Copyright © 1999 Buronson Tetsuo Hara/Shueisha, Toei Animation

The sight of a human body exploding like a grapefruit dropped from a great height is inevitably going to incite a strong reaction in the viewer. Faced with such a spectacle, even in animated form, one is likely to either to turn away in embarrassed revulsion or laugh gleefully and await the next gory detonation. I'll be honest, this reviewer leans towards the former response, but those who practice the latter are going to get quite a kick out of FIST OF THE NORTHSTAR (pun unabashedly intended).
Manga Entertainment is releasing all 36 of the FIST OF THE NORTHSTAR (HOKUTO NO KEN) Japanese television episodes over the coming months, and it's worth noting it took over a decade for an American company to import these episodes. The manga, TV show and full-length movie were all extremely popular in Japan, and FIST deserves no small credit for opening the doors to a variety of exceptionally violent martial-arts anime. While the movie has been available stateside for many years, it has taken a long time for anyone to decide to bring the television series to the United States. The level of violence, the simplicity of the plot and the low animation standards all seem to discourage wide American release—but now Manga is apparently banking on viewers embracing FIST's brute force appeal.
In my opinion, FIST can't help but come across as terribly dated to the contemporary anime watcher. The artwork features rough, heavily-inked lines with flat, if somewhat disproportionate, characters. The much-touted martial-arts action amounts to essentially a repetitive array of still frames and the constant silhouettes of exploding bodies. The best that can be said of the soundtrack is that it does not distract from the action onscreen. And as for the plot, anime cliches had to come from somewhere and FIST embraces many of them.
Stop me if you heard this one before: nuclear war has reduced humanity to hardscrabble existence in a harsh world full of nasty mutants. A lone warrior searches for his lost love who was kidnapped by his fiendish archenemy. Along the way he fights for truth and justice on behalf of mothers, orphans and abandoned puppies. Think MAD MAX blended with RAMBO topped off by a smattering of your least favorite Hong Kong action flick, creating a top-heavy stew of violence and surliness and even more violence. Our hero is the laconic, and extremely eyebrowed, Kenshiro who stalks the post-cataclysm earth, bringing chaos everywhere he goes. He wields a special martial-arts ability to hit his foes' acupuncture pressure points, causing their bodies to literally, and messily, explode. He also seems to lose his shirt often as well, revealing the Big Dipper shaped holes burned into his chest and the source of his hatred of his mortal enemy Shin, who also stole his best girl.
The first episode of this tape is entitled "God or Devil?! The Mightiest Man Who Appeared in Hell!" It lasts 25 minutes, and by my calculations, that figures out to mean roughly one bursting bad guy every three minutes. During this episode Ken also manages to save a village from barbarians with mohawks, and restore a young girl's ability to speak after the trauma of seeing her parents killed by some other mohawked mutants made her mute. (Why do post-nuclear mutants always have mohawks anyways, must be something in the water?) In the end, Ken leaves the grateful townspeople behind, lurching off silently and bow-legged into the sunset.
I'll let the titles of the remaining episodes of this volume speak for themselves: "The Deadly Fist of Lingering Regret! The Future is Sighted in the Barren Desert!!" & "In a City Without Light, a Lone Fist Burns! Furious Death of Five Exploding Fingers!!" The exclamation points alone almost make my head want to explode.
Like its burly protagonist, FIST OF THE NORTHSTAR is crude and pompous, brutal and heavy-handed. Some seminal shows have stood up to the test of time, but to this reviewer, FIST tastes more like sour grapes than a fine wine. However, if you prefer that your anime have a high body count, then FIST OF THE NORTHSTAR just might be your cup of tea.

Released (in N. America) by Manga Entertainment
75 minutes.
$19.95 dubbed / $24.95 subtitled
(VHS Color/Stereo Hi-Fi)
UPC: 6-60200-40013-2 (dub) / 6-60200-40023-1 (sub)
Available Now in the U.S.
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