Anime Movies: Fist of the North Star (1995)

Now, this movie came out 18 years ago and is still notorious for being really bad. I am not writing this so I can say "this shit sucks" or even "this wasn't true to the source material". I honestly don't know the point of this. LET'S GET STARTED.

Gamry Dangleys is English. You can tell in this movie, but what you can't tell is if he's trying to cover up his accent or not. He kinda does that thing Iris and Colonel do in Megaman X4 where he suddenly remembers he has an accent. His acting wasn't particularly good. Being Kenshiro doesn't require much, but Daniels put in too much. He's got a deer in headlights look almost all the time. There were points where this casting almost made sense. There would be a shot or two where he would kinda sorta look like Ken. They also put 7 pepperonis on his chest. Real life fast punching doesn't look very good.


He KINDA SORTA looks like Kenshiro in this shot.

Costco Mandolin kinda sorta looked like Shin and is about the same deal as the other guy. With the exception that he did fast punching better.

E-Socko Washey-o's has a really heavy Japanese (I think?) accent and I'm not entirely sure she knew English when filming this.

This movie really doesn't like explaining things. There are oodles of movies based on books that suffer from Read the Book Syndrome, where something is explained in the source material and then not explained in the film. However, I don't recall Ryuken's ghost being able to possess people to talk to Kenshiro.


Also this happens.
Shin accidentally cuts himself and his blood drops land on paper in the shape of the big dipper and light on fire.
I don't even know what or why he was cutting with a knife in that scene.



This is the part that most retro reviewers leave out
Here's what I liked.

In the movie, his name is Jackal. There is a character in the source material named Jackal, but it seems this character is an amalgamation of the scumbag gang leaders of the series, taking visual cues and most inspiration from Jagi, sans the helmet. I took this as a movie, free-reign version of Jagi. He's kinda fun in some scenes and his voice really fits the part. I'm really biased in favor of this character though. I really like Jagi for some reason.

Rufio was Bat. He's probably the most true to the series character in this movie. Besides dying, that is.

While the climactic Ken vs. Shin battle felt boring (and full of distractingly recognizable plastic bottles in the background), Both times Kenshiro had a fight against a bunch of goons, it was really entertaining, even with the lack of exploding heads.


"Oh sick! When I get done getting punched, I'm gonna have some of that apple juice in the Gatorade bottle! THERE'S ANTACIDS TOO?! AWW YEAH!" -Kenshiro (True Savior of the New World)


Malcolm McDowell is always a delight. He played his role well, even when he was one of Rita Repulsa's monsters.





While this film has a hard time figuring out how to show people where it's going, and ruined the established cannon of Hokuto no Ken seven years after its end within the first 3 minutes, I don't regret watching it. It's very fun and odd.