So yeah, I just finished watching Fist of the Blue Sky, and I have to say that it was an entertaining little romp into the past of the Fist of the North Star universe.
It had it's fair share of problems though, actually, probably more than it's fair share.
Let's talk about the good things first though, since I hate putting them last so I might as well get them out of the way. For one, Kasumi Kenshiro (aka, Yan Wang), Kenshiro's uncle, is the star of the show, and he far and away has much better dialogue and a better personality than his nephew. He's much more fun to watch. The setting that that show takes place in, 1935 Shanghai, is also a much more lively and realistic atmosphere, and it provides a useful backdrop for all of Kasumi's problems to spring out from. The cast is also larger and more likable, and the show features some tidbits of Chinese culture and language that I feel truly contributed to the quality of the show, if only because I like learning about stuff like that.
Also, the opening and ending credit music is pretty boss. Those are some catchy engrish tunes, if I say so myself.
Even though the show is much, MUCH more morally ambiguous, the show still does a good job of portraying Kasumi and his gangster buddies as the good guys... even though they're going around performing hits, bribing the police, selling opium, and controlling the casinos just like all their competitors. They're just not dicks about it, which makes them the defacto good guys as far as the show is concerned. Hell, the show even makes a big deal about one character USING opium in order to try to reach a certain level of enlightenment, basically saying that he's completely in the wrong to even think such a thing... but it's alright for the other guys to be selling it by the WAREHOUSE full, just so long as they aren't using it themselves. Just great guys, good job.
However, the show was very unambitious and poorly directed at times. There's also some weird dialogue that reveals that the creators weren't paying attention. For example, at the very beginning, Ryuuken, Kenshiro's father, is waiting for him to be born, since he's waiting "For an heir to Hokuto Shinken", and you see, this doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense because at this point in time Ryuuken had already fathered THREE sons, Raoh, Toki, and Jagi. What made him so sure that he had to wait for the fourth one to be a winner? This is just me being pedantic though.
Also, there's alot of details that require MUCH more elaboration on because they're just so damn important to the background and the setting, but never go anywhere.
Like, in the show, we learn some of the history of Hokuto Shinken, and that besides Hokuto Shinken, there's two other rival schools of Hokuto Ken: Hokuto Sonkaken, and Hokuto Sokaken. To my knowledge, skipping ahead 70 years into the future of the show, these schools don't exist anymore after the apocalypse. What the hell happened to them? After all is said and done, the show never says. Way to avoid enriching the background.
Also, the other masters of these schools are the only people that Kasumi ever gets around to fighting. There are literally no Nanto masters in the show, whatsoever. I mean, there are 108 schools of Nanto Ken, and in the year 20XX, Kenshiro can't walk 10 feet without running into a Nanto master. It'd have been cool, like, REALLY cool to see the background and history of the different Schools of the South Star.
Besides that, there's also quite a few details and side-plots which are simply never resolved. What happened to Kitaoji's dream of creating a Shangri-la? Apparently never happens, since we already know the world gets blown up. What happened to Charles De Guise's plan to undermine Shanghai's underworld to gain political dominance over the entire city in the name of France? He apparently forgot about it. What happened to Zhang Tai-Yan's pursuit of revenge against his father, and as an extension to that, his pursuit to perfect his mastery of Hokuto Sokaken and become the next successor in that particular school? Apparently not important enough for the show to focus on. Hell, what the FUCK happened to Pan? Did he fucking die or what? He was kind of an important character, but the show just leaves us hanging on the last goddamn episode. Seriously, what the hell?
Also, just like Kenshiro after him, Kasumi suffers from "Infallible God Man" syndrome, in which everything that Kasumi says or does is validated as being totally acceptable by everyone else, that he's always able to complete any task he sets his mind to, and that every enemy he confronts is OBVIOUSLY weaker than him in some way, shape, or form, and they clearly never had a chance to win in the first place, so why did they even bother? Sometimes the show has a literal army of soldiers with automatic rifles standing around, and Kasumi will pretend to be afraid of these guys, to create this sorta-kinda tension, but he could seriously just kill them all without even thinking about it and everyone knows it. It really kills the drama when it's basically established that the main character is the strongest man in the whole damn world, and that everyone else is a wannabe pansy that could never hope to beat him. It's not like they didn't have good stock of characters to present a challenge to him, they had OTHER Hokuto masters fight him, so it should have basically been god-man fighting god-man, which on paper sounds awesome, but in execution, it's apparently not. Way to go guys, you're wonderful.
Also, before I even saw the first episode, I read a synopsis of the show that promised there'd be Nazis in the show. I didn't see a single goddamn Nazi. Sonsofbitches! Not the show's fault, but I was looking forward to it.
Overall, if you really like Fist of the North Star, then give this a good looksie. If not, then you're not missing anything important.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3150612 times)