bigger thugs who appear menacing for the few minutes before Kenny drops the “little did you know I was p0wnzorring you the entire time, WAAATAAA!!!” card (go fish).

Yeah, FotNS was never about smart (in one ep. a village is wiped out trying to protect a handful of rice seeds. Lmao! Rice? In a wasteland? Water-wut?) and sometimes it wasn’t even about cool. Kenshiro’s one man massacre antics tended to be so laughably one sided that he made Vegeta look incompetent. Each episode debuted a new soul-of-slaughter pressure point strike, and damn near every one was some variant of twisty/crunchy/gushy stupid mook tricks. Kenshiro occasionally made friends, but equals were damn hard to come by, and when they did they died pretty quick.

Not much has changed.

However, New Fist of the North Star has definetly style, and that makes up for quite a bit.

Synposis:
Across the blasted, damned earth, beyond the blistered horizon, through the bloody gates of heaven, Kenshiro will stride killing the vile and demonic scum who infest the wastelands. Their first mistake was betraying him and their last was leaving him alive. Not that we know who They are, or how They wronged him…but c’mon, it’s the Fist of the North Star -somebody’s screwed with Ken, and they’re gonna get rocked.

Story:
The great wastes are still a dangerous place. Murderous bandits, tainted water, radioactive dead zones, all we’re missing are Radscorpions. Hobbes was right, life IS “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” And doubly so if you’re not in line with the plans of the warlord running the local city-state.

See, Sanga has a plan. His Last Land boyz raid towns and kidnap slaves for the work crews that monopolize the safer ground water sources. They do all that in the name of little Lord Doha, Sanga’s puppet demi-deity who showers the desperate commoners with miraculous displays of benevolence. From this Sanga has built a land upon which he is lord, and a finely appointed castle. But, being a shrewd sort of despot, Sanga knows Doha’s tricks won’t be enough forever. And it just so happens the local pesky rebels have among their number a miracle healer named Sara.

Simple plans are often the best, and so all he’s got to do is seize her. What could possibly go wrong!

Enter Kenshiro.

Volume one of New Fist of the North Star doesn’t offer many substantial hints about what the hell is going on beyond the here and now. There are a few informative flashbacks and clues, and one of the weirdest little bits of foreshadowing I think I’ve ever run across. During Ken’s confrontation with a press gang’s bulked-out boss Geese, Geese shouts about “…the art I practice. The art of assassination, Hokuto no Shinken, the FIST OF THE NORTH STAR!” -just before Ken deals him an attitude adjustment.

Hokuto No Shinken is, we find out, highly exclusive. So why some ’roid-lord biker-banger from the burning nowhere would claim to be trained in it is a damn fine question. Mmmaybe it’s got something to do with the blonde fella rushing Ken in the intro, or the woman reaching towards him. I do get the feeling that old skool FotNS fans will have a good idea of what the score is long before the expository halftime show begins.

Art/Animation:
Ahhh…the apocalyspe future sure is purty. The fluttering scraps of fallout tainting the earth, the sand battered bikes of the raiders bouncing across the sand, even Kenshiro’s Mad Max-wear is meticulously detailed. Great pains were surely taken to present scenes with the same obsessive detailing and intricacy that one would expect from a printed page. Sanga’s palace is a goon infested art piece; the walls are thoroughly etched and textured. A flyover shot manages to deftly both detail the layers of social strata in Sanga’s kingdom and impress with the actual aestethic of the images.

Yes, it’s CGI and hand-drawn interacting cleanly.

Getting back to Kenny’s fashion sense, the art even reproduces the little bitty scalloping found on actual leather wear, the kind that only accumilates with age and exposure to the elements. Color me impressed. Even granting that this tends to only happen when Ken’s precision killing requires a little explanation that’s still excessively awesome.

Kudos for the machines as well. The average everyday post-apocalyptic people mover is held together by duct tape and prayers. We see a siege weapon/command post constructed from a cannabalized dump truck. Even the mook-cycles are all different from each other.

Without a doubt New Fist of the North Star is hardcore about it’s looks…and we haven’t even touched on the killing yet.

There’s this perverse corollary in FotNS: the tougher you are, the worse you die. Normal mooks typically detonate like fire-cracker laced tomatoes. But if you’re some 12ft-tall bad-arsed chem-beast, you’re gonna spend a few minutes stumbling along trying to stuff your face back into place before spraying your grey into the desert. And I need stereo sound because I suspect that the two bigger clumps of brains can actually be heard landing in different spots. New Fist is old school like The Punisher: killing is funny, so really gratuitous killing is really funny.

Music/Voices:
I get this persistent impression that the dominant focus behind NFotNS was “get it right.” Just that, just simply “get it right.” And the voice work continues to influence this perception of mine.

To start, Kenshiro is uber. Ken’s V/A is pitched lower than Barry White making a diving catch. He‘s menacing and determined and fearlessly calm, and pretty damn awesome for it.

Sanga’s not quite the direct hit; just a wee too prissy to really be impressive. Still, “done right” if not done perfectly.

For their part the assorted Goons are a typically mixed bag of nuts. They’re loud and they’re braggarts, sometimes blubbery and goobery, at others paunchy and, uh…Australian. (Yeah, wasn’t sure ‘bout that last one either but that’s how it went) in turns as befits such. Ditto the peasants and other scenery; if the quality stays consistent there won’t be much to kvetch about in future volumes.

A note on the music. Good intro theme -anything with the line, “I can still only supress it by hurting others“ is a winner.

Extras:
The right term here is “Wow“. Like, “Wow there’s a lot of extra features stuffed into this DVD.” Interviews with the cast, press release coverage, character bios and an exposition by Gracie Jiu-Jitsu all-star (and starkly intense dude) Phil Cardella who breaks down what’s real about Hokuto No Ken in the application of actual pressure-point techniques. Fascinating stuff; might be a little beyond casual study but intriguing all the same. Yeah, and he’s big on the “pain is weakness leaving the body” school of thought; watching him thrash his pupil while demonstrating how it’s done in the house of Gracie brings back memories of fresh bruise days and muscle strain nights.

The cast interviews are pretty fascinating themselves. Not a common sort of insight this, but a chance to understand somewhat how good V/A is done, what kind of attitude and expectations work…and which don’t.

Final Analysis:
New Fist of the North Star gets it right with authority. The bar has been set, and set high. I think that given consistency this series could really make a mark as long as the production values don’t drift away (Heeeeeeyyyyy, Mezzo!) and the story stays strong. If there’s a bone to pick, it’s found in the absence of a second chapter to the volume. It’s an hour of solid thrashing and jammed with goodies, but ultimately the fanbase will decide whether that makes for a proper bargain.

New Fist of the North Star revives Tetsuo Hara’s legend. It just might create a new generation of fans, might win to the series another round of longevity. It’s a fine new surprise and a safe gift for the otaku who takes his action bloody.