I've been thoroughly enjoying Fist of the North Star lately. It's a fairly straightforward show that manages to actually do so many bad things so well that the end product is pretty awesome.
Kenshiro, our main character, is a martial artist genius that is the sole heir of the fighting style "Hokuto Shin-ken", which, in Kenshiro's own words, is invincible.
What this means is that from episode 1, Kenshiro is ALREADY next to unbeatable and infallible as far as fighting is concerned. His entire fighting repertoire consists entirely of ancient secret techniques, nearly all of which make the victim's head and body explode violently.
That's right, he fights by making his enemies explode. The way it's explained is that he's hitting "secret hidden pressure points" that alters the body's physiology and forces the body to do any number of things, some pressure points are helpful, while most are instantly lethal. You can tell this is bullshit though, as Kenshiro in most fights appears to just be punching and kicking any damn place he wants and his enemy's explode as a result. He doesn't even need to be very exact about it, he can just elbow them, headbutt them, or only touch them indirectly (through thrown objects or thrown enemies), and BAM there's exploding heads everywhere.
So now that I'm done blabbering about Kenshiro himself, let me talk about the story, if you even want to call it that. It's simple, before the show started, Kenshiro's only true rival, Shin, beat his ass, stole his hottie girlfriend Yuria, and left him to die in the desert. He then wandered around for a bit before the show started, and we meet up with him as he's walking into a town that's getting attacked, he kicks everyone's ass, and we learn that he's determined to get revenge against Shin and get Yuria back.
As far as I know, Shin is the only character in the show to have EVER dealt significant damage to Kenshiro. Everyone else is a pissant in comparison to either Kenshiro or Shin. Nameless mooks die by the truckfuls as Kenshiro doles out his exploding head techiques, and named mooks only last a couple seconds longer.
Of course, Ken only kills bad guys, he never ever hurts innocent townspeople, even if he desperately needs food or water. Also, he always goes out of his way to kill the bad guys of each area, because the show would be boring if he didn't.
It'd be pretty damn easy to call Kenshiro a blatantly obvious Gary Stu, seeing as he's a next to invincible super-badass with a heart of gold, good looks, the admiration of the people, and the true love of the hottest babe in the land, but it doesn't grate on you like it sounds it would. This is because Kenshiro, while being a generally flat, simple character, plays up his Sue status for every damn cent it's worth. He almost never talks, except when explaining the way in which his latest victim is going to die. He doesn't ever concern himself in matters more complicated that "punch guys and make heads explode". His fights are surprisingly enjoyable, despite being painfully one-sided, because the action is plentiful, bloody, and Ken always seems to have new ways of killing people. Finally, Ken is just plain cool, like, he's the guy you always pretended you were when you were 10, and you just got done watching a Bruce lee flick, and you're just running and screaming and punching real fast fighting invisible baddies. It's pretty cathartic, and it's also pretty cool when he screams and his shirt literally EXPLODES off his chest for no reason other than to look cool.
Even though nothing is explicitly stated, there's a bunch of little quirks about Kenshiro though that lead me to believe he's an idiot savant as far as fighting is concerned. For one, he travels around in a car, but unless I'm forgetting something, I've never seen him drive. He leaves all the driving to a 15-year-old boy that he met in the first village. Kenshiro is the type of person that would never purposefully put a child in danger, so I'm led to believe that he doesn't actually know how to drive or operate machinery. Also, theres a very odd scene in one episode where he acquires some rice seeds from a man that's killed in the same episode. He goes to the grave of the man, then sprinkles the seeds on his grave, saying "They will grow, because that man is buried here." and I can't help but think "That's not how agriculture works Kenshiro!". Also, I can't help but speculate that Kenshiro is secretly the world's greatest seamster, as his shirt and jacket are torn off (or literally, explode off) his chest 2-4+ times per episode, but no matter how many times it happens, by the time the next scene rolls around, he'll have a seemingly brand new shirt and jacket that are identical to the ones that were just destroyed. So he's either sewing/mending himself up new clothes at superhuman speed every time he needs them, or he's secretly carrying a cache of thousands of identical outfits with him everywhere.
Finally, it must be mentioned that the opening theme song is so fucking awesome, there is a very good chance that I'll let a single episode linger on my harddrive forever so that I can go back and listen to it any time I want.
Pretty good show, I'd recommend it.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3055949 times)